Ustice

Karma: 501

Ustice 2 May 2026 13:39 UTC
2 points
0
on: Psychopathy: The Problem
I look forward to your future posts.

Ustice 2 May 2026 13:08 UTC
3 points
0
on: Games that change your mind
D&D taught me about the importance of journaling. Watching how effective Marisa Rey was by using her game journal on Critical Role, Campaign 2, it inspired me to try it out. After about a year into to it, I went back through it, and it brought back so many memories, and I realized I remembered things from the game better than my real life. that’s when I started daily journaling.
3 years later, I’m still at it, and I wish that I had started so much sooner, like as a kid. It helps me collect my thoughts when I’m dealing with complicated feelings. It helps me remember specific details that would otherwise be lost to time. I hand-write, but I use Notability, which can index my handwriting, so I can search for things.
Going back to games for a bit, Blue Prince was one of my favorite games of all time, and my journal from my journey through that game is a treasured possession. For those weeks I played obsessively, most of my time was looking through or reading my journal, trying to pull threads together. by the end, I had about 120 pages of notes, including pictures, drawings, details, tables, etc. I can’t go back and play that game the same way again, but I can rediscover what it was like.
My journal s a gift to future-me. Inattentive-presenting ADHD makes remembering hard, and my journal is my mental prosthesis. I expect that years later, when these were the good ol’ days, I’ll be able to go back and read about them, and relive the memories. I’ll have a better connection to now-me, and I’ll be thankful that I took that time, even when it was hard.
Also, if you haven’t played Blue Prince, go do that—like right now—but be careful: It’s extremely addictive.

Ustice 2 May 2026 0:01 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Martin Randall’s comment on: Am I the baddie?
Intellectual property is going to go the way of privacy.

Ustice 1 May 2026 23:51 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: SpectrumDT’s comment on: Why do many rationalists like cryptocurrency?
I think currency is best when it is backed by a central authority.

Ustice 23 Apr 2026 20:58 UTC
2 points
0
on: Why do many rationalists like cryptocurrency?
They do make a good way to exchange between different currencies in countries where that would otherwise be very difficult/illegal.
In general though, blockchain is a brilliant solution to a particular problem (decentralization). For most things having a trusted central system of record is a better solution.
I feel that way about currency too. 🤷🏻‍♂️ Then again, outside of my 401k, I don’t have any financial investments, so I’m a terrible source of financial advice.

Ustice 4 Apr 2026 23:07 UTC
1 point
0
on: Is AI a house of cards?
Bubble or no, with the latest models I can ship quality code 20x faster. I can make prototypes in minutes to hours, and finished tested code in a few days that would have taken months previously. My tool’s and workflows are forever changed. This isn’t hype; this is what I am doing today.

This is the worse it will ever be. even if we stopped here, society is soon going to be running on jet fuel.

The models don’t have to get stronger, and we would still be seeing improvements, and they aren’t stopping.

Ustice 4 Apr 2026 16:29 UTC
5 points
0
in reply to: Seth Herd’s comment on: Am I the baddie?
Yeah. I think that is where I’m landing. I’ve been going hard for the last two weeks, with not enough sleep. It just hit me once I had time to slow down.

Am I the baddie?

Ustice4 Apr 2026 6:00 UTC

34 points

11 comments2 min readLW link

Ustice 8 Mar 2026 22:39 UTC
3 points
2
on: Videogames for Rationalists
I’d add Blue Prince to the list. I haven’t seen a game with so many layers before. It’s a masterpiece. I have 125 pages of notes, that I used to complete the game. Room 46 is just the beginning.

Timberborn would be an honorable mention. It’s a city builder game with beavers and water physics.

Ustice 1 Mar 2026 1:30 UTC
2 points
1
in reply to: Bowl of Cereal’s comment on: The Voices That Are Missing From Sex-Themed Online Communities
I might even add, “avoid absolutist statements”: always, never, all, none, etc. Not ban them, as there are appropriate uses, but rarely are they true about people.

Ustice 27 Feb 2026 6:34 UTC
3 points
1
in reply to: Bowl of Cereal’s comment on: The Voices That Are Missing From Sex-Themed Online Communities
Admittedly so. Having the example helps clear things up. Thank you. To me, sex-positive means, “it’s okay here to discuss sex like any other topic without fear of you being shamed for it.” I’m okay to refer to that as “sex-focused”
Everyone has their own views on sex, so I think it’s important in a broad community to respect the other people in the discussion. If I were moderating a discussion involving people from the NoFap community, and others including from a gooning community, I’d try to keep the focus on what sex means to the individuals speaking, and steer discussion away from criticizing other people in the discussion.

