Screwtape

Karma: 5,904

I’m Screwtape, also known as Skyler. I’m an aspiring rationalist originally introduced to the community through HPMoR, and I stayed around because the writers here kept improving how I thought. I’m fond of the Rationality As A Martial Art metaphor, new mental tools to make my life better, and meeting people who are strange in ways I find familiar and comfortable. If you’re ever in the Boston area, feel free to say hi.

Starting early in 2023, I’m the ACX Meetups Czar. You might also know me from the New York City Rationalist Megameetup, editing the Animorphs: The Reckoning podfic, or being that guy at meetups with a bright bandanna who gets really excited when people bring up indie tabletop roleplaying games.

I recognize that last description might fit more than one person.

Screwtape Jul 24, 2025, 6:34 PM
4 points
1
on: Reflections from Ooty retreat 2.0
This sounds like a very successful retreat! Congratulations to the org team. I also appreciate you doing this writeup; postmortems like this make a great learning tool for other teams.
Organizers have to sacrifice their ability to participate
Yep, that about matches how I’ve experienced organizing events. Thank you for doing it anyway.

Screwtape Jul 24, 2025, 4:52 AM
6 points
0
in reply to: Linch’s comment on: Screwtape’s Shortform
“In my defense, if I had meant to offer the Senator a bomb removal squad, I would have said bomb removal squad.”
-Unsong

Screwtape Jul 24, 2025, 1:49 AM
15 points
11
on: Screwtape’s Shortform
Every so often I see the following:
Adam: Does anyone know how to X?
Bella: I asked ChatGPT, and it said you Y then Z.
Adam: Urgh, I could ask ChatGPT myself, why bother to speak up if you don’t have anything else to add?
I’m sort of sympathetic to Adam- I too know how to ask ChatGPT things myself- but I think he’s making a mistake. Partially because prompting good answers is a bit of a skill (one that’s becoming easier and easier as time goes on, but still a bit of a skill.) Mostly because I’m not sure if he’s reinforcing people to not answer with LLM answers, or if he’s reinforcing not telling him it’s from an LLM.
Citing sources is valuable! In grade school I sometimes got told not to use sources I found on the internet, and what happened isn’t that I stopped using the internet it’s that I stopped citing the sources that were from the internet and left them as assertions, instead adding requisite citations from other sources. It changed some of my essay structure sometimes, but not as often as I think the teachers were hoping.
Anyway, I don’t really want to encourage more people to give LLM answers when I ask questions, but if you do give me that kind of answer I appreciate it being cited as such. I try to score such that you do not lose more points telling me relevant true things vs where you don’t tell me things.

Screwtape Jul 22, 2025, 5:07 AM
2 points
0
in reply to: Screwtape’s comment on: Make More Grayspaces
Meh, the debate team and the scientists know they’re aiming at different things, that’s not a great example on my part.

Screwtape Jul 22, 2025, 4:32 AM
2 points
0
in reply to: Cole Wyeth’s comment on: Make More Grayspaces
Your skepticism seems warranted! I can’t tell how the rules of the sport affect the training system, and I haven’t studied MMA in depth so maybe it has more answers to problems which I just didn’t find.
the reality is you just can’t actually go for the eyes in a sparring match so you mostly focus on the other stuff.
Yeah, that’s the kind of reasonable-at-first-blush rules that come to mind. This is a tangent to the grayspaces post and if we get more than another back and forth into this I might just try to write this up as its own post. I don’t think what I’ve said above or what I’m saying in this comment should be convincing. Training to completion against a resisting opponent usually means training with moves that won’t put someone in the hospital. I don’t know that’s the wrong tradeoff, training against a resisting opponent is pretty useful.
The circumstances I needed martial arts for were mostly across a weight difference, with varying number of opponents, in an environment full of hard abrasive surfaces. There was a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu class that said it was pulling in some MMA techniques (yeah, I know calling MMA a style is a bit weird, pretty sure it was mostly Muay Thai) I tried to learn from, and it proved a trap. Later on I learned a bit more about MMA and the parts that felt like traps seemed to come from assumptions like the ground being okay to land on.
Circling back to the grayspaces-as-worrying-insulation-from-tests; if I imagine a bunch of skilled scientists and a bunch of skilled debaters talking about who has better discussion norms, I could see the scientists saying “look, we’re not going to spar with you by your rules, and we’re not going to let you come in and spar with us either unless you spend some time understanding what we think sucks about your rules.” Maybe the scientists have allowed themselves to become too insulated from someone asking the right questions or from outside perspectives. That does seem like it can happen! But also the debaters are focused on a different purpose and that could be an actual problem.

