Viliam

Karma: 27,971

Viliam 21 Jul 2026 12:04 UTC
3 points
0
on: People might start believing in radical life extension soon
I wonder if some kind of rebranding might help. For example, instead of “life extension” let’s call it “youth extension”, and make the pitch something like: people are already living longer, let’s keep them young for longer.
This could be less controversial, because instead of discussing pros and cons of immortality (which are not even relevant yet, and can get you in trouble with all kinds of people, not just religious) we will simply suggest that people get more healthy and youthful, which seems like everyone would agree with.

Viliam 20 Jul 2026 13:23 UTC
4 points
−4
in reply to: HedonicEscalator’s comment on: A Very Simple Game Theory of Pronoun Degendering
people ideologically aligned with some form of gender-abolition adjacent movement
Political alignments do not need to make sense (it is enough if both sides oppose the same enemy, even if they kinda disagree with each other), but it seems to me that insisting that you are a different gender is incompatible with insisting that genders do not exist.
More crudely, compare the “female brain in a male body” meme and “there is no such thing as a female and male brain, the only differences between men and women are their secondary sex characteristics, and socialization”. Could both somehow be true in the same world? I don’t see how.
(That’s basically the conflict between the trans-positive feminists and the traditional feminists a.k.a. TERFs.)

Viliam 20 Jul 2026 13:17 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Karl Krueger’s comment on: A Very Simple Game Theory of Pronoun Degendering
Makes me curious about trans women from countries that do not have gendered pronouns—what short explanations do they use? (Also, how do they know whether they are being misgendered?)

Viliam 20 Jul 2026 12:45 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: Noah Birnbaum’s comment on: Mikhail Samin’s Shortform
I would expect the difficult part to be getting contacts to the winners. There is only one source you can get them from, if for whatever reason they say “no”, is there a Plan B?
On a second thought, the organizers of math olympiad probably do not even have contacts to individual competitors. They probably communicate through schools.

Viliam 20 Jul 2026 12:34 UTC
4 points
0
in reply to: TsviBT’s comment on: TsviBT’s Shortform
One example is that X was “abuse people without political power” and those people got political power, and now it’s not worth it to express your desire and get in conflict. (That is, you would be punished not only for hurting them, but also for expressing the desire.)

Viliam 20 Jul 2026 12:29 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: O O’s comment on: O O’s Shortform
Not sure what values the CCP actually has. Seems to depend on the current leader; Xi’s idea of socialism is like the opposite of Mao’s idea. The only part they agree on is that CCP should rule the country. So presumably the AI would keep that part, and maybe ignore the implementation details like who gets to be the boss of CCP?

Viliam 20 Jul 2026 11:16 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: dynomight’s comment on: Kaj’s shortform feed
Shit, that sounds like me. (Minus the Zettelkasten because my new system would obviously be better, but...)
I guess a part of this is a lack of calibration. You already know what you can realistically achieve without an AI. But you are not sure how much you can achieve with the AI. You are still learning how to use them, and the AIs are evolving, so whatever you have achieved until now seems like the lowest bound on what you could achieve...
The failure mode is talking about it but not doing it. In my case, the excuse is that I have a full-time job (where the AI does not help much, because writing code is not the actual bottleneck) and kids, so it feels like the ascension to godhood is right behind the corner, I just need one free fucking weekend… ideally a week.
If my model is correct, the problem will mostly fix itself as people get more experience and find their upper bounds, too.

Viliam 20 Jul 2026 11:06 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: Taylor G. Lunt’s comment on: Evan Rysdam’s Shortform
Assuming you want to have one-night stands, should you only choose strangers who seem unpopular?

Viliam 20 Jul 2026 11:02 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Martin Radzaj’s comment on: Posts I don’t have time to write
Good question! I imagine something similar to the actual court, but it would result in a series of articles written by Scott Alexander explaining why certain things are good or bad to do.
The result of the investigation would be to make the truth known, and optionally to expel the bad actor from the rationalist community.

Viliam 20 Jul 2026 10:49 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: tpotthinker’s comment on: Woke nonsense in competitive debate.
I am confused. If the strategy is already known and successful, I would expect that soon everyone starts using it. What happens when both sides are using it?
A: “I am not debating you, because the English language was made up by white cishet males.”
B: “No, I am not debating you, because the very concept of a debate implies a dichotomy, a false binary which is a form of oppression, and that makes makes you sexist, racist, and antifurryist.”
Judge: “I declare player B to be the winner of the debate on...” (checks notes) ”...on the topic of whether capybaras are cute animals. Both players did the right thing of completely ignoring the original topic and focusing on the larger context. Player A, you need to try harder the next time.”

