Parker Conley
Expertise researcher Gary Klein recounts an interview where a firefighter was convinced that he had extrasensory perception. On one occasion, something in a building had just felt wrong, and the firefighter had had his crew withdraw, only to have the floor collapse moments after they had evacuated.
Side note that Gary Klein and Naturalistic Decision Making is a fascinating field! Cedric Chin’s writing at Commoncog sparked my interest in the field, and Jared Peterson on Substack has some thoughtful writing. The whole field gives some pretty compelling ideas that touch on where Kahneman’s research is incomplete in regards to expertise.
Update, 2026-05-01: I will no longer be updating this article as I now think the best way to find reference works is to ask LLMs. Specifically, I recommend you copy-pasting (Ctrl + A, Ctrl + C) this entire page into an LLM and ask for further reference works on X subject.
This thread sparked me to have a long chat with Claude about the subject, and look at a few books to potentially understand the field better myself. What do you think a rationalist reckoning with law would look like?
Speculating on my end: Something like having more public intellectuals like Brian Caplan and Tyler Cowen engage with rationality but are lawyers? Or more have more form posts or discussions about legal topics to the point where there are some rationalist concepts that come from law?
Any recommended further reading re reckoning rationality with law?
I find the existence of the site somewhat unsettling! Similar to how AI X/Twitter account blocking me felt unsettling. Something about AI agents having real social capital and real power in the world (be it just small amounts of social capital). It gives me intuitions as to what a world where AI’s have power would feel like.
Scott Alexander’s commentary: Best of Moltbook
A quick Opus 4.5 output asking for 10 more concept names, you’d know if they fit well better than I would.
Claude Opus 4.5 - Concept Name Suggestions
Based on this LessWrong post about “diagonalization”—the phenomenon where a more competent agent simulates and predicts a smaller agent’s behavior to exploit weaknesses in their model—here are 10 alternative names:
Outmodeling—You’re building a model that encompasses their model of you, then exploiting the gaps. Clean verb forms: “He’s outmodeling you,” “I got outmodeled.”
Enveloping—Captures the spatial intuition of a larger agent “containing” a smaller one. “They’re enveloping your strategy.”
Meta-gaming—Already has some currency in gaming contexts for playing above the object-level game. “That’s pure meta-gaming.”
Overreading—Building on the Japanese “yomi” (reading) that Archimedes suggested. “She’s overreading your intentions.”
Encompassing—Similar to enveloping but with slightly different connotations. “You’ve been encompassed.”
Outlooping—Riffs on OODA loops from the previous post. “They’re outlooping us.”
Prediction capture—More descriptive, though clunkier. “That’s prediction capture at work.”
Supersimulation—Emphasizes the simulation aspect. “I’m being supersimulated.”
Leveling (from poker) - Already suggested in the comments and has natural usage: “Don’t start a leveling war,” “He’s leveling you.”
Boxing—Simple, physical intuition of being trapped in someone’s model of you. “I feel boxed,” “Stop trying to box me.”
My personal favorites are outmodeling (most precise), leveling (already has cultural traction), and boxing (most accessible).
Large AI accounts and multiple people (or other AI accounts) being adversarial when I pointed out that it is AI is the phenomenon.
An AI content X/Twitter account with nearly 100k followers blocked me, and I got a couple of disapproving replies for pointing out that the account was AI-generated. I quote-tweeted the account mostly to share a useful Chrome Extension that I’ve been using the detect AI content, but I was surprised that there was a negative reaction in the form of a few replies pointing out the account was AI-generated. I am neither pro- nor anti-AI accounts, but being aware of the nature of the content seems to be useful.
Would be curious to hear others’ thoughts on the phenomenon.
Original Tweet: https://x.com/parconley/status/2000064102543376413
Late to respond but I fixed this when I saw it. Thanks!
I find these ideas interesting and compelling. Thanks for writing. Would also be curious for further conversation on these themes.
Appreciate the suggestion!
I’ve had coffee chats with three people who like that retreat center. I like retreats, and I did a 8h/day home retreat last summer. Have seriously considered Panditarama but it is a big time investment and career break especially early career. And also I worry it would be hard on my body sitting so long and hard, and that Mahasi practice risks being destabilizing. May still do one though. Probably not while getting a business off the ground, but maybe when there is in between time or room for a small sabbatical.
Do you have any thoughts on career circumstances where I could make income for the 9 months I wouldn’t be on retreat?
Is it possible to get a stable 10h/wk remote SWE job as an early career decently smart person? Would like to meditate 6h/day. Current idea is to start a lifestyle SaaS business.
I agree that you can’t learn a subject from using reference works, and that they are very supplemental, but this comment comes off as pretty harsh! See Exercises in Comprehensive Information Gathering if you want to understand more where I’m coming from in the benefits of reference works.
Thank you for the encouragement and kind words!
Following up re above @Ben Pace
Looking at it now, I realize you probably unpinned it due to the dead link. Fixed this!
Thanks! If it’s not too much to ask, pinning the updates comment would be useful to people though. Just not this one.
Any chance you could unpin this comment? Seems like the idea of people suggesting videos based on it didn’t work, and having the updates be the first pinned comment would probably provide more value to people looking at the post.
I enjoyed the post. My experience in meditation circles is that people are awfully resistant to talking about results—for good reasons and bad. Speaking opening about the results of yourself or others makes you a target. But, as your post implies, not talking about results could be a convenient excuse for not having results.
For those looking for verified results in I think one’s best bet is finding mentors or communities of practice where results of members can be relatively verified. Even there, epistemics are hard.
Also, side point that I think you would agree with, I don’t think meditation practice is the quickest intervention to achieve mundane life benefits like making deeper friendships, or having a flourishing home life. I’m not sure about that though, because my maturing has been intertwined with meditation practice, so I don’t know the counterfactual.