Screwtape Jul 21, 2025, 8:12 PM
6 points
−2
in reply to: RickyDMMontoya’s comment on: Make More Grayspaces
Datapoint: I run regular tabletop RPG oneshots. We’ll play new characters with whoever shows up, running through the adventure in one evening. I also run long running tabletop RPG campaigns with more regular players, which I often select players for by picking players I like a lot and who mesh well at the oneshots.
The oneshots map pretty well to the gray space concept.

Screwtape Jul 21, 2025, 8:09 PM
6 points
0
in reply to: Garrett Baker’s comment on: Make More Grayspaces
For my two cents, I enjoy dinner parties full of rationalists where we talk about fanfiction and D&D and bread recipes. I would also enjoy having a dojo full of rationalists where I trained how to think faster and make fewer obvious mistakes. Trying to do that with roughly the same people seems likely to work just fine. Trying to do that at the same time (that is, train thinking faster while eating dinner and talking about D&D) sounds like it would not work.
My guess is I’m not disagreeing with Duncan or Garrett here.
I don’t know if I’m disagreeing with Cole. I actually have an idiosyncratic beef with MMA specifically around its very specific set of rules (at least in the MMA scenes I’ve run into) which made it worse at teaching me to fight than some other arts, though I do think MMA is probably more useful than a randomly selected more ritualistic martial art.
Probably this can be fixed by evaluations- I do like the idea of tossing a few masters from different arts into a ring and seeing what happens, I just think in practice a lot of reasonable-at-first-blush-sensible rules around how that gets done wound up distorting things.

Screwtape Jul 21, 2025, 7:58 PM
18 points
12
on: Just Make a New Rule!
Continually making new rules has downsides, both in administration attention and also in negative impacts for bystanders. I think those downsides outweigh the benefits of just making new rules in many cases.
I wrote a bit about this in Pick Two: Clear, Concise, or Comprehensive. It’s often the case that trying to specifically rule out undesired behavior takes a lot of exasperating, detailed work or is going to involve reserving the ability to make broad judgement calls. For instance, imagine you don’t want people calling each other morons, so you make a rule saying don’t do that. Ten minutes later Bella calls Carl an idiot, so you make a rule not to call people idiots either. Five minutes after that, Carl calls Bella a numbskull, so you make a rule not to call people numbskulls. One minute later, Bella calls Carl a dumbass. They can obviously keep coming up with new rude things to call each other, and eventually the number of banned insults will impede normal communication.
Imagine Carl calls Bella a child, you ban calling people children because this has been going on for weeks and you’re a little bit on autopilot, and then the next day Dean posts a picture of his family where he says “Here’s my husband Evan and our children Frankie and George!” You, in your bountiful wisdom, let this slide, and then later Carl starts arguing that moderation is totally inconsistent, he got in trouble for calling someone a child but for some reason it’s fine when Dean does it.
Okay, so maybe the rule is “no insulting people.”
Well, you’ve given up having a comprehensive list of insults in favour of having more concise rules. You’re now going to have to make moderation judgments about what counts as an insult.
- Does calling someone a rat count as an insult? It totally would at a church picnic. It probably doesn’t at a LessWrong meetup.
- Countersignalling exists.
- Does saying someone’s essays are boring count as an insult, or is it an honest review? How about calling them a plagiarist?
The work of coming up with rules to ensure socially beneficial outcomes can be frustrating, because you won’t always get the rules exactly right the first time. You might need to iterate. But it’s a finite and achievable amount of work, not an unwinnable unending battle against the formidable intelligence of an adversary who hates everything your Society stands for, because those mostly aren’t a real thing either.
Okay, so I want to point out that sometimes “a battle against an adversary who hates everything your Society stands for” is a passable description of what’s actually going on. Like, take a look at the relationship between Hamas and the IDF for a second. I’m not saying one side of that is an evil mutant who hates all that is good in the world, but if I was in charge of writing rules (for a ceasefire, for rules of warfare, etc) I would actually be thinking about how someone might argue loopholes in whatever I came up with. That’s an extreme example, sure, but if I imagine spending a year in a conflict like that, trying to write down specifically what I did not want people to do, I can imagine eventually winding up with rules that amounted to “stay out, don’t send anything to the other side, don’t even think about it.” Either that or I’d wind up with a book of rules too big to physically print in one book.
And there’s things that would break a rule (“send normal water to the other side via this river”) which I might still want to happen. I can try and make carveouts and exceptions and more detailed rules, but the thing I really want is for whatever inner generator of ideas and actions they’re using to be a bit more in tune with my preferences for the space. There’s violations that are fine if they happen once or twice and not if they happen all the time^[1], there’s violations that are fine because it was done well but are bad if they’re done badly^[2], there’s violations that might just get a warning if it’s a small amount but not if it’s a big amount^[3] and trying to write that down as a rule in advance rather than leaving it up to moderator judgement sounds . . . maybe still finite and achievable, but it’s finite and achievable for the U.S. government, not random forum administrators.
(Remember, if you want it in advance then you have to write it down for every situation that might come up. If you don’t need to have it in advance, then someone can still get punished for breaking a rule they didn’t know about.)
For spaces I don’t need to be in (e.g. my local YMCA, or my favourite internet forum) I prefer the administration have a more high level strategy than just making a new rule whenever someone does something undesirable.
1. ^
  Don’t constantly ask for money. If once or twice a year when hanging out you go ‘shoot, I forgot my wallet, do you mind covering me?’ this is probably fine. If you never cover your bar tab then people will likely stop going out drinking with you.
2. ^
  Don’t hit on people badly. If you walk up to someone for the first time and say ‘I’m Ted, I want to have sex with you.’ then this will not go well. If after a couple weeks of hanging out and enjoying each other’s company you say ‘hey, I’d like to go on a date with you sometime. Would you like to see a movie next week?’ this is probably fine.
3. ^
  Compare “Man, I feel like you’re being a little dense here” vs “you fucking imbecilic waste of air.” Both insults! Or compare a light punch to the shoulder vs a full power haymaker to the temple. Both are punches! But the former might well correctly get off with an informal warning, while the later would be a pretty strong argument for a ban in many venues.