Viliam 17 Jul 2026 15:22 UTC
2 points
0
on: Learning concepts is dirty work
Most of the criticism regarding Piaget’s work is aimed at this methodology, since it fails to meet many criteria of good scientific research: repeatability, for instance.
I agree that classifying things that kindergarteners says into categories like “conveys information to others” or “just comments loudly on what he sees, ignoring the audience” is going to be very subjective. Piaget already admits it in his book, and says something like… the exact categories do not matter, you just have to make some and evaluate them consistently for different age groups, and then you will observe a change of frequency in the categories between age groups. (Not an exact quote.) That sounds kinda doable.
But a more precise part is where he started. He worked for Alfred Binet—the guy who made one of the first IQ test—and while Binet was interested in counting the number of correct answers and calculating the IQ, Piaget noticed a different thing in the same tests:
Naively, if the test has four answers A, B, C, D, we should expect small children to start with a random distribution, like 25% chance of choosing each answer… and ending with smart adults choosing the right answer all the time (assuming reasonable adults, and a reasonably simple test)… and in the meanwhile, if we make a graph with a age on one axis and the frequency of choosing a specific answer on the other axis, we would expect the correct answer to go up, and the incorrect answers to go down (albeit at a different rate, if one of them is more obviously wrong than another). But what we often see instead is that some wrong answer gets more popular as the kids grow up, until some moment where the trend reverses and the kids finally start to converge on the correct answer.
This is what led him to the conclusion that kids tend to have certain wrong models (in LW lingo: cognitive biases) specific for certain age, such as magic thinking etc. so those answers go up before they go down. And this part should be relatively easy to replicate; actually all you need is the raw results of many IQ tests plus the age.

Viliam 16 Jul 2026 14:43 UTC
2 points
0
on: Monthly Roundup #44: July 2026
If people don’t trust you, or don’t trust people in general, that usually you can’t trust them either.
Yes, but this does not apply to people who distrust a specific person who is not you, or a group of people that does not include you. Unless the definition of the group is fuzzy enough that it can include you additionally.
If you are very intelligent, beware getting caught too permanently in some worthless rabbit hole. You have to pick a useful rabbit hole.
I am so lucky my childhood rabbit hole was “computers” before it became common knowledge that there was money to be made there.

Viliam 16 Jul 2026 13:55 UTC
6 points
2
on: Woke nonsense in competitive debate.
Could you go meta and declare the entire debate racist and colonialist? You know, it happens in USA...
(Generally, a nice way to outmaneuver woke people is not to push back, but to go even further. They are not used to their opponents doing that, and you can turn their own rhetorical tools against them.)

Viliam 16 Jul 2026 10:53 UTC
4 points
0
on: Embracing Amateurs to Get Experts
Bad art is the best art.
Bad art makes you say “I am pretty sure I could do this much better” and invites you to become an artist.
Good art makes you say “I could never do something like this” so you remain a consumer.

Viliam 16 Jul 2026 10:45 UTC
4 points
1
in reply to: Kabir Kumar’s comment on: Kabir Kumar’s Shortform
Agreeing gives status to the author, disagreeing tries to give status to you.
A good way to agree is e.g. some kind of “yes, and”, where you add another example the original insight applies to. But that requires having a good example that the author missed.
Sometimes I do the low-status thing and just write a comment praising the article, especially if I see the discussion is either empty or that kind that you described.

Viliam 16 Jul 2026 10:14 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: leogao’s comment on: leogao’s Shortform
Totally off topic—scrolling seems like a measurable thing. Imagine if all your devices measured every scroll operation you do on your computer or smartphone, and provided statistics like “today, you have scrolled 240 meters of screen”. If we had that data, the first obvious question would be whether you are scrolling more miles per day than you used to do years ago.
Another interesting thing to measure would be be the number of insights (or other valuable things). Imagine that anytime you see something valuable, you say “oh”, and your smartphone makes a note about what you were currently reading. Combining these things could give you statistics such as “LessWrong gives you 1 insight per 20 meters of screen, Reddit gives you 1 insight per 100 meters of screen”, etc.
it’s hard to pinpoint when it changed. i wonder what happened.
My guess would be that the average IQ of internet writers has decreased as we made it easier for stupid people to write. But also, you got smarter, and the things that were new and insightful are now old and boring.
For me, rationality reduced the enjoyment of large parts of internet, because the things that were exciting for me when I was 20 are just “ah, people being mindkilled again” or “I feel lazy to fact check, but with probability 90% this exciting fact would turn out to be false if I tried” or “this guy is making a huge generalization from 3 pieces of data” or “come on, X is correlated with Y does not imply that X causes Y” etc.

Viliam 16 Jul 2026 9:20 UTC
8 points
2
in reply to: leogao’s comment on: leogao’s Shortform
For people who haven’t been in Japan, is there a good article with examples of the “shittiest software imaginable”?

