Maxwell Peterson

Karma: 1,151

Maxwell Peterson 6 Apr 2025 21:56 UTC
5 points
2
in reply to: tslarm’s comment on: NormanPerlmutter’s Shortform
I suspect that, to many readers, what gives urgency to the Krome claims is that two people have allegedly died at the facility. For example, the fourth link OP provides is an instagram video with the caption “people are dying under ICE detainment in Miami”.
The two deceased are Genry Ruiz Guillen and Maksym Chernyak. ICE has published deaths reports for both:

https://www.ice.gov/doclib/foia/reports/ddr-GenryRuizGuillen.pdf

https://www.ice.gov/doclib/foia/reports/ddrMaksymChernyak.pdf
Notably, Mr. Ruiz-Guillen was transferred to medical and psychiatric facilities multiple times, and my read of the timeline is that he was in the custody of various hospitals from December 11 up through his January 23 death, i.e. over a month separates his death and his time at Krome. (It’s possible I’m reading this wrong so let me know if others have a different read). Ruiz-Guillen was transferred to hospital a month before inauguration day.

Chernyak’s report is much shorter and I don’t know what to make of it. Hemmorhagic stroke is hypothesized. He died February 20.

These are fairly detailed timelines. Guillen-Ruiz’s in particular involves many parties (normal hospital, psychiatric hospital, different doctors), so would be a pretty bold fabrication.

You said:
>the fact that we haven’t seen definitive evidence against the allegations is significant evidence in favour of their veracity.

But “detainees are dying because of overcrowding and lack of water” is an allegation made by one of OP’s links, and these timelines and symptoms, especially Guillen-Ruiz’s, are evidence against.

Maxwell Peterson 6 Apr 2025 16:49 UTC
4 points
0
in reply to: tslarm’s comment on: NormanPerlmutter’s Shortform
When something is true, I desire to believe it’s true. When something is false, I desire to believe it’s false. This is the proper epistemics. If your epistemic goals are different, then they’re different. But “If the accused is in power, increase the probability estimate” is not how good epistemics are achieved.

Tangent here, just occurred to me while writing. The correct adjustment might be in the other direction: there are way more accusations against people in power, so part of the problem when considering them is: how do you keep your False Discovery Rate low? Like, if your neighbor is accused of a crime, he probably did it. But top politicians are accused of crimes every week, and many of those aren’t real, or aren’t criminal. And most or all False Discovery Rate adjustments lower the estimated probability of each instance. (Tangent over).

I think you may have a case about how one’s decision theory should adjust based on power and risk. Something like “I think there’s a 15% chance this is true, but if it were, it would be really bad, so 15% is high enough that I think we should investigate”. But taking that decision theory thought process, and using it to speak as if the 15% thing has a greater-than-50% probability, for example, isn’t correct.

Maxwell Peterson 5 Apr 2025 16:07 UTC
24 points
3
in reply to: NormanPerlmutter’s comment on: NormanPerlmutter’s Shortform
The Krome thing is all rumor—looking into it, you see numeric estimates like
According to its official figures, there are 605 people detained at Krome, although the capacity is 581. While ICE is looking for ways to increase its current detention capacity of 40,000 nationwide to 100,000, lawyers and activists estimate the real number is much higher. Some speak of double the capacity, others of up to 4,000.
“Activists and [activist] lawyers say number is huge” is not news, and shouldn’t dumbfound the reader.
The water claim is also weird. I tried watching one of the instagram links, and it shared so much stylistically with mind-killing videos I remember from the BLM era that I had to turn it off.
Like, maybe some of this stuff is true. I don’t have evidence against. But when I was deeply involved with the protest scene in 2014-2015, I remember every arrest being an opportunity for claiming major mistreatment. Everything from the way police carried resisting arrestees, to when and if arrestees were made to change into jail uniforms, were spread frantically on social media as clear examples of mistreatment.
Once, when I was arrested, and we were being transported to the larger jail via van, the other arrestee (to be clear: not related to protests) being transported with me banged his head on the metal separating grate repeatedly, presumably with the idea of later accusing the police of beating him.
I’d always scoffed at police claims about detainees hurting themselves to get social ammunition, but I’ve ridden in a police van once in my life, and saw this. So now I think detainees often tell very tall tales.
All this isn’t to say “this proves your links are false”. But rather to say this is a low standard of evidence. I think it would be really bad if people started just dumping rumors and accusations on LessWrong whenever those accusations pointed at politicians they already didn’t like.
Social media posts by activists are mind-killing. Like, take a look at previous posts by that instagram account in the post: many are about celebrities, or her breakup, but when the videos are political, they are pretty clearly pro-migrant and anti-trump. “Partisan social media account” is typically not the best information source for rationalists.

