Nathan Young

Karma: 2,285

Nathan Young 2 Feb 2026 11:28 UTC
1 point
1
in reply to: Ben Pace’s comment on: Nathan Young’s Shortform
Yeah, that makes sense.
Though I don’t think I regret asking questions about a thing that was troubling me in a polite way on the community forum.

Nathan Young 2 Feb 2026 0:24 UTC
−4 points
−16
on: Nathan Young’s Shortform
I’m about to go to sleep but I am a bit confused about Epstein stuff.
In 2019, @Rob Bensinger said that “Epstein had previously approached us in 2016 looking for organizations to donate to, and we decided against pursuing the option;”

Looking at the Justice Dept releases (which I assume are real) (eg https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%209/EFTA00814059.pdf)

That doesn’t feel a super accurate description. It seems like there was a discussion with Epstein after it was clear he had been involved in pretty bad behaviour. (In 2008 he pleaded guilty in a Florida state court to procuring a minor for prostitution and soliciting prostitution, was required to register as a sex offender, and served about 13 months in custody). Likewise the discussion involves a lot of information sent to Epstein and probably a skype call. It wasn’t just him approaching and MIRI saying no.

I guess I wonder if it might have been more appropriate to say, “We discussed funding with Epstein but decided not to go forward with it. In hindsight even the discussion was an error”

From the emails it seems @Eliezer Yudkowsky makes clear that @So8res and he know who Epstein is:

Epstein: Or were you clearing my name with him

Yudkowsky: Not sure what you mean. Nate knows you’re Jeffrey E. I check not-yetpublished info/speculation past him before saying it.^[1]

So I guess, do we think the discussion was an error? I think I would not endorse discussing funding with a known sex offender, but it’s hard to get in frames of mind I’m not in and much still wasn’t known.

I guess:
- Are the emails real?
- What do Yud and Nate think of talking to Epstein now?
- What does Rob Bensinger think of his 2019 communication
- What are some broader thoughts on this?
I don’t have a strong view. I find it’s worth moving slowly. Appreciate everyone’s time.
1. ^
  I’m not sure what this third sentence means.

Nathan Young 2 Feb 2026 0:09 UTC
3 points
−3
on: Question about a past donor to MIRI.
Looking at the Justice Department disclosures, I feel uncomfortable reading this.
In 2016 quite a lot of Epstein misbehaviour was known.
Link: https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%209/EFTA00814059.pdf

Nathan Young 24 Dec 2025 15:19 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: jimmy’s comment on: EA Yale Destiny Debate Discussion:
Please critique the discussion styles of the participants in this discussion
This is an interesting discussion to analyze. Here’s my critique of each participant’s style:
Nathan Young
- Strengths: Opens with genuine intellectual uncertainty and acknowledges tensions in his own position (“Which leaves me sort of confused”). He’s willing to admit aesthetic discomfort with positions he’s trying to defend on game-theoretic grounds. This shows real intellectual honesty.
- Weaknesses: His final response (“I think your response would admit basically no evidence”) is a meta-dismissal rather than engagement. Jimmy offered specific criteria for what would constitute a true parallel—Nathan could have either met those criteria with better examples or challenged the criteria directly. Instead, he essentially accused Jimmy of being unfalsifiable without demonstrating it.
interstice
- Strengths: Concise and makes a specific, relevant distinction (assassination vs. other attacks).
- Weaknesses: Too terse to be fully productive. The brevity leaves Nathan to guess at the underlying reasoning, which creates friction.
jimmy
- Strengths: The most analytically careful. He draws specific distinctions (severity of harm, nature of mockery, what a true parallel would require), acknowledges being a Destiny fan while still critiquing him, and tries to articulate where Destiny’s symmetry-breaking logic fails on its own terms.
- Weaknesses: His distinctions could read as motivated reasoning—each example Nathan raises gets explained away with a different caveat. The closing move (suggesting Claude as arbiter) is clever but slightly passive-aggressive; it’s a way of saying “you’re being defensive” while maintaining plausible deniability. He also doesn’t quite grapple with whether his own framework might be similarly self-serving.
Overall pattern: The discussion shows a common failure mode—it becomes a battle over whether specific examples are “close enough” parallels rather than directly addressing the underlying question about when reciprocal norm-violation is justified. Both Nathan and Jimmy are partially right that the other is being somewhat selective.
End of claude.
I’m not really interested in continuing to discuss with you if you are going to dismiss the Paul Pelosi attack out of hand. I just don’t think we’ll get anywhere. Merry Christmas!