It’s not really that different from here, and I think. Yes, it takes work for all involved, but such is the price of productive and difficult conversations.
It’s amazing how effective using I-based phrases are. “I feel that…”, “To me…”, “I believe…”. They can take things from a judgement of others, to a fact about oneself.

“Sex before marriage is a sin, and those that indulge are wicked” →
“I believe that sex before marriage is a sin. I’ve grown up believing that those who indulge are wicked.”
The content in those two statements are the same, but the focus is different. I’d lean heavily into non-violent communication to keep things civil and productive. I’d try to give as much leeway as possible, but be on the lookout for people that are getting overheated, and gently nudge them back to civility.

Ustice 27 Feb 2026 0:44 UTC
1 point
0
on: The Voices That Are Missing From Sex-Themed Online Communities
Hmm. I’m not really sure that I agree with your premise, but that may be because I’m not quite understanding what you mean a sex-focused community that isn’t sex-positive. The sex-positive communities I’ve know have been very context-aware, rather than simply talking about sex in a vacuum. Usually the rules are typically on the lines of don’t yuck somebody’s yum, and don’t be a dick.

I used to run a group called Constellations that was focused on the larger non-monogamy community: so swingers, poly, mono-poly, open, hotwife, cuckold, etc. it wasn’t generally sex-focused, but we often talked about sexual topics pretty regularly. There were a lot of differing perspectives, and as you say, that was a good thing. I think that there is even more diversity in kink culture.
Can you give me some examples of what you mean? I suspect my disconnect is primarily a semantic one.

Ustice 20 Feb 2026 12:28 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: CarolusRenniusVitellius’s comment on: Power Laws Are Not Enough
Hahaha yeah, that was it. My bad.

Ustice 19 Feb 2026 21:35 UTC
1 point
0
on: Power Laws Are Not Enough
You’ve got a typo: search for “At least ime many ML/alignment folks”

Ustice 1 Feb 2026 12:59 UTC
−1 points
0
on: What would it mean for the Myers-Briggs personality test to be pseudoscientific?
INTJ?

Ustice 1 Feb 2026 12:55 UTC
10 points
5
on: A short list of Moltbook shitposts
Gotta admit, Moltbook has me updating towards AI are conscious.

Ustice 25 Jan 2026 19:12 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Horosphere’s comment on: Are there any extremely strong arguments against worrying about Acausal extortion?
Well, those are my best arguments. I hope I’ve been helpful in some way.

Ustice 23 Jan 2026 1:30 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Horosphere’s comment on: Are there any extremely strong arguments against worrying about Acausal extortion?
So go back. Why is it unlikely that an ASI would reward those that help create it, rather than punish those that don’t? You dismissed angels, but this seems to me the far more-likely scenario. It’s basically the default, otherwise what’s the point of building them in the first place? Now that doesn’t mean the angel doesn’t kill us all too, but it doesn’t engage in all this torture causal trade nonsense.
I just don’t understand why this particular scenario seems likely. Especially since it’s unlikely to work, given how most people don’t give it much credence.

I’m just not about to change my life and become a supervillain henchman, but if some ASI slid into my DM’s and said, “Yo, Jason. I’ll give you $2 million dollars to write some software for me. He’s proof I’m sincere,” I’d at least listen and ask about the benefits package.

There is no thought trap, other than what you create for yourself.

Let’s consider a functionally equivalent ASI scenario to a Basilisk. Let’s call it Jason’s Hobgoblin. An ASI comes into existence decides to ultra-torture everyone, with maybe some small chance of a reprieve based on whether it likes you or not. No acausal trade. It just sees who helped it exist, and chooses to make some of them its pets. The Hobgoblin takes up a bunch of space of the Basilisk futures.

Now, do you change your life to try to get on its good side before it even exists? I don’t think so: it’s crazy. How can you really understand why the Hobgoblin likes you, or does what it does?
I think that a chance for a reward from a Basilisk is equally inscrutable. You’re already considering cooperating with it, so it doesn’t have to actually cooperate with you. You have no way of knowing if it will cooperate with you it’s not actually incentivized to.

