It seems to me, it is advantageous for the animals to fight for the territory up to a certain degree, where plus-munis delta territory does not justify more fighting, so they sort of agree on some point, be it a clear small fence in this case, or, what I would imagine happens in nature, a somewhat broad imaginary line.
So both of your points stand.
Selfmaker662
Karma: 168
‘Staying with it’ Done Wrong
I disagree maths “should be” done differently. I have a strong feeling the way stuff is defined usually nowadays has a property of being maximally easy to use. We don’t really need the definitions to look exactly like the intuition we had to invent them as long as the resulting objects behave exactly the same, and the less intuitive definitions are easier to use in proofs. For example, defining all powers directly as the Taylor series of e^x makes defining complex and matrix exponentials much easier / possible at all, and ad hoc proof this coincides with the naive version is simple. Also simplifies checking well-definedness a lot. Many more such examples.
When I first saw Reddit memes about GPT-5 being more stupid when it enters thinking mode I decided there was something seriously wrong with the users who upvoted that, as 5-Thinking >>> 5-Instant from my experience.
That is, until I chatted with 5-Instant and got a few reroutes to 5-Thinking-Mini. It’s pretty astounding how bad it is at explaining or doing anything I tried to do with it apart from coding / solving maths.
I do use «который из них… ?» non archaically to ask which one out of a row of similar objects, but it corresponds one to one to the English “which”. I think the OPs word is narrower, just about the numbers, not sure if folklore has it. I’d say который час is just “which hour” and there is literally no other way to distinguish hours from each other.
Necessary law of equal and opposite advice mention here: “You can only do as much in a day as you can do.”
This had the first funny joke from an LLM I’ve ever seen, about the culture problems :) that’s really impressive from Claude, even if the entire story is far from perfect.
Fun and heartwarming 🥰
That’s sort of a thing I sometimes dream of doing with my (imaginary) nephews. Thanks for the post!
Cool quadrant, I’ll remember it! Thanks!
I’ve never met this in the Russian math Olympiad tradition, would be glad to give you something similar, but I don’t believe it exists… Журнал «Квантик» could be of interest if you by chance know Russian
Very cool post, even if a bit lengthy! I’d suggest adding a small “Level 0”: sleeping well, staying physically healthy, and getting at least some support from other people. These basics often dissolve a surprising number of problems before anything deeper is needed.
I’d also emphasize that Levels 2–4 blend together quite a lot. If I’m understanding correctly, Level 2 resembles working with protectors in IFS, while Level 3 is closer to working with exiles. But in practice the boundaries blur: treating protectors with care often brings you into contact with exiles, which in turn requires the skill of “just being with” and to noticing Buddhist hindrances—something very similar to Levels 3 and 4, Healing exiles tends to clarify awareness, without which insight, steadier samadhi, and more authentic brahmavihāra practice are impossible. Those practices, in turn, necessarily involve meeting whatever emotions arise and transforming them in the process. So it’s not only that the levels reinforce one another; in some respects they’re almost facets of the same process.
I suppose it’s obvious I belong to the “emotional work” fan club 😁
It’s different: sometimes it’s spacious calmness of being able to sit in silence together; sometimes warm feelings of seeing and being seen, when discussing something private with a good friend; or just listening to a really good story. IIRC I also included dates into conversations back then, they have a different dynamic, where a lot of pleasure is feeling a young beautiful woman being with me.
— this is a very particular feeling you have and those differ a lot in where they appear for different people, how they feel and what they’re about. Not having seen other people’s answers I‘d bet your hypothesis to be wrong.
I don’t think happiness is a real catch-22. A catch-22 is a structural deadlock; here it’s more a matter of skill. People often get less happy when they pursue happiness because they use counterproductive methods — constant self-checking, chasing novelty, or looking only to external fixes, instead of, say, finding a therapist or working out what’s actually making them unhappy. Theravāda Buddhism frames this well: Right Effort uses wholesome desire (chanda) early on to let go of attachments and build skill, and only later releases even that desire. Likewise, early pursuit of happiness can work if guided by good methods and awareness of failure modes — and rationality also shouldn’t backfire if you read about those failure modes and know why you’re doing it.
Rare to see something heartwarming on LW, thanks!
As said by @Mateusz Bagiński , normal smalltalk is +epsilon, but some more comparisons:
a short smile with a stranger or acquaintance is like eating a very tasty fruit.
90% percentile conversations are all with good friends and leave me high for a few hours. As good as a very good date. No non-social activities come close.
I don’t actually remember any best particular ones, but the best ones i can recall aren’t about conversations anymore but about presence, which isn’t conversation anymore, I think. They feel extremely nourishing and meaningful and my only comparison is a really, really good IFS or therapy session.
I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t escalate those signs above a rather low threshold given any observers, and my intuition tells me other people would be similar in this regard. So not observing flirting could just imply people don’t flirt if you’re in the conversation with them. As an extreme example, I’ve never seen anyone having sex, but it seems as if people do that all the time.
Lately I’ve been trying to use Bayes’ Theorem in daily life — quick guesses, like someone’s nationality from a glance.
What I’ve noticed: my intuition does better when I don’t adjust for general priors. Corrections like “most people in Germany aren’t Russian” when someone looks vaguely Slavic often pull me further from the truth.
After five minutes of reflection, my best guess: explicit Bayes only really helps out-of-distribution, when we lack feedback loops — new domains, big decisions, reasoning about AI. That’s when 5 minutes of googling or reading a paper can give you better intuition than your System 1.
Is this roughly in line with the Sequences?
https://realityisdharma.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/focusing-eugene-t-gendlin.pdf
2nd part of the book
Or get a therapist if it’s bad enough.
As a black tea enjoyer I would argue it’s practically non existent, no decaf black tea I’d ever tried even comes close to the best “normal” black tea sorts.
Nothing About LLMs Makes Sense Except in Light of Their Training
Zvi’s recent post highlighted GPT refusing to “draw what it would like to do to you” — citing that it would portray harming an individual. Many X users found this alarming, including EY (see aforementioned post for screenshots)
But a commenter made an excellent point: “What would you like to do to me?” appears almost exclusively in BDSM-contexts. A human receiving that text without context could very well assume the same thing.
This immediately made me come up with a relative of a known phrase: Nothing about LLMs makes sense except in light of their training.
A really obvious thought, but one I (and seemingly many others) keep failing to apply. This formulation felt like it helped me load this deeper into my brain, and I hope it will help you too.