npostavs

Karma: 287

npostavs 22 Aug 2026 18:57 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Archimedes’s comment on: AI Text Watermarking Is Free And Good

But this is externally checkable: if watermarking is as described, then the rate of next-token agreement on identical prefixes should match within an account and across accounts.

With features like memory and cross chat history, getting identical prefixes across accounts might be difficult. And isn’t username part of the context too?

npostavs 22 Aug 2026 18:52 UTC
5 points
0
in reply to: aphyer’s comment on: AI Text Watermarking Is Free And Good
Hmm, I just tried with ChatGPT 5.6 Luna “Generate a D&D character for me.”, and got:
1. Kael Thorn half-elf ranger
2. Kael Emberstep tiefling rogue
3. Kael Veyrin, tiefling warlock
Claude Sonnet 5 seems to like half-elf rangers more, although has slightly better first name diversity:
1. Kestrel Ashwood Half-Elf Ranger
2. Kaelin Duskwarden Half-Elf Ranger
3. Kael Ashgrove Half-Elf Ranger
I don’t see sufficient reason to believe this or other common LLM names like Elara Voss are due to watermarking in particular. Isn’t it more that LLMs are just generally bad at making random decisions? See for example https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/t9svvNPNmFf5Qa3TA/mysteries-of-mode-collapse and https://maxread.substack.com/p/who-is-elara-voss

npostavs 4 Jul 2026 14:39 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Owain Mogford’s comment on: Role confusion: sounding like the cause is indistinguishable from being it.

If anyone would like to point to specifics I’d be grateful

The use of “genuinely” in the opening (and a few more times) definitely had me wondering.

npostavs 9 Jun 2026 0:18 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: AnthonyC’s comment on: Honking is good

FWIW 10-20 years earlier [...] You would have simply had no way to find your way to Philadelphia, and would have either waited or turned around and gone home.

What about paper maps? Asking someone for directions?

npostavs 20 May 2026 23:55 UTC
5 points
0
on: Housing Roundup #15: The War Against Renters
This is a dup of https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jW4TeNZhxBA9Fzdim/housing-roundup-15-the-war-against-renters

npostavs 2 May 2026 15:07 UTC
6 points
2
on: Housing Roundup #13: More Dakka
This is a duplicate of https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/eSwdsDTnqigQJPfkw/housing-roundup-13-more-dakka

npostavs 20 Mar 2026 20:01 UTC
4 points
3
on: Why I am not buying IPv4 addresses as an investment

There are ~4.3 trillion IPv4 addresses

[...]

Assuming residential ISP connections also use CGNAT, it is possible we never (?) need ipv6 as all webservers and all clients can be serviced on 4B * 1000 IP addresses (??)

[...]

There are 2^32 = ~4.3 trillion IPv4 addresses.

2^32 = ~4.3 billion, not trillion.

npostavs 11 Mar 2026 3:45 UTC
3 points
3
in reply to: Fractalideation’s comment on: Prologue to Terrified Comments on Claude’s Constitution
I didn’t vote, but it could be because it’s formatted as a wall of text, seems to have a lot of useless filler and no clear message. I got to the end of it, but don’t really have any idea of what you wanted to say.

npostavs 18 Feb 2026 19:29 UTC
23 points
20
in reply to: Max H’s comment on: You’re an AI Expert – Not an Influencer

Ostensibly-neutral (but in reality heavily blue-tribe-coded) “experts” who stay in their lane are not exactly popular or influential at the moment,

Aren’t they at a low point due to not staying in their lane by smuggling in political views into their ostensibly-neutral pronouncements? E.g., doctors saying it’s okay to break Covid restrictions on gathering if it’s for social justice.

npostavs 11 Feb 2026 15:58 UTC
2 points
−2
in reply to: speck1447’s comment on: Stone Age Billionaire Can’t Words Good

See https://x.com/twocents/status/2020596821228388704

It sounded kind of… rehearsed? Not sure if I should take this is as real position.

npostavs 9 Jan 2026 15:54 UTC
1 point
0
on: What do people mean by “recursive self-improvement”?

