Ustice

Karma: 510

Ustice 25 Jun 2026 11:49 UTC
2 points
1
on: Could we have another family?
This is one advantage of polyamory. It’s not discussed much, but it’s the kind of thing you see when someone gets hurt. When my girlfriend broke her leg, me and her other partner were able to coordinate and help her more than either of us could alone.

Ustice 14 Jun 2026 13:08 UTC
9 points
4
on: Paying Kids To Do Schoolwork
I was coming on here to say that this doesn’t take into account all of the kids that aren’t very motivated by money. I‘ve tried paying my son for things like this, but he’s not interested. he does way better with intrinsic motivation.
Then I realized that the intrinsic motivation would still exist, and therefore this would be for students who are easily extrinsically motivated. My nephew is. He’s not even a teenager, and bought a portable pressure washer to make money in the neighborhood. I think he’d be motivated to go to school and participate.
The biggest issue I see is cost. Education has been severely underfunded, and this would increase the cost. According to Google, there were about 49.6 million gradeschool students in the US in 2022. Assuming that the grades are distributed evenly, on average we’re talking around 150 million per day, nation-wide. With about 180 school days in a year, we’re looking at 27 billion dollars.
That’s well within the range of federal government budgeting, but given the track record, that seems very unlikely.
I think it would be worth studying. I’d want to know how much that money affects outcomes, and what payment thresholds produce what kind of results. I’m skeptical that it would be a better than the money going to teacher pay, but it’s worth finding out.

Ustice 9 Jun 2026 11:13 UTC
2 points
0
on: LLMs and almost good code
i think that we need to start rethinking some of our best-practices. For instance, does DRY matter? If i have a server that serves a bunch of endpoints, and if each one reimplements some fetching function, is that bad? As you said, if all of the code is local, and we need to fix one of the endpoints, we can just fix that endpoint, and not break anything else in the process. If we need to make changes across the endpoints, we can tell it to do so.
I’m not sure about this though. Right now, I don’t think that’s the right call—mostly because humans still have to read and understand the code—but I expect that in the very near future we won’t be reading much of the code anyway.
it’s a weird time we’re living in right now as software engineers.

Ustice 15 May 2026 11:51 UTC
2 points
2
on: Emma Baker on ADHD
One of the things that just really gets to me is that because my medication is a controlled-substance, I can’t use my pharmacy’s app for refills: I have to call or go in. That little bit of friction has meant the difference between having the medication and not. Without the medication, tasks like this are difficult for me to remember and do. It’s a perverse feedback loop.
Please just let me refill my prescription like everyone else.

Ustice 7 May 2026 23:44 UTC
2 points
0
on: Over Eight Months of Progress in Two: Analyzing the Mythos Preview Capability Jump
FOOM! Is this really a jump, or just the exponential trend?

Ustice 6 May 2026 21:21 UTC
1 point
0
on: The Best Argument Against Deontology Is About Suitcases
The deontoligical answer is this: without consent, the only acceptable sacrifice is oneself. The answer is to jump on to the tracks.

Ustice 4 May 2026 14:16 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: Shankar Sivarajan’s comment on: Games that change your mind
I have started it, and I’m far enough into it that I’m hooked on finishing it. I LOVE archeology games Where I piece together the story through clues left. Viewfinder was another good example.

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.

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”