Nathan Young 23 Dec 2025 15:55 UTC
10 points
0
on: Why I’m not a Bayesian
Solid article.
Defines terms in ways I agree with. Raised objections I hadn’t thought of. Thought provoking.
On the object level the criticisms of bayesianism seem solid, but I am unsure if the replacement is good.
What links here?
- Deeper Reviews for the top 15 (of the 2024 Review) by Raemon (14 Jan 2026 23:59 UTC; 45 points)

Nathan Young 23 Dec 2025 15:38 UTC
2 points
0
on: How I Learned To Stop Trusting Prediction Markets and Love the Arbitrage
I think the title was a bit overdone but the content was solid. Worth a read/think for prediction market people. We are perhaps a bit overly optimistic on prediction markets (eg this is a play money one) so yeah.
I think Yglesias is right to have couched his praise for the market in question but that is easy to forget.

Nathan Young 23 Dec 2025 13:35 UTC
2 points
0
on: Toward a Broader Conception of Adverse Selection
Having thought about this a bit, I think it’s reasonable to say that there is some “adverse” “selection” going on as far as those english words are used, but I think it’s not that similar to adverse selection in the economic sense. There, goods leave the market because sellers don’t want to sell them, here they leave because they do. Is that correct?
I think maybe tonally it feels similar to adverse selection—a sort of “types of markets that you should feel suspicious of”. If you go to a used car lot with no warranties, be suspicious. If you go to an empty restaurant at a busy time, be suspicious.
I’m unsure if it’s helpful for this “market types to be suspicious of” is labelled as “adverse selection” which has a technical meaning, rather than coming up with a new phrase.

Nathan Young 23 Dec 2025 13:12 UTC
2 points
0
on: Toward a Broader Conception of Adverse Selection
Your quantitative trading firm is holding its annual juggling tournament. Cost to enter is $18, winner takes all. You know you’re far better at juggling than most of your coworkers, so you sign up. As it turns out, only a few of your coworkers signed up, including Fortune, who used to be in the lucrative professional juggling world before leaving to pursue her lifelong passion of providing moderate liquidity to US Equities markets. You come in second place.
Isn’t this basically a true story about Jane Street? I assume Ricki didn’t want to break confidences but I am not so obligated, so I’ll say, I’m pretty sure this happened! Though I can’t remember what the skill involved was.

Nathan Young 23 Dec 2025 12:47 UTC
4 points
−1
on: Toward a Broader Conception of Adverse Selection
I’ve thought about and come back to this article several times and indeed it has encouraged me to understand both the original definition of adverse selection and Ricki’s. To me, this is suggestive of a top quality piece.
What links here?
- Deeper Reviews for the top 15 (of the 2024 Review) by Raemon (14 Jan 2026 23:59 UTC; 45 points)

Nathan Young 22 Dec 2025 10:17 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: jimmy’s comment on: EA Yale Destiny Debate Discussion:
I think your response would admit basically no evidence.
I think Paul Pelosi nearly dying and there being jokes and accusations of him being gay were to not take attacks seriously. I think Trump’s comments about Rob Reiner were not to remotely take his death seriously.
I basically reject your argument on those terms.

