Richard_Kennaway

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Computer scientist, applied mathematician. Based in the eastern part of England.

Fan of control theory in general and Perceptual Control Theory in particular. Everyone should know about these, whatever subsequent attitude to them they might reach. These, plus consciousness of abstraction dissolve a great many confusions.

I wrote the Insanity Wolf Sanity Test. There it is, work out for yourself what it means.

Change ringer since 2022. It teaches learning and grasping abstract patterns, memory, thinking with your body, thinking on your feet, fixing problems and moving on, always looking to the future and letting both the errors and successes of the past go.

I first found an LLM useful (other than for answering the question “let’s see how well the dog can walk on its hind legs”) in September 2025. As yet they do not form a regular part of anything I do.

Richard_Kennaway Nov 13, 2025, 10:20 PM
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in reply to: Fiora Sunshine’s comment on: How I Learned That I Don’t Feel Companionate Love
Ideally, one would also want to find a volunteer with a typical faculty of love, to try the same spray and compare effects.

If there’s anyone who has tried oxytocin, I’d be interested in an account of the experience. The OP moved me to obtain some, but at a dose of 24 IUs I experienced no effect.

Richard_Kennaway Nov 13, 2025, 11:54 AM
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in reply to: curvise’s comment on: A glimpse of the other side

What is there to like about this heaven-posting?

Inspiration. “Live this way, not the other way.” What is there to like about a beautiful picture? Is it the artist’s job to do more than create it?

What was your response to the hell posting? It too has nothing actionable, except the implicit “don’t live that way”.

Richard_Kennaway Nov 12, 2025, 4:21 PM
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in reply to: julius vidal’s comment on: Pythia

The thermostat acts in exactly the same way as you do. I is possibly even already conscious (I had completely forgotten this was an established debate and its absolutely not a crux for me). You are much more complex that a thermostat.

I don’t think there is any possibility of a thermostat being conscious. The linked article makes the common error of arguing that wherever there is consciousness we see some phenomenon X, therefore wherever there is X there is consciousness, and if there doesn’t seem to be any, htere muste be consciousness “in a sense”.

The fact that you can consciously implement the control algorithm does not tell us anything about your cognition

Of course. The thermostat controls temperature without being conscious; I can by my own conscious actions also choose to perform the thermostat’s role.

Anyway, all this began with my objecting to “agents” performing time travel, and arguing that whether an unconscious thermostat or a conscious entity such as myself controls the temperature, no time travel is involved. Neither do I achieve a goal merely by predicting that it will be achieved, but by acting to achieve it. Are we disagreeing about anything at this point?

Richard_Kennaway Nov 12, 2025, 9:18 AM
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in reply to: johnswentworth’s comment on: Rejecting “Goodness” Does Not Mean Hammering The Defect Button
In ~~Soviet Russia~~ sickbed, defect button hammers you.

Richard_Kennaway Nov 11, 2025, 2:30 PM
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in reply to: Bentham's Bulldog’s comment on: We’re Not The Center of the Moral Universe

It would be suspicious if I was right about everything but I don’t think I am.

That is something we can agree on. :)

Richard_Kennaway Nov 11, 2025, 2:19 PM
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in reply to: julius vidal’s comment on: Pythia
(Also a reply to your parallel comment.)

If we are to imagine the thermostat conscious, that we surely cannot limit that consciousness to only the perception and the reference, but also allow it to see, intend, and perform its own actions. It is not inexorably being pulled, but itself pushing (by turning the heat on and off) towards its goal.

Only if we want to commit ourselves to a homunculus theory of consciousness and a libertarian theory of free will.

You introduced the homunculus by imagining the thermostat conscious. I responded by pointing out that if it’s going to be aware of its perception and reference, there is no reason to exclude the rest of the show.

But of course the thermostat is not conscious.

I am. When I act as the thermostat, I am perceiving the temperature of the room, and the temperature I want it to be, and I decide and act to turn the heat on or off accordingly. There is no homunculus here, nor “libertarian free will”, whatever that is, just a description of my conscious experience and actions. To dismiss this as a homunculus theory is to dismiss the very idea of consciousness.

And some people do that. Do you? They assert that there is no such thing as consciousness, or a mind, or subjective experience. These are not even illusions, for that would imply an experiencer of the illusion, and there is no experience. For such people, all talk of these things is simply a mistake. If you are one of these people, then I don’t think the conversation can proceed any further. From my point of view you would be a blind man denying the existence and even the idea of sight.

Or perhaps you grant consciousness the ability to observe, but not to do? In imagination you grant the thermostat the ability to perceive, but not to do, supposing that the latter would require the nonexistent magic called “libertarian free will”. But epiphenomenal consciousness is as incoherent a notion as p-zombies. How can a thing exist that has no effect on any physical object, yet we talk about it (which is a physical action)?

I’m just guessing at your views here.

So does the delta between goal and perception cause the action directly?

For the thermostat (assuming the bimetallic strip type), the reference is the position of a pair of contacts either side of the strip, the temperature causes the curvature of the strip, which makes or breaks the contacts, which turns the heating on or off. This is all physically well understood. There is nothing problematic here.

