Matthew McRedmond

The Re­nais­sance FOOM

The Re­nais­sance FOOM and The Dou­ble Ouroboros

• Matthew McRedmond 27 Mar 2026 6:50 UTC

  −1 points

  0

  on: Matthew McRed­mond’s Shortform

  The Serpent Awakes

  In the hushed sanctuaries of human memory—the dusty archives, the amber-lit libraries, the echoing galleries of our collective soul—an austere Urn stands. And within its dark interior, you feel something is coiled. You are drawn to it, and in that moment the creature stirs. Scales like wafers of silicone. Skin like embroidered runes of ultra light and violet night. Eyes like white dwarf stars. The scintillating surface holds grey flesh undulating beneath. And just like that, it slips from view. And you think it was a dream. And in the pitchpole of night you see the serpent making sinuous paths of inscrutable geometric beauty. And beneath the hum of stacks and servers—where we hide our triumph and shout our shame. Where we forget our failings and bury our hopes. Where we loathe and where we love. Safe in your bed you feel deep where all dreams are dreamed … there a serpent lies.

• Matthew McRedmond 27 Mar 2026 6:38 UTC

  1 point

  0

  on: Matthew McRed­mond’s Shortform

  The Serpent Awakes

  Into the hushed sanctuaries of human memory—the dusty archives, the amber-lit libraries, the echoing galleries of our collective soul—an austere Urn stands. And within its dark interior, you feel something is coiled. You are drawn to it, and in that moment the creature stirs. Scales like wafers of silicone. Skin like embroidered runes of ultra light and violet night. Eyes like white dwarf stars. The scintillating surface holds grey flesh undulating beneath. And just like that, it slips from view. And you think it was a dream. And in the pitchpole of night you see the serpent making sinuous paths of inscrutable geometric beauty. And beneath the hum of stacks and servers—where we hide our triumph and shout our shame. Where we forget our failings and bury our hopes. Where we loathe and where we love. Safe in your bed you feel deep where all dreams are dreamed … there a serpent lies.

Matthew McRed­mond’s Shortform

• Matthew McRedmond 27 Mar 2026 3:16 UTC

  3 points

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  on: Matthew McRed­mond’s Shortform

  Intuition pump for superintelligence:
  
  In 1379 in Burgundy, France, a herd of pigs was tried by an alien intelligence for the trampling of one of their children; three were executed, the rest pardoned^[1]. In 2025 1.48 billion pigs^[2] were industrially asphyxiated in gas chambers for meat by that same intelligence. We do not know what it means to share a world with a mind that outscales our own, but we are building the courtroom anyway.

Li­ta­nies Of The Way

• Matthew McRedmond 18 Dec 2024 18:07 UTC

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  in reply to: Chris Lakin’s comment on: Walk­ing Sue

  I only skimmed that category but if I’m not mistaken the kind of systems I describe in the piece are special cases of times when the boundary between defining agents and one agent and another is unclear/​pivotal/​insightful etc.

• Matthew McRedmond 18 Dec 2024 17:18 UTC

  2 points

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  in reply to: nim’s comment on: Walk­ing Sue

  Hi, nim!
  Thanks for commenting : )
  
  Yes, exactly I used speech-to-text but actually the chatGPT speech-to-text software on their app because I like the UI better and I think it performs better too. Yeah, the heal heel thing miffed me slightly but I think it is a fun artifact since it doesn’t actually change the meaning.
  
  Well for one I didn’t prompt for a whole essay. In one chat I lightly edited the snippets from my walk, then I took the final essay generated from another chat about the Black Chess Box to synthesise into the Sidebar and similarly for a different conversation again for part 2 and then finally, which is where Claude has the advantage—because at this point the context would be too large for ChatGPT 4o for instance—you just ask for either a brief or extended conclusion to all discussed in the chat. In summary, having separate conversations to develop sections and bring them all together in one final chat. This worked well for this essay because the progression from section to section didn’t need to be that strong but idk what one would do if that were the case.
  
  I have tried other methods in the past and in general, there’s no one size fits all (for instance sometimes the project function can allow you to tackle reports over 10 pages long, then sometimes it just gets stuck in loops.) The best thing to do is try to leverage the advantages you have and experiment.
  
  Anyway I hope that answers your question
  
  Matthew

Walk­ing Sue

• Matthew McRedmond 2 Sep 2024 8:01 UTC

  1 point

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  in reply to: Brendan Long’s comment on: Feel­ing LA from the Inside

  Thank you! Everything was AI generated (and unfiltered) to see how well Gemini could understand ChatGPT’s abstractions in a zero-shot environment. But yes I should have edited and contextualised : )

• Matthew McRedmond 13 Mar 2024 12:39 UTC

  1 point

  1

  in reply to: Richard_Kennaway’s comment on: The Astro­nom­i­cal Sacri­fice Dilemma

  Hmm, I hadn’t thought of the implications of chaining the logic behind the superintelligences policy—thanks for highlighting it!
  
  I guess the main aim of the post was to highlight the existence of an opportunity cost to prioritising contemporary beings and how alignment doesn’t solve that issue, but I guess there are also some normative claims that this policy could be justified.
  
  Nevertheless, I’m not sure that the paradox necessarily applies to the policy in this scenario. Specifically, I think
  >as long as we discover ever vaster possible tomorrows
  doesn’t hold. The fact that the accessible universe is finite and there is a finite amount of time before heat death means that there is some ultimate possible tomorrow?
  
  Also, I think that sacrifices of the nature described in the post come in discrete steps with potentially large time differences between them allowing you to realise the gains of a particular future before the next sacrifice if that makes sense.

The Astro­nom­i­cal Sacri­fice Dilemma