Screwtape Jul 20, 2025, 6:12 PM
8 points
2
on: Screwtape’s Shortform
Today I’m running a meetup about AI 2027. I plan to end it with a short pitch on If Anyone Builds It. I think the meetup itself is solid- talking about some of Scott’s writing and making predictions about the future, both good ways to spend an afternoon. I wouldn’t run it if I thought it was just going to be bad.
But part of the motive is marginal If Anyone Builds It pre-orders. I’m wary here, because several notable previous organizations that looked like they were not for AI x-risk eventually turned out to be mostly for AI x-risk. I dont want to wind up like that, and I super don’t want to be basically focused on x-risk under the hood but most people think I’m working on something else.
Current solution- say out loud the extra motive here.

Screwtape Jul 16, 2025, 8:18 PM
2 points
0
on: AI 2027 Predictions
Update- changing to Sunday to avoid a schedule conflict with an EA event I didn’t notice!

AI 2027 Predictions

ScrewtapeJul 14, 2025, 9:05 PM

9 points

2 comments1 min readLW link

Screwtape Jul 11, 2025, 1:50 AM
2 points
0
in reply to: Screwtape’s comment on: Screwtape’s Shortform
(That last paragraph is a pile of sazen and jargon, I don’t expect it’s very clear. I wanted to write this note because I’m not trying to score points via confusion and want to point out to any readers it’s very reasonable to be confused by that paragraph.)

Screwtape Jul 10, 2025, 10:47 PM
3 points
0
in reply to: CstineSublime’s comment on: Screwtape’s Shortform
Not that much crossover with Elicitation. I think of Elicitation as one of several useful tools for the normal sequence of somewhat adversarial information exchange. It’s fine! I’ve used it there and been okay with it. But ideally I’d sidestep that entirely.
Also, I enjoy the adversarial version recreationaly. I like playing Blood On The Clocktower, LARPs with secret enemies, poker, etc. For real projects I prefer being able to cooperate more, and I really dislike it when I wind up accidentally in the wrong mode, either me being adversarial and the other people aren’t or me being open and the other people aren’t.
In the absence of the kind of structured transparency I’m gesturing at, play like you’re playing to win. Keep track of who is telling the truth, mark what statements you can verify and what you can’t, make notes of who agrees with each other’s stories. Make positive EV bets on what the ground truth is (or what other people will think the truth is) and when all else fails play to your outs.

Screwtape Jul 10, 2025, 10:37 PM
6 points
0
on: The Tenets of a Rational Debate
If you haven’t seen it before, I recommend checking out Basics of Rationalist Discourse and Twelve Virtues of Rationality. That isn’t me trying to say you didn’t need to write this since it already exists- I actually enjoy reading different people’s takes on what’s important in a rationalist discussion or practice. Thank you for the extra vantage point! Since it is a topic people have written on before and likely will again, it might be worth retitling this something like “SD’s Tenets of a Rational Debate” to make it easier to talk about.
Focus is an interesting addition I don’t think I’ve seen before in things like this. It has some appeal to me (I like efficiency) but I also enjoy meandering conversations sometimes. Do you have thoughts on when to be focused and when to let the conversation take its time?

