Linch

• Linch 8 Apr 2026 4:01 UTC

  2 points

  0

  in reply to: Afterimage’s comment on: Thoughts on Claude’s Constitution

  Agreed narrowly, though like Haiku said this is a highly unreasonable hypothetical and it’s not at all clear to me that model answers on questions like this say much about their performance in real-world ethical dilemmas (or in general).

• Linch 3 Apr 2026 0:34 UTC

  2 points

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  in reply to: Morpheus’s comment on: Linch’s Shortform

  I always thought naked mole rats live long because they are eusocial

  Well subterranean mole-rats in general (describing the shape, nothing else is in the same genus as NMRs) also live longer than mice and rats. I do think the eusociality plays a role too!
  
  Another unique-ish thing about naked mole-rats, in addition to their high average lifespan, is that they don’t age (or don’t age much) in the demographic sense (ie their annual probability of dying is close to flat). I don’t think worker ants or bees work the same way though the data on this is scarce.

  I am curious: What is the theory?

  In addition to eusociality and the subterranean environment (=lower predators from a non-adaptive evolutionary perspective, = lower oxidation from a mechanistic/​biological perspective), naked molerats’ rather unique form of queen selection may mean that living longer confers reproductive advantage, similar to lobsters.

  So there’s an evolutionary incentive to live longer/​having later-in-life deleterious mutations are costlier.

  Since the NMR extrinsic mortality rate is low, the reproductive advantage conveyed from being slightly older doesn’t have to be as high as for other animals, in the standard nonadaptive framework.
  
  Can elaborate more if needed.

• Linch 31 Mar 2026 16:19 UTC

  2 points

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  in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Linch’s Shortform

  It’s an evolutionary theory, not a mechanistic theory. Tbc not a revolutionary theory broadly, nor a theory that would cash out to longevity treatments if true or anything crazy like that.

• Linch 31 Mar 2026 10:47 UTC

  6 points

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  on: Linch’s Shortform

  I have a new theory of naked mole-rat longevity, that’s most likely false. I (and LLMs) couldn’t find enough data to either back or disprove it. Nor could we find anybody who’s proposed this theory before.

  Any advice for how I can find the relevant experts to talk to about it and see if they’ve already investigated this direction?

  A few years ago I’d just email the relevant scientists directly but these days I’ve worried about the rise of LLM crank-science so I feel like my bar for how much I believe or could justify a theory before cold-emailing scientists ought to go up.

• Linch 29 Mar 2026 8:42 UTC

  3 points

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  on: Linch’s Shortform

  Who are some of ur favorite living essayists or bloggers, on a prose/​technical level? I’m interested in potentially improving my craft by reading more high-quality writers of nonfiction, particularly non-rationalist ones.

• Linch 29 Mar 2026 1:54 UTC

  2 points

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  in reply to: lc’s comment on: lc’s Shortform

  But that also means that explaining to the person that rational people don’t get negatively polarized is unlikely stop them from saying these bizarre-sounding things.

  I agree, however the objective isn’t to change their mind, the objective is to remind coalitional partners and neutral third-parties that their surface-level arguments are retarded. Whether the onlookers then assess whoever said it as liars or idiots is up to the onlooker in question.

  (Btw this comment was really annoying to format, getting the quote-blocks right seemed impossible)

• Linch 29 Mar 2026 1:44 UTC

  2 points

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  in reply to: Davidmanheim’s comment on: What if su­per­in­tel­li­gence is just weak?

  Fair, it depends a lot on whether you think the badness of insulting someone is due to intrinsic vs game-theoretic reasons.

• Linch 27 Mar 2026 23:31 UTC

  4 points

  2

  in reply to: Simon Lermen’s comment on: What if su­per­in­tel­li­gence is just weak?

  DM’d

• Linch 27 Mar 2026 23:01 UTC

  5 points

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  in reply to: Alex Mallen’s comment on: Alex Mallen’s Shortform

  I think the thing I was missing was that in a typical RL implementation you should expect the two copies of the same policy to use different seeds, where I was imagining it as a “logical twin PD” situation where your actions are actually evidence for your twins’ actions.

• Linch 27 Mar 2026 21:49 UTC

  8 points

  4

  in reply to: Davidmanheim’s comment on: What if su­per­in­tel­li­gence is just weak?

  While I sort of see your point, I do think Dean has a higher rate of randomly insulting other people (including myself) than pretty much anybody else respected within rationalist circles for their discourse norms^[1].

  1. ^

     (I’m not including people who, e.g., respect Musk for his ability to Get Things Done; I don’t think many people here think of Musk as an ideal debate participant).

• Linch 27 Mar 2026 19:00 UTC

  LW: 7 AF: 3

  0

  AF

  in reply to: Alex Mallen’s comment on: Alex Mallen’s Shortform

  I’m confused. Can someone explain to me in simple language why an RL environment for twin-prisoner’s dilemmas wouldn’t favor EDT?

• Linch 27 Mar 2026 18:31 UTC

  2 points

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  in reply to: Daniel Kokotajlo’s comment on: leogao’s Shortform

  I think the same world that coordinated well enough to do a centuries-long AGI pause (without heralding a dark age of negative economic growth or global totalitarianism, etc) is probably also more than capable of preventing thermonuclear war, extinction-level artificial pandemics, grey goo, etc.

  At that point your biggest risks are natural x-risks (very low), authoritarian backsliding, meme wars, and some fraction of unknown unknowns.

• Linch 25 Mar 2026 22:57 UTC

  14 points

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  in reply to: Tomás B.’s comment on: ricraz’s Shortform

  I also liked this one for foreshadowing the same problems Ngo was complaining about: https://​​substack.com/​​home/​​post/​​p-179661551

• Linch 25 Mar 2026 15:37 UTC

  2 points

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  in reply to: Mo Putera’s comment on: The Fourth World

  It’s a (slightly surprisingly to me) very high-controversy post! On Substack it’s led to both people DMing me saying it’s their favorite post I’ve ever written, and the highest number of unsubscribes from a single post so far.

• Linch 25 Mar 2026 15:21 UTC

  2 points

  3

  in reply to: cubefox’s comment on: Linch’s Shortform

  Sure, I use “implied” in the colloquial sense rather than the logical sense.

• Linch 25 Mar 2026 14:52 UTC

  2 points

  1

  in reply to: cubefox’s comment on: Linch’s Shortform

  It’s implied to be intentional here.

• Linch 25 Mar 2026 14:50 UTC

  2 points

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  in reply to: Charlie Steiner’s comment on: The Fourth World

  Sure, arguably there are separate things like games, and rights, and art, and honor, and so forth. I was trying to define things in a relatively minimalist way, and interested in something like an escalating hierarchy of clearly different worlds rather than seriously consider things all the emergent stuff or things that are in between.

• Linch 25 Mar 2026 14:48 UTC

  2 points

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  in reply to: James Camacho’s comment on: The Fourth World

  I don’t understand your argument here. I think we don’t have a good mathematical definition of phenomenological consciousness that seems particularly believable to me, and confusing it with access “consciousness” is just one of the many ways where people seem confused about it. It also means that attempting a new mathematical construct is an interesting and valid approach to the problem but surely shouldn’t be your Plan A.

• Linch 24 Mar 2026 13:44 UTC

  9 points

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  on: Linch’s Shortform

  Did reposting to EA Forum break recently?

• Linch 19 Mar 2026 18:06 UTC

  2 points

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  in reply to: Linch’s comment on: Linch’s Shortform

  Wrote it up in more detail on substack:
  
  https://​​linch.substack.com/​​p/​​further-moral-goods