Why cooperate when you have no idea what the actual effect will be? Well, other than the damage you might do as its henchman. And the cost to your mental health as you go around the anxiety loop.

Even if you believe the Basilisk is a likely future, there’s no reason to cooperate with it, or give it further thought than any other possible future.

If the Hobgoblin splits the Basilisk probability space, then it’s it likely that there are other similar scenarios that do as well. Maybe an Angel is a Hobgoblin in disguise? Doesn’t this lead us back to the Basilisk not being a particularly likely possible future given all of the alternatives?

If the Basilisk is just a story, then is not worth worrying about. If the Basilisk is just one of any number possible futures, then there is no reason to give it special attention. If the Basilisk is the future, then there is no point is cooperating with it.

Ustice 19 Jan 2026 20:27 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Horosphere’s comment on: Are there any extremely strong arguments against worrying about Acausal extortion?
“Moreover so much more than what could exist does”
Why would that be?
Pure combinatorics. You could potentially have children with everyone you encounter. Now some of those are exceedingly unlikely, but even if ¹⁄₁₀₀ of them had a significant probability, that’s likely at least on order of magnitude or more than the people that you do wind up having kids with. For every potential coparent, there are a lot more children that you could have, but won’t. There are just too many factors that determine the outcome of a pregnancy. Again, we’re talking orders of magnitude more potential children than actual children. when we talk about all of the possible states of the world, versus the actual state of the world, the difference in orders of magnitude is simply astronomical.

Most things that could exist, don’t exist. There are far more possible worlds that have no Basilisk than ones that do. Now, you’re right to include how likely a particular potential world is, but even if we say in all worlds with AGI, humans are worse off, the likelihood of a Basilisk is vanishingly small, compared to all of the ways things could go wrong. Even in the worlds where there is a Basilisk, given variation in population, and AGI timelines, the chance of you being targeted is minuscule.

I don’t think that the nature of the torture matters. I think that I could think of a scenario where it would be worth enduring. It’s hard to balance torture against the welfare of others, but once we are in the billions, that feels pretty clear to me. The negative value of being tortured for 10,000 years can’t possibly be lower than the torture and deaths of billions of people. There is always a scenario where it is worth enduring. The risk is always finite.

But let’s take a step back, and presume that a Basilisk scenario is possible. What harms are you willing to do to make sure it is created? Would you create such a monster? Even in a world where a Basilisk is inevitable, what harms would you cause? Would they be worth it? What if it decides to just go ahead and torture you anyway?
There is no reason to cooperate with something so horrible: it can’t be reasoned with nor negotiated with—causally or not.

It’s astronomically unlikely to happen; and if it did there is no value in cooperating. If you create it, then you are the monster, whether you were inspired by Rosco or not.
Rosco’s Basilisk is an intellectual trap of your own making. It’s delusion: a rationalization of the irrational. It’s not worth thinking of, and especially not worth buying into.
It might make a good novel though.

Ustice 10 Jan 2026 20:05 UTC
−1 points
0
on: Are there any extremely strong arguments against worrying about Acausal extortion?
Nothing—that does not yet exist—wants to exist: it can’t. Only we that do exist, can want anything, including our own existence. If an entity doesn’t yet exist, then there is absolutely no qualia, so no desires. We can talk about them like they do, but that’s all it is.
Moreover so much more that what could exist does. It’s effectively infinite given the configuration space of the universe. Your expected value is the product of the value of whatever you’re considering and its likelihood. For every Basilisk, there could be as likely an angel. The value of being tortured is negative and large, but finite: there are things that are worth enduring torture. Finite/effectively-infinite is effectively-zero. Not something to be planning for or worrying about. Granted, this argument does depend on your priors.

Lastly, you don’t negotiate with terrorists. When my son was little and throwing tantrums, I’d always tell him that it wasn’t how he could get what he wants. If they are threatening to cause harm if you don’t comply, that’s their fault, not yours. You have no moral obligation to help them, and plenty to resist.

Rosco’s Basilisk, The Holy Spirit, Santa Clause, and any other fictional or theoretical entity that who might “want” me to change my behavior can get bent. 🖕🏻👾🖕🏻😇🖕🏻🎅🏼
Also, relatedly, here’s today’s relevant SMBC.

Ustice

Am I the bad­die?

Am I the baddie?