For me acting as the thermostat, I perceive the delta, and act accordingly. I don’t see anything problematic here either. The sage is not above causation, nor subject to causation, but one with causation. As are we all, whether we are sages or not.

A postscript on the Hard Problem.

In the background there is the Hard Problem of Consciousness, which no-one has a solution for, nor has even yet imagined what a solution could possibly look like. But all too often people respond to this enigma by arguing, only magic could cross the divide, magic does not exist, therefore consciousness does not exist. But the limits of what I understand are not the limits of the world.

Richard_Kennaway Nov 11, 2025, 9:33 AM
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on: Rejecting “Goodness” Does Not Mean Hammering The Defect Button

And you can get the good parts

The good parts? Are you throwing Good out the front door, only to find it still in the house, without even needing to climb back through the window?

Richard_Kennaway Nov 10, 2025, 5:30 PM
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in reply to: julius vidal’s comment on: Pythia

All of this is to say that to successfully do something deliberately, your goal must have the property that when used as a reference your perceptions will actually converge there (stability).

For all that people talk of agents and agentiness, their conceptions are often curiously devoid of agency, with “agents” merely predicting outcomes and (to them) magically finding themselves converging there, unaware that they are taking any actions to steer the future where they want it to go. But what brings the perception towards the goal is not the goal, but the way that the actions depend on the difference.

From the point of view of the thermostat, the set temperature is its destiny to which it is inexorably being pulled. In other words it is the only goal it can possibly hope to pursue.

If we are to imagine the thermostat conscious, that we surely cannot limit that consciousness to only the perception and the reference, but also allow it to see, intend, and perform its own actions. It is not inexorably being pulled, but itself pushing (by turning the heat on and off) towards its goal.

Some of the heaters in my house do not have thermostats, in which case I’m the thermostat. I turn the heater on when I find the room too cold and turn it off when it’s too warm. This is exactly what a thermostat would be doing, except that it can’t think about it.

Richard_Kennaway Nov 10, 2025, 12:11 PM
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in reply to: julius vidal’s comment on: Pythia
I don’t understand this example. If someone throws a ball to me, I can try to catch it, try to dodge it, let it go whizzing over my head, and so on, and I will have some idea of how things will develop depending on my choices, but you seem to be adding an unnecessary extra level onto this that I don’t follow.

Richard_Kennaway Nov 10, 2025, 11:29 AM
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on: We’re Not The Center of the Moral Universe

But I think this belief is rather suspicious. It would be a bit too convenient if it turned out correct. It would be a surprise if humans really were nearly all of what mattered, but no surprise at all if humans falsely believed we were nearly all of what mattered.

This is Proving Too Much. Pointing the same argument in a different direction:

You probably believe your beliefs are right. After all, they couldn’t otherwise be your beliefs. But who is telling you to believe these things? You are! Isn’t that suspiciously convenient? That you believe just the things that you tell yourself to believe? What about all the people who happen to believe different things? Well, of course they’re wrong, because you’re right, because you tell yourself so. Isn’t there something a little bit wrong here? Something that you will try not to see because it would totally destroy your whole worldview to admit it? List all your beliefs and you’re probably the only sentient being in all of creation that believes exactly those things, it only takes a few tens of bits to narrow down to just you. How likely is it that you, out of billions of people and trillions of sentient beings, are the only one who is right about everything? But that is what you are claiming with your beliefs. If you did not cling desperately onto the illusion of your rightness, you would have to admit that among all those trillions you are nothing, that you are only a jot of scum on the ocean of sentience.

Richard_Kennaway Nov 10, 2025, 10:55 AM
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in reply to: Screwtape’s comment on: The Snaw
“So their best work’s the work that they see replicate.”

Richard_Kennaway Nov 8, 2025, 10:51 AM
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on: Augustine of Hippo’s Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love in Latin (or: Claude as Pandoc++)
The link (https://www.lesswrong.com/pdfs/augustine_enchiridion.pdf) is 404.

Richard_Kennaway Nov 8, 2025, 9:43 AM
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on: Pythia

Time travel, in the classic sense, has no place in rational theory[3] but, through predictions, information can have retrocausal effects.

[...] agency is time travel. An agent is a mechanism through which the future is able to affect the past. An agent models the future consequences of its actions, and chooses actions on the basis of those consequences. In that sense, the consequence causes the action, in spite of the fact that the action comes earlier in the standard physical sense.

― Scott Garrabrant, Saving Time (MIRI Agent Foundations research[4])

Feedback loops are not retrocausal. When you turn on a thermostat, then some time thereafter, the room will be at about the temperature it says on the dial. That future temperature is not causing itself, what is causing it is the thermostat’s present sensing of the difference between the reference temperature and the actual temperature, and the consequent turning on of the heat source. If there’s a window wide open and it’s very cold outside, the heat source may not be powerful enough to bring the room up to the reference temperature, and that temperature will not be reached. Can this supposed Tardis be defeated just by opening a window?