Viliam 16 Jul 2026 9:18 UTC
4 points
0
in reply to: jdp’s comment on: icely’s Shortform
Obsession seems to me like a milder form of mental illness—the kind of thing that everyone has to some degree and we classify it as mental illness only when it is strong enough to interfere with the person’s life in general. Problem is when it manifests in people with power, in a way that does not prevent them from getting power. The underlying problem is that many people would prefer to see the country led by an insane member of ingroup, than by a sane member of outgroup. Politics is often seen as a zero-sum conflict, rather than a collective attempt to figure out how to make the country better for everyone.
Vice signaling is a difficult thing to explain, when most people seem unable to even understand that things can have 2nd order effects.
The desire to blaspheme seems to me like some kind of status move. If many people feel low-status, they will be tempted to join. (The politics as usual only makes things worse, because people desire to make their outgroup feel low-status. The problem is when they succeed.)
...many of these things seem downstream of the zero-sum approach to politics and maybe life in general. I mean, if you adopt the perspective of a zero-sum life, then words like “good” and “evil” lose their original meaning. The only thing that remains is “good for ingroup / bad for outgroup” and “good for outgroup / bad for ingroup”.

Viliam 15 Jul 2026 18:15 UTC
45 points
0
on: Viliam’s Shortform
Uh, Wikipedia. :(
I have already complained (not sure whether on LW or ACX) about how Wikipedia no longer accepts imperfect articles (used to be called “stubs” long ago). Now you are supposed to create a full article that follows all the rules, provides enough sources, establishes notability, etc., or it won’t be even admitted as a Wikipedia article. Then you put it in the “Draft” workspace, and wait for some Wikipedia editor to judge whether it is worthy of adding to the online encyclopedia.
Now I learned the second part. If your attempt at an article does not pass the judgment, not only it stays in the “Draft” workspace (which would be fair: keep the “stubs” in a separate namespace), but after a few months it will be automatically deleted if no one fixes it.
It feels like Wikipedia is actively trying to get rid of volunteer contributors.
I admit that my attempt at an article sucks, but come on, twenty years ago this would be a perfectly legit “stub”. I have made new articles like this, someone else added a few lines or paragraphs, and after some time it developed into a solid article. That’s what cooperative encyclopedia means, doesn’t it?
The problem is not that the author is insufficiently notable. At least—well, let me quote Claude:
Alston has been covered/profiled by numerous independent outlets — an international bestseller profile noting his book was published in 27 countries and spent over 30 weeks on the NY Times Bestseller List, plus interviews and features from sources like ReadingZone, Fictitious Podcast, and Barnes & Noble’s Poured Over podcast. That’s a solid spread of independent secondary coverage.
An author qualifies if they meet any of several criteria — Alston appears to hit multiple:
Significant awards: His debut novel won the Barnes & Noble Children’s Book Award for Young Readers, and was named the Overall Winner of the Barnes & Noble Children’s and YA Book Awards in 2021.
Commercial/critical success: He is described as the #1 New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the AMARI books, published in over 30 countries and winner of numerous international awards.
Notable/well-reviewed work: The series received starred reviews from major trade publications — Booklist, Kirkus, and Publishers Weekly all gave starred reviews to his debut (Kirkus called it “an impressive debut series opener”).
Adaptation into another medium: A major motion picture is currently being developed by Universal, starring Marsai Martin — adaptations are a strong secondary-notability signal.
In practice, this is well above the bar where most Wikipedia editors would consider an author uncontroversially notable — and indeed, a Wikipedia article on him already likely exists or would survive an AfD (articles for deletion) discussion easily, given this level of sourcing.
So the problem is not that Alston is a nobody. A quick question to LLM, or just a Google search confirms that he is a successful writer.
The problem is that my article “stub” does not document this, and therefore it is better to delete it than to keep an imperfect article.
But I am not paid to be a writer for the fucking Wikipedia! Especially if they warn me never to use an AI to jump through their hoops. I tried to help, but the time I want to spend doing unpaid work for Wikipedia is limited. In my opinion, any sane person would agree that this guy should have a Wikipedia page. And in my opinion, a short page is better than no page, because a short page can be improved gradually, which is easier than creating the entire page from scratch.
Another complaint: Twenty years ago it was also considered OK to add links to articles that did not exist yet. The links were displayed in red color, and if you clicked on them, you got a “this articles does not exist yet, do you want to write it?” message. This was a way to notify other editors about topics you thought deserved coverage. When I tried to create a link to Alston (not to the draft, but where the final article should be), the edit was reverted, so apparently this is also no longer allowed.
It feels like the editors consider Wikipedia a completed project that needs to be protected against vandals, but no longer needs to be extended, unless you provide solid evidence that it should.
EDIT:
Added 4 references from reliable sources, submitted again, got rejected again. (At least the clock for deleting the stub started ticking from start again, if I understand it correctly.)

Viliam 15 Jul 2026 13:26 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: icely’s comment on: icely’s Shortform
Perhaps there are various kinds of “evil”, each better modeled in a different way? Some people hurt others by making a mistake (e.g. by incorrectly assuming that they are actually helping them). Some people hurt others because of a perceived zero-sum conflict (and that perception may or may not be correct). Some people simply enjoy hurting others. It gets even more complicated when talking about groups of people, where then can be e.g. one leader who enjoys hurting others, and thousand followers who merely make the mistake of trusting the leader. Modeling evil as a mistake would explain the actions of the followers, which is what you interact with most of the time, but would fail to explain where this all comes from and why some mistakes resist explanation so much.