Viliam

Karma: 26,452

Viliam 15 Jan 2026 14:57 UTC
3 points
0
on: A Loser’s Reflections
Surprised by the karma not being higher, and by the negative reactions.
I generally enjoy your articles for providing me insights into a part of the planet I know little about, but I think this article was good even separately from that. The fact that education has been warped from “nurturing individuals” into “screening them,” is something that I also perceive as obviously true and very painful. Unlike the author, I have a university diploma, I worked as a teacher for a few years, and I have a life-long interest in improving education, so many ad-hominems used against the author wouldn’t work for me. And I agree about how the system is broken. Also, Bryan Caplan’s The Case Against Education makes the same point.
You can complain about a system regardless of whether you win or you lose; but of course, if you win, you have less of a motivation to do so (especially if the system is designed to pretend that the winners are superior beings, so by questioning the system you also question your own superiority), and if you lose, there is the convenient argument that your opinions are opinions of an inferior human, and therefore superior humans should avoid them without discussing them, lest they contaminate themselves with the inferiority.
Take one of the schools as an example: I remember a few years ago only four students entered the interview stage, but this year it increased to ten, yet the admission quota remained unchanged. As the number of people increases, participants must expend more effort than in previous years to secure a spot.
The logic of screening here, if viewed from the perspective of “education,” is deformed. We can compare it to a driver’s license exam to understand—if we screened driver’s license applicants annually, saying “only the top 5%” are eligible to get a license, the absurdity of university educational screening becomes apparent. An illiterate person indeed doesn’t meet the standard and cannot enter university, but if a person possesses basic high school knowledge, why can’t they enter university to learn? The logic of a “qualification exam” and a “selection exam” is fundamentally different: Selection means there are still losers above the standard, and it is relative (the top 5% of last year coming to take the exam again doesn’t mean they can still be in the top 5%). However, a fixed qualification standard line remains consistent every year. Unless there are adjustments to the standard of “basic university knowledge” based on learning sciences and cognitive sciences, this line should remain largely unchanged annually.
This is (from my perspective) the key part of the article—pinpointing a part of the difference between what the educational system does, versus what it pretends to be = what it derives its legitimacy from.
As a thought experiment, imagine that you are designing an educational system, and your great desire is that e.g. as many people learn calculus as possible. You do not want to sacrifice literally all resources towards this goal, but you are pretty serious about it. You would probably design a system where anyone who has a potential to learn calculus is invited and taught, and then examined.
You would filter out e.g. mentally retarded people, because trying to teach them calculus is hopeless. Also, suppose that only have control over universities, but not over elementary and middle schools. Then, you would also filter out people who fail at the prerequisites so hard that there is no way to teach them calculus in the available time.
But what you definitely wouldn’t do is establish a goal of only admitting a certain fraction of the population. Not if your goal is to teach the calculus to as many people as possible. If more people arrived from middle schools sufficiently prepared, you would be happy to admit all of them; not trying to figure out more ways to reject them. (And you definitely wouldn’t reject them based on e.g. extracurricular activities unrelated to math.)
From this we can conclude the difference between the idealistically stated goals of the educational system, which is providing knowledge (to those who are capable of receiving it, given limited time and resources), and its actual goals, which are more like selecting a fraction of population, based on criteria that are correlated with their ability to receive knowledge but also with lots of arbitrariness and sheer luck.
Another way to say the same thing is that if you have a specific goal, such as “teach everyone literacy”, it is a game that the majority of people can win. In theory, you would be happy if 100% managed to win. The educational system is designed to be the kind of game where many people can’t win, because separating the winners from the losers is its point; it would be considered a failure if somehow 100% managed to win.
A system that is advertised as trying to make 100% win (and pretends that it anyone loses, it is only their own fault), but it actually designed to make a predefined fraction fail, is a system based on lies.
Why it matters (besides the standard rationalist obsession with truth)? Among other reasons, system based on lies are surprisingly resistant against attempts to improve them—if your proposal would improve them according to their stated criteria, but not according to their actual criteria. From the perspective of a system whose purpose it to separate winners from losers, improving the number of winners would be a failure; therefore it will resist any attempt to improve the number of winners, in ways that will be infuriating for a person who genuinely desires to see more people succeed at getting knowledge.