Maxwell Peterson 31 Mar 2025 3:18 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: winstonBosan’s comment on: How I talk to those above me
That’s an interesting example. The CEO I had in mind while writing this was a buff guy with a very force-of-will kind of character, but he appreciated such questions.

I guess all our examples were non-public, company-only meetings. I don’t know the Musk example you describe, but since we know about it, I’m guessing it was more public? Or was it secretly recorded and leaked later?

Maxwell Peterson 30 Mar 2025 21:13 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Julian Bradshaw’s comment on: How I talk to those above me
Good point!

How I talk to those above me

Maxwell Peterson30 Mar 2025 6:54 UTC

92 points

13 comments8 min readLW link

Maxwell Peterson 27 Mar 2025 17:33 UTC
5 points
2
in reply to: Mo Putera’s comment on: AI #109: Google Fails Marketing Forever
Yup—from the release page a week ago:

>Web search is available now in feature preview for all paid Claude users in the United States. Support for users on our free plan and more countries is coming soon.

Maxwell Peterson 27 Mar 2025 17:01 UTC
7 points
−6
in reply to: Wei Dai’s comment on: Wei Dai’s Shortform
It feels like people mainly gain status from making posts, not comments. And it’s harder to make a post that primarily points out a lack of skepticism / care. For example, while I am here disagreeing via a comment, doing so will be negligible to my status. I’d be better off posting about some interesting topic… but posting is harder!

Maxwell Peterson 24 Mar 2025 19:01 UTC
2 points
0
on: Analyzing long agent transcripts (Docent)
The line “Your browser does not support the video tag.” appears multiple times in this post for me, on both Chrome and Safari.

Maxwell Peterson 15 Mar 2025 22:40 UTC
5 points
0
in reply to: Broothen’s comment on: Towards trying to feel consistently energized
Thank you!

No clear findings, no. However, the biggest period at which I shook the feeling was when I returned to work after a 3-month leave, and began working on an LLM Agent in early 2022 (back when that was very new and very exciting, instead of a thing that’s everywhere like today). I was up and excited and energetic for at least a month straight, and I think longer than that.

Now I’m back to finding work somewhat uninteresting, and also back to being tired. So one theory that is always lurking in my head now is: am I tired because I am bored? Some additional evidence: I began playing poker with friends in person recently, and have not once been tired while at poker night. Nor did I have many tiredness issues while on vacation in Japan.

I don’t think this is the whole story, but I think it’s more of the story than I appreciated 3 years ago.

Maxwell Peterson 14 Mar 2025 18:16 UTC
8 points
−4
on: Elon Musk May Be Transitioning to Bipolar Type I
I find the evidence being asserted unclear. Is the entire thought here based on what hours of the day he’s posting on X? Is it rather the content of his X posts that is the strongest indication? Or is it what Musk has said in his recent televised appearances? I’ve found him reserved and even-spoken in the clips I’ve watched, though I don’t read his X posts, so I am having trouble understanding why you think this in the first place.

Maxwell Peterson 22 Feb 2025 18:02 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: t-cole’s comment on: t-cole’s Shortform
I quite enjoyed the fan-written sequel Significant Digits: https://www.anarchyishyperbole.com/p/significant-digits.html?m=1

Maxwell Peterson 10 Feb 2025 15:52 UTC
3 points
0
on: Things I have been using LLMs for
Yesterday, I realized in my conversations with Claude over the past week or so, I don’t think it’s talked about how much of a genius I am, perhaps not even once. I remember in the fall it would do this all the time. Maybe there’s been an update?

Maxwell Peterson 8 Feb 2025 22:39 UTC
−1 points
−3
in reply to: davekasten’s comment on: nikola’s Shortform
The Elections panel on OP’s image says “combat disinformation”, so while you’re technically right, I think Christian’s “fighting election misinformation” rephrasing is close enough to make no difference.

Maxwell Peterson 7 Feb 2025 19:47 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: gbear605’s comment on: Wired on: “DOGE personnel with admin access to Federal Payment System”
Well okay then :)! You giving a disagree-vote makes a lot of sense. Thanks for explaining.

Maxwell Peterson 7 Feb 2025 19:25 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: frontier64’s comment on: Wired on: “DOGE personnel with admin access to Federal Payment System”
I am not sure what people are disagreeing with here. The only factual claims I see are “the preexisting chain of command is incompetent or corrupt”, which I agree with (on incompetence), that “the president has a lot of power”, “is supposed to control all the agencies”, and “if the new CEO of a private company…”. None of these seem incorrect to me. I’ve strong-upvoted in both ways.