Nathan Young 21 Dec 2025 22:35 UTC
−1 points
0
in reply to: interstice’s comment on: EA Yale Destiny Debate Discussion:
Kirk’s jokes about the Paul Pelosi hammer attack? Trump not remembering when those state senators were shot.

Nathan Young 21 Dec 2025 20:37 UTC
2 points
0
on: EA Yale Destiny Debate Discussion:
Veganism:
I though pretty strong, though doesn’t deal with how hard and tiring veganism is. I feel I can do a lot more good if I’m not vegan, hence I offset.
I tried being vegan for 3 months and it was very tiring to me often one of the the main things I was doing that day.

https://www.farmkind.giving/

Nathan Young 21 Dec 2025 20:21 UTC
−5 points
0
in reply to: interstice’s comment on: EA Yale Destiny Debate Discussion:
Do you expect me to struggle to find politically motivated assassinations that Republicans didn’t respond seriously to?

Nathan Young 21 Dec 2025 19:15 UTC
1 point
0
on: EA Yale Destiny Debate Discussion:
While I don’t love Destiny’s debate style, I think he makes a great point about reciprocation (here-ish). I need to believe that it’s unsustainable to have one side that embages in good debate norms, and the other side that isn’t willing to at all.
It at least makes sense not to be too upset over Kirk’s death if Republicans won’t do the same over Reiner’s. Likewise while aethetically I don’t like Gavin Newsom’s posts. I think they serve as a balancing force to Trump’s rhetoric.
Finally, I’ve long thought that it makes sense for democrats to gerrymander places if the Republicans are going to gerrymander.
Which leaves me sort of confused as my position here. I don’t like destiny’s crowing over the deaths of Trump supporters. But I find it hard to condemn in the face of the game theory of the situation if republicans often do similar things ( which I think they do).

Nathan Young 21 Dec 2025 19:11 UTC
2 points
0
on: EA Yale Destiny Debate Discussion:
In the housing argument they both miss that making housing more like a market could lead to more people living in NYC. Like, it isn’t a completely fixed asset, housing can be more dense! And then more people get to benefit.
It isn’t purely a quesiton of who gets to live in NYC it’s about getting more housing to exist.

EA Yale Destiny Debate Discussion:

Nathan Young21 Dec 2025 19:10 UTC

10 points

11 comments1 min readLW link

(www.youtube.com)

Nathan Young 15 Dec 2025 9:45 UTC
2 points
0
on: The Inner Ring by C. S. Lewis
I don’t know if it’s appropriate to put something by C.S. Lewis into the review, but I think this essay is really good and it has given me a thing to notice which is when people who are in the in-group are encouraging me to be less moral in exchange for a sense of belonging.
I think this applies to jobs too. Should I work in a job that people I like will like, or should I work in a job that I actually think I can justify is the best thing to do?
What links here?
- Deeper Reviews for the top 15 (of the 2024 Review) by Raemon (14 Jan 2026 23:59 UTC; 45 points)

Nathan Young 13 Dec 2025 15:18 UTC
6 points
0
on: I would have shit in that alley, too
Nice set of human stories.

Nathan Young 13 Dec 2025 15:15 UTC
4 points
0
on: 2024 Unofficial LessWrong Census/Survey
Surveys seem very important. Unclear if this post should be where my favour goes but still.

Nathan Young 13 Dec 2025 11:06 UTC
2 points
0
on: Eliezer’s Unteachable Methods of Sanity
Somewhat worrying the extent that reading Planecrash really does help understand this.
Does LW have spoilter tags?

edit moderate planecrash spoiler that comes perhaps 70 hours of listening in.
Rough approximation: After a while Keltham, wonders if he’s in a story and begins discussing “the tropes”—he thinks are aspects of his reality which seem to be more story-like and whether they should play into or out of those aspects. Yudkowsky seems to be referencing the same concept here. Do we wish to play towards or away from the tropes we might expect to see?

Nathan Young

EA Yale Destiny De­bate Dis­cus­sion:

EA Yale Destiny Debate Discussion: