MondSemmel

Karma: 4,403

MondSemmel 24 Dec 2025 10:26 UTC
15 points
16
in reply to: David James’s comment on: David James’s Shortform
Feedback: I had to read your first sentence like 3x until I understood you meant “based on reading this, I think many of us had an inaccurate view previously”) instead of “I think many of us have an inaccurate view from reading this”.

MondSemmel 23 Dec 2025 20:12 UTC
6 points
0
in reply to: davekasten’s comment on: Elizabeth’s Shortform
Can you elaborate on how the erosion of the filibuster empowers the party leaders? I figured the filibuster empowers the members (because there are ~never 60 votes for anything) to veto/stop arbitrary legislation, and thus any erosion of the filibuster would weaken the members’ ability to veto/stop legislation and thereby empower their ability to enact legislation instead.
Also, it’s my understanding that a majority of Senators could at any point abolish the filibuster, but they never want to no matter which party is in power, because it empowers individual Senators.

MondSemmel 23 Dec 2025 16:05 UTC
5 points
0
in reply to: Elizabeth’s comment on: Elizabeth’s Shortform
One thing I recall is the (informal) Hastert Rule. Namely that in the House, nowadays leadership often doesn’t even bring bills up for a vote unless a majority of their party is in favor. Whereas if all bills came up for a vote, then you could imagine that even in a D/R-controlled legislature, occasionally a bill might pass that 100% of the minority and 20% of the majority would vote for.

MondSemmel 22 Dec 2025 14:45 UTC
8 points
0
in reply to: davekasten’s comment on: Elizabeth’s Shortform
Re: 0) and 3), Matt Yglesias occasionally mentions Secret Congress as one way of how things still get done in the legislature: namely, if there’s no public scrutiny on a topic, then it doesn’t necessarily get embroiled in partisan conflicts, and then politicians are actually willing to cooperate, strike deals, and pass legislation. Whereas any public attempts at legislating quickly become or look like zero-sum conflicts (if one side wins, the other side loses), so there’s little incentive for politicians to cooperate or make compromises, and then due to a plethora of veto points (like the filibuster), the default outcome is that no legislation gets passed.

MondSemmel 20 Dec 2025 19:01 UTC
4 points
0
in reply to: TomasD’s comment on: TomasD’s Shortform
I assume they could do it since all capabilities have increased by orders of magnitude since 2019 (2019!), but I also don’t see the economic incentive to do so.
Plus I personally think these real-time scenarios in some ways stack the field against the human players by giving the AIs not just superior reasoning ability, but also allowing them to use superior reflexes etc. Like, in some sense it’s entirely unremarkable if an AI with 3000 apm (= actions per minute) beats a human player with 400 apm; and IIRC even if the AI is restricted to 400 apm, it still gets to take much better actions than the inflated apm count of human players.
Turn-based games don’t have this problem, and nor do real-life real-time tasks with robots because there it’s clearer that you’re measuring and comparing both physical and intellectual aspects.

MondSemmel 16 Dec 2025 18:46 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Why do LLMs so often say “It’s not an X, it’s a Y”?
Sure, I just meant that I didn’t mean to suggest the parentheses which are now in the title.

MondSemmel 16 Dec 2025 15:26 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Why do LLMs so often say “It’s not an X, it’s a Y”?
Sorry, I meant to suggest “not a X, it’s a Y” or “not an X, it’s a Y” or “not X, it’s Y”, but not “not a(n) X, it’s a Y”. The latter was just me trying to be compact with the edit suggestion.

MondSemmel 16 Dec 2025 15:17 UTC
0 points
0
on: Why do LLMs so often say “It’s not an X, it’s a Y”?
Surely title and comment should be “It’s not a(n) X, it’s a Y”?

MondSemmel 9 Dec 2025 19:19 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Gavin Runeblade’s comment on: Little Echo
I just tried it on mobile in a browser, and it works the same there: edit your comment via the ⋮ menu in the top right, and select the text of the paragraphs you want to turn into a quote. Then a popup with formatting options opens where you can find the quotation formatting behind another ⋮ option.
By the way, LW quotes look like this.

MondSemmel 9 Dec 2025 12:24 UTC
4 points
0
in reply to: jamiefisher’s comment on: Eliezer’s Unteachable Methods of Sanity
Not every post is addressed at everyone. This post (and others like Death With Dignity) is mostly for those who already believe the world is likely ending. For others, there are far more suitable resources, whether on LW, as books (incl. Yudkowsky’s and Soares’ recent If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies), or as podcasts.
Though re:
I could be convinced we’re in serious danger. I could even be convinced the odds are bad. But I need to believe those odds can move: that the right decisions, policies, and technical work can shift them. A fixed 99% doesn’t call me to action; it calls me to make peace. And I’m not ready to make peace yet.
Yudkowsky argues against using the concept of “p(doom)” for reasons like this. See this post.

MondSemmel 9 Dec 2025 11:45 UTC
4 points
4
in reply to: Gavin Runeblade’s comment on: Little Echo
I only realized halfway through that this was a quote. Suggestion: format it as one. (On desktop, by selecting all the quote text and then choosing the quotation mark symbol.)

MondSemmel 5 Dec 2025 11:57 UTC
10 points
2
in reply to: Drake Thomas’s comment on: Daniel Kokotajlo’s Shortform
+1. In general, if an expert has already put in the time to write such a detailed comment, I strongly encourage them to turn it into a top-level post. If it sounds daunting to edit a comment to the ostensibly higher standards of a top-level post, then don’t; just add a brief disclaimer at the top à la “off-the-cuff comment turned into top-level post” or something and link to this original comment thread. And maybe add more section headings or subheadings so the post is easier to navigate and parse.

MondSemmel 26 Nov 2025 11:50 UTC
6 points
1
in reply to: Mikhail Samin’s comment on: Mikhail Samin’s Shortform
I skimmed your tweet and didn’t see what evidence you used to support your assertions in it.

MondSemmel 26 Nov 2025 10:13 UTC
3 points
1
on: Reasons Why I Cannot Sleep
I was somewhat surprised you didn’t mention bad / autumn weather in your post as a potential contributing factor to depression or sleep problems at this time of year, but apparently California is a lot warmer and sunnier right now than it is here in Germany.

MondSemmel 22 Nov 2025 21:22 UTC
3 points
0
on: Automatic alt text generation
Tangentially related comment: From webcomics like xkcd or SMBC, I was under the impression that alt text is automatically displayed on mouse hover, but apparently that’s realized via the “title” HTML tag instead. For instance, the HTML for today’s xkcd looks as follows, and only the content of the “title” tag is displayed on hover:
<img src=”//imgs.xkcd.com/comics/geologic_core_sample.png″ title=”If you drill at the right angle and time things perfectly, your core sample can include a section of a rival team’s coring equipment.” alt=”Geologic Core Sample” srcset=”//imgs.xkcd.com/comics/geologic_core_sample_2x.png 2x” style=”image-orientation:none”>
That almost makes me wonder why alt text isn’t displayed on mouse hover when no title text is set, but I suppose that runs contrary to the core purpose of alt text, namely that it’s only displayed when the image is not.

MondSemmel 18 Nov 2025 20:04 UTC
4 points
0
in reply to: Kaj_Sotala’s comment on: Heroic Responsibility
I can certainly empathize with that, but is it still “heroic” responsibility if someone else tries to push it onto you? The situation you describe sounds like one of the friend exhibiting emotional blackmail or attention-seeking behavior.

MondSemmel 18 Nov 2025 19:09 UTC
5 points
0
in reply to: Bistrofan’s comment on: Paranoia: A Beginner’s Guide
Here’s a LW discussion thread of this article from back then, including a review comment I made with some extra info which I think still holds up well.

MondSemmel 18 Nov 2025 19:02 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: habryka’s comment on: Paranoia: A Beginner’s Guide
Maybe this is just me nitpicking, but as long as you limit your randomization process to a pool of allowed actions, you’re still largely predictable insofar as you predictably choose from within that pool of actions. For example, if you’re randomizing your actions on a digital market, you’re maybe deciding whether to buy or sell or hold or whatever, but you’re probably not considering a DDoS attack on the market etc. Or, even a human who tries to randomize their actions can’t randomly decide not to breathe so as to thwart their predictive adversary. And so on.

MondSemmel 17 Nov 2025 19:12 UTC
7 points
8
in reply to: Wei Dai’s comment on: Wei Dai’s Shortform
This is indeed a notable design flaw. In principle, I think it allows one to get a highly upvoted top comment on a post which entirely misunderstands or doesn’t have anything to do with the top-level post.

MondSemmel 17 Nov 2025 12:10 UTC
4 points
1
in reply to: rsaarelm’s comment on: Wei Dai’s Shortform
Thanks, that was a clear way to describe both perspectives here. Very helpful.