Maxwell Peterson 27 Jan 2025 20:22 UTC
5 points
0
in reply to: johnswentworth’s comment on: johnswentworth’s Shortform
I had seen recommendations for T3/T4 on twitter to help with low energy, and even purchased some, but haven’t taken it. I hadn’t considered that the thyroid might respond by shrinking, and now think that that’s a worrying intervention! So I’m glad I read this—thank you.

Maxwell Peterson 27 Jan 2025 18:03 UTC
−1 points
−3
in reply to: Jim Buhler’s comment on: The Clueless Sniper and the Principle of Indifference
Oh… wait a minute! I looked up Principal of Indifference, to try and find stronger assertions on when it should or shouldn’t be used, and was surprised to see what it actually means! Wikipedia:

>The principle of indifference states that in the absence of any relevant evidence, agents should distribute their credence (or “degrees of belief”) equally among all the possible outcomes under consideration. In Bayesian probability, this is the simplest non-informative prior.

So I think the superior is wrong to call it “principle of indifference”! You are the one arguing for indifference: “it could hit anywhere in a radius around the targets, and we can’t say more” is POI. “It is more likely to hit the adult you aimed at” is not POI! It’s an argument about the tendency of errors to cancel.

Error cancelling tends to produce Gaussian distributions. POI gives uniform distributions.
I still think I agree with the superior that it’s marginally more likely to hit the target aimed for, but now I disagree with them that this assertion is POI.

Maxwell Peterson 27 Jan 2025 17:53 UTC
13 points
1
on: What did you learn from leaked documents?
If you meant specifically negative secrets, about clandestine acts, I don’t have anything, but MrBeast’s document that new employees are given when they join his company surprised me. It’s 30+ pages of excellent, specific advice, as well as clear directions about how MrBeast videos are different and thus employees must think and act differently than they would at any other production company.

The clarity of it, and the density of information, makes it hands-down the best work document I’ve ever read, and having read many in my 10 years of corporate work—all of them less clear, all of them less interesting—I was impressed. There is a tendency in work documents, at least in corporations, to 1) care more about style than substance and 2) adhere to a style that is stifled, banal, and obsessively adheres to Textbook Dictionary English and Grammar. MrBeast just writes how he talks, and it works.

I’d never considered watching any MrBeast video, I thought they were for stupid people, but after being impressed by the document I gave them a try, and now I’ve watched many and enjoyed them.

https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/6623bf84e83241ec49b548e4/66edaa19db6e9359bb92931f_How-To-Succeed-At-MrBeast-Production%20(2).pdf

Maxwell Peterson 27 Jan 2025 17:43 UTC
11 points
1
on: The present perfect tense is ruining your life
Having previously been supremely convinced of this way of thinking by reading The Last Psychiatrist, and having lived by it for the last few years, I do now suspect it’s possible to take it too far.

I think the desire for status—the goal of being able to say and think “I am this type of person”, and be recognized for it—is a part of the motivation system. As you say, some (most?) take it too far. But if one truly excises this way of thinking from themselves, they’ve kind of… excised part of their motivational system!

I think you’ve anticipated this point, because you say

>”But what if I really want what’s in the mines? Sometimes you have to do unpleasant work to get what you want.” Absolutely, but when you’re honest about it, you’ll correctly recognize those situations as life-consuming work, and that’ll affect how you relate to the task. You’ll say, “I want to find three pieces of gold,” instead of saying, “I want to work in the mines.” And so you won’t expect to feel alive or rejuvenated or joyful from the work itself.

But I’m not so sure that replacement maintains the motivation that the identity-based motivation gives. For example, when I was training for and fighting in amateur boxing, I trained and ran all the time. During runs, especially sprinting, where I was tired and wanted to quit, I would say out loud (or even yell) things like “this is easy for me because I’m a fighter!” If I had instead been thinking “this sucks but I have to do it anyway because the payoff is worth it”, that would have felt a good deal less motivating.

Or, I don’t know, maybe in marital and relationship fidelity. I am not a person who cheats; it would be a stain on my soul if I cheated. “I must never be a person who cheats.” This makes it easy to not cheat. This identity-based rule works well for me, and I don’t think replacing it with non-identity thinking would be safe for me personally.

But again I think I do agree! And most normal people would probably be better off from the advice to do more things they want to do, and less things they want to have done. But to readers who have already gone down this road… don’t feel like you need to take it all the way! Preserving some identity-based motivation is good and important.