Viliam 14 Jan 2026 21:26 UTC
6 points
2
in reply to: TsviBT’s comment on: On Owning Galaxies
Looking at small children, seems like human nature has hardcoded the following instincts:
- if I want something, I take it… or act violently/annoyingly if I can’t
- I jealously monitor my siblings and cry “not fair” whenever they have something I don’t (even if I don’t need it, even if the thing is trivial, even if the difference between the things we have or their amounts is relatively small...)
Seems like a lot of human behavior can be explained by the interaction of these two forces—people try to take things; other people try to prevent them from taking more than their share. Sometimes the stronger people succeed to take more than their share, at the cost of making enemies.
Then, I guess we have many civilizational inventions on top of this. Strategies that a smart person could figure out alone, or copy from others, such as “if you take a lot, but share some of that with a few people who agree to support you in turn, you can still have a lot, and also some allies instead of only enemies”. A smart chimp could do this with one or two strong allies; a human dictator can create an entire army and a secret police for this purpose. It probably helps a lot if the culture provides you with potential minions who already understand their role, so you don’t have to explain individually to everyone what is an “army” and why you might benefit from joining one.
The reaction to people taking power can be to avoid them or fight them. The availability of these reactions depends on the situation. A complicated civilization can invent complicated methods to check people in power. In a primitive, a group of people who hate status quo can simply walk away and start a new tribe.
It seems to me that people have some “switches” that respond to changes in environment, for example in situations of natural disaster people become more altruistic. (And more likely to lynch you if they catch you looting houses in the middle of a disaster.)
But this all seems like possibly a consequence of the two basic instincts “try to get more, unless strongly opposed” and “prevent others from getting more than their fair share”. With culture changing the definition of “fair share”, e.g. we may be taught that high-status people (nobility, university educated, corporate bosses, etc.) deserve more than we do, but in turn we deserve more than low-status people (homeless, foreigners, less intelligent, etc.), because <insert ideology>.

Viliam 14 Jan 2026 14:40 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Scott Alexander’s comment on: On Owning Galaxies
If I was Sam, I would try to keep the definition of “the spec, a public document” such that I can unilaterally replace it when the right moment comes.
For example, “the spec” is defined as the latest version of a document that was signed by OpenAI key and published at openai/spec.html… and I keep a copy of the key and the access rights to the public website… so at the last moment I update the spec, sign it with the key, upload it to the website, and tell the AI “hey, the spec is updated”.
Basically, the coup is a composition of multiple steps, each seemingly harmless when viewed in isolation. Could be made even more indirect, for example, I wouldn’t have the access rights to the public website per se, but there would exist a mechanism to update the documents at public website, and I could tell it to upload the new signed spec. Or a mechanism to restore the public website from a backup, and I can modify the backup. Etc.

Viliam 14 Jan 2026 10:49 UTC
5 points
−6
in reply to: Karl Krueger’s comment on: Should you be posting on the open internet
But it’s also true that participating in the public sphere enables cooperation; enables mutual aid; enables creating reputation and credibility; enables joining with others to achieve your values.
Before internet, we had “public spheres” of various size—there is a difference between e.g. telling something to a group of friends, speaking at a village meeting, or publishing a book.
Internet kinda makes it all one size—anything said anywhere could leak anywhere else. Which changes the equation: you can’t choose smaller sphere for smaller risks and smaller benefits; now everything is associated with the large risks. You can’t trust that things said to your friends won’t reach your employer.

Viliam 14 Jan 2026 10:41 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: kaiwilliams’s comment on: AndrewS’s Shortform
It’s like a small sip of wine.
Astral Codex Ten comments however, are like drinking the entire bottle.

Viliam 14 Jan 2026 10:25 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: sarahconstantin’s comment on: sarahconstantin’s Shortform
https://read.isabelunraveled.com/p/manifest-rationally decent article on “manifestation” without woo.
Made me think about “keep your identity small” and epistemic vs instrumental rationality.
Short version is that you should keep your epistemic identity small. Avoid things like “I am <political faction>”, because they will make you think <beliefs associated with the political faction> regardless of evidence.
But you should choose your instrumental identity consciously. (See also