Screwtape Jul 9, 2025, 5:25 AM
20 points
4
on: Screwtape’s Shortform
There’s this concept I keep coming around to around confidentiality and shooting the messenger, which I have not really been able to articulate well.
There’s a lot of circumstances where I want to know a piece of information someone else knows. There’s good reasons they have not to tell me, for instance if the straightforward, obvious thing for me to do with that information is obviously against their interests. And yet there’s an outcome better for me and either better for them or the same for them, if they tell me and I don’t use it against them.
(Consider a job interview where they ask your salary expectations and you ask what the role might pay. If they decide they weren’t going to hire you, it’d be nice to know what they actually would have paid for the right candidate, so you can negotiate better with the next company. Consider trying to figure out how accurate your criminal investigation system is by asking, on their way out of the trial after the verdict, “hey did you actually do it or not?” Consider asking a romantic partner “hey, is there anything you’re unhappy about in our relationship?” It’s very easy to be the kind of person where, if they tell you a real flaw, you take it as an insult- but then they stop answering that question honestly!)
There’s a great Glowfic line with Feanor being the kind of person you can tell things to, where he won’t make you worse off for having told him, that sticks with me but not in a way I can find the quote. :(
It’s really important to get information in a way that doesn’t shoot the messenger. If you fail, you stop getting messages.

Screwtape May 20, 2025, 4:02 PM
2 points
0
in reply to: Hastings’s comment on: Interest In Conflict Is Instrumentally Convergent
I think of Ziz and co as less likely than 2std out, for about the reasons you give. I tend to give 200 as the rough number of organizers and groups, since I get a bit under that for ACX Everywhere meetups in a given season. If we’re asking per-event, Dirk’s ~5,000 number sounds low (off the top of my head, San Diego does frequent meetups but only the ACX Everywheres wind up on LessWrong, and there are others like that) but I’d believe 5,000~10,000.

Screwtape May 20, 2025, 4:51 AM
4 points
2
in reply to: Said Achmiz’s comment on: Book Review: The Art of Happiness
And I wouldn’t really try to figure out how to be happy by looking at what religions say about it.
People have been thinking about the problem for thousands of years, most of the written answers we’ve got come from religion and philosophy. Maybe they’re all terrible answers but virtue of scholarship, sometimes I read a book and check.
(Which is—I’m sorry to say it—perfectly illustrated by your whole “let’s look at the Wikipedia page for each religion and see how many times it mentions ‘happy’ or ‘happiness’” thing. Come on! Obviously that is a nonsensical thing to be doing here! It isn’t even a “quick and dirty approximation” to anything; it’s just noise.)
I mean, not total nonsense but it isn’t a very detailed way to figure this out, I just couldn’t think of a better way after thinking for sixty seconds that didn’t involve doing some kind of literature review on each of them.
On the contrary, Buddhism strikes me as a religion which is deeply anti-life and pro-death (very “life goals of dead people”). I would not even consider going to such people for insights about joy, of all things. Hence my somewhat incredulous comment.
Checking: Have you ever read a book to learn about Buddhism before coming to the conclusion that you wouldn’t consider going to them about it? Talked to a Buddhist for a while? Read a dictionary entry? A book review of some other book?
I’m not particularly disagreeing with your conclusion at the moment, just- dude, I talked to a few Buddhists in passing, they told me a bit about what they believed, I read a book about it, I wrote a review of the book. If it bugs you that I asserted “Buddhism is unusually X” in the preamble to a book review would this go away if I added a citation from the Dalai Lama saying something to this effect, because I still have the book and I’m pretty sure there’s a line in there somewhere. I have watched you assert wilder things with less evidence though so I think this is an isolated demand for pedantry.

Screwtape May 20, 2025, 4:33 AM
2 points
0
in reply to: Said Achmiz’s comment on: Book Review: The Art of Happiness
I disagree with #1
Okay, let me try starting from before that point then.
There’s a bunch of things commonly referred to as emotions. Happiness is one. Anger is another. Sadness is a third. This list is not exhaustive but there’s lots of lists of emotions, here’s one.
Have you ever felt any of these, such that you could say “gosh, I’m really angry right now” as a fact about the world?
basically agree with #3, and agree with what #4 says but almost certainly not with what you mean by it. (I also—obviously—disagree with the notion that these things form some kind of meaningful sequence of specificity or claim strength etc.)
- wait. You don’t think happiness is a thing that people can notice about themselves, but you do think there’s some kind of circumstance that makes a particular person happy? Like, I could go to the beach, and I would be happy, but I couldn’t notice that fact? I put them in that order because I assumed if you were going to disagree with one of them you’d also disagree with all the ones after, so I’m pretty surprised here.

Screwtape May 20, 2025, 4:21 AM
3 points
0
in reply to: romeostevensit’s comment on: Book Review: The Art of Happiness
It sounds like you’ve got the same thing going on that the book is talking about, and I’m either labeling a different thing “compassion” in my head than you and the Dalai Lama are talking about or something else is going on.

Screwtape May 20, 2025, 4:19 AM
2 points
0
in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: Book Review: The Art of Happiness
Possible but from reading the book I think that interpretation is unlikely to be correct. The authors seemed to think empathy itself brought some joy even in these cases.