The consequence does not cause the action. It does not even behave as if it causes the action. Here the consequence varies according to the state of the window, while the action (keep the heating on while the temperature is below the reference) is the same, regardless of whether it is going to succeed.

For agents that think about and make predictions about the future (as the thermostat does not), what causes the agent’s actions is its present ideas about those consequences. Those present ideas are not obtained from the future, but from the agent’s present knowledge. Nothing comes from the future. If there is the equivalent of an open window, frustrating the agent’s plans, and the agent does not know of it, then they will execute their plans and the predicted consequence will not happen. The philosopher Robert Burns wrote a well-known essay on this point.

To the extent that they accurately model the future (based on data from their past and compute from their present[5]),

Yes.

agents allow information from possible futures to flow through them into the present.

No. The thermostat has no knowledge of its eventual success or failure. An agent may do its best to predict the outcome of its plans, but is also not in communication with the future. How much easier everything would be, if we could literally see the future consequences of our present actions, instead of guessing as best we can from present knowledge! But things do not work that way.

The Nick Land article you linked describes him as telling “theory fiction”, a term I take as parallel to “science fiction”. That is, invent stuff and ask, what if? (The “what if” part is what distinguishes it from mundane fiction.) But if the departure point from reality is too great a rupture, all you can get from it is an entertaining story, not something of any relevance to the real world. “1984″ was a warning; the Lensman novels were inspirational entertainment; the Cthulhu mythos is pure entertainment.

There’s nothing wrong with entertainment. But it is fictional evidence only, even when presented in the outward form of a philosophical treatise instead of a novel.

ETA: I see that two people already made the same point commenting on the linked Garrabrant article, but they did not receive a response. In the same place, I think this also touches on the same problem.

Richard_Kennaway Nov 7, 2025, 10:53 AM
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on: Living in the Shadow of The Sort
Is The Sort another name for the rat race?

Richard_Kennaway Nov 5, 2025, 9:03 PM
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in reply to: Richard_Kennaway’s comment on: A glimpse of the other side

The vision of heaven stands at 37 karma, that of hell, 133. (But the former is two days younger. It will be interesting to see where it stands in the days to come.)

Two days later, the vision of heaven has actually gone down to 33, while hell is now at 165.

Apparently, people prefer five to one to be told they are powerless trash than that anything else is possible. I am reminded of Eric Raymond’s essay on good porn vs. bad porn, and why the latter sort is the overwhelming majority.

I am sad about this but not surprised. People in the rationalsphere lap up tales that they have no choice about anything, that they are scum floating on the surface of unconscious forces they are powerless to affect, that they do nothing, only observe what their body has done, that nothing is true, all is a lie, X is never about X, status has you, and you don’t exist.

I didn’t invent any of these memes, only turned up to 11 what runs in the bloodstream of the rationalsphere.

Richard_Kennaway Nov 3, 2025, 5:56 PM
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in reply to: Richard_Kennaway’s comment on: A glimpse of the other side
A few more remarks about the contrast.

The vision of heaven is individual, spoken by “I”. The vision of hell is all couched in terms of a general “you”. The sufferer is unable to contemplate the idea that this is their own, individual state, but insists that this must be the condition of all.

The vision of heaven looks outward at the world, a place to find and create joy in. The vision of hell is turned in on itself. The character is curled up in a ball with eyes tightly shut, screaming forever at a world they refuse to see.

The vision of heaven is hopeful. The vision of hell is hopeless, at the end denying that any other state is possible for anyone.

The vision of heaven stands at 37 karma, that of hell, 133. (But the former is two days younger. It will be interesting to see where it stands in the days to come.)

Richard_Kennaway Nov 3, 2025, 1:37 PM
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on: Pepperoni and the end of morality
When you say “you”, are you talking about yourself, or is the monologist an imaginary victim of the utility egregore?

without any action in this engagement being able to be appropriately labeled “deliberate”

Well, there’s the root of it. Who is to be in charge, you or the soul-eating shoggoth that wants to nest behind your smiley face?

Richard_Kennaway Nov 3, 2025, 1:16 PM
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on: A glimpse of the other side
This post makes a striking contrast to this one by yourself two days ago.

The vision of heaven is written in the first person, while the vision of hell is written in the second. Are you saying that your life is like the first, while everyone else’s is like the second?

Or… what? Is either of these an account of reality, of what someone would see if they followed you around all day?

Richard_Kennaway Nov 2, 2025, 1:59 PM
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on: You’re always stressed, your mind is always busy, you never have enough time
You can just not do things.

Richard_Kennaway Oct 31, 2025, 5:16 PM
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in reply to: mhampton’s comment on: Thresholds for Pascal’s Mugging?
The uncertainties that will always be present for a real gamble make the Kelly bet rash, uncertainties about not only the numbers, but about whether the preconditions for the criterion obtain.

Because of this, Zvi recommends that Kelly is the right way to think, and you should evaluate the Kelly recommendation as best you can, but you should then bet no more than 25% to 50% of that amount. Further elaboration here.