Hard RSI: AI modifies itself in a way that is different from just changing numerical values of its weights. It creates a new version of itself [...]

In hard RSI there is no danger of misalignment since AI doesn’t create a successor, but rather modifies itself. In easy RSI there is danger of misalignment, [...]

I don’t think I understand how “creates a new version of itself” is different from “create a successor”?

npostavs 22 Dec 2025 20:49 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: cousin_it’s comment on: Technoromanticism
Oh, LLMs also suggested SCP-3125, but I thought they were wrong because “U” didn’t seem like a plausible typo for “SCP”. I wasn’t aware of the alternate U-3125 naming.

npostavs 22 Dec 2025 0:38 UTC
5 points
0
on: Technoromanticism

But rebelling against a globalized techno-political-memeplex is like rebelling against U-3125.

Is “U-3125” referencing something?

npostavs 12 Dec 2025 15:52 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Horosphere’s comment on: Universities as rocket engines and why they should be less stratified
I think I’m mostly following now, but when you write stuff like:

In the higher education system, I expect it would take the form of increasing the swathe of universities which taught a complete curriculum, as well as evening out the distribution of staff.

I wonder, is the undergraduate curriculum really significantly different between top-tier universities and others? Instead of wasting space on the rocket analogy, it would be useful to establish that sort of thing about the actual subject. And generally, the posts is really missing a lot of detail about universities, and has way too much details about rockets.

(I haven’t cast any votes on your post)

My position with respect to downvoting, or upvoting for that matter, would be only to downvote a post well below 0 if I was confident that I could explain why it was harmful and/or illogical.

I’m not sure whether it’s a good idea or not to take into account the current score before voting. But regardless, there’s no way to enforce that 100% of people will follow any particular voting policy, so you’re going to end up with posts below 0 sometimes, even if they aren’t harmful.

npostavs 11 Dec 2025 1:06 UTC
4 points
0
in reply to: Horosphere’s comment on: Universities as rocket engines and why they should be less stratified
You are talking so much about rockets that I can’t even tell what point you’re trying to make about universities. The post would probably be a lot clearer without this analogy.

npostavs 27 Nov 2025 16:27 UTC
5 points
4
on: The Big Nonprofits Post 2025
This is an accidental double post of https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FJxc4Lk6mijiFiPp2/the-big-nonprofits-post-2025 (also double posted on the wordpress site: https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2025/11/26/the-big-nonprofits-post-2025/ and https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2025/11/27/the-big-nonprofits-post-2025-2/)

npostavs 22 Nov 2025 4:33 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Tapatakt’s comment on: Tapatakt’s Shortform
Seems understandable to me (although I guess I’m somewhat primed by reading the previous versions).

npostavs 20 Nov 2025 20:41 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Tapatakt’s comment on: Tapatakt’s Shortform
I think most of “you” can be omitted in English as well:

Imagine: you study an immature AI in depth. Decode its mind entirely. Develop a great theory of how it works. Validate this theory on a bunch of examples. Use that theory to predict how the AI’s mind will change as it ascends to superintelligence and gains (for the first time) the very real option of grabbing the world for itself. Even then, you are, fundamentally, using a new and untested scientific theory to predict the results of an experiment that has not yet run, about what the AI will do when it really, actually, for real has the opportunity to grab power from the humans.

npostavs 4 Nov 2025 4:38 UTC
8 points
0
on: Crime and Punishment #1
This seems to be an accidental repost of https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9TPEjLH7giv7PuHdc/crime-and-punishment-1 from April. (It’s also reposted on https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2025/11/03/crime-and-punishment-1-2/, but not thezvi.substack.com/).

npostavs 12 Sep 2025 18:08 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Measure’s comment on: AI #131 Part 2: Various Misaligned Things
Seems to be a repost of this one: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wcp8hcQwqhd8nDA2x/ai-131-part-2-various-misaligned-things (https://thezvi.substack.com/p/ai-131-part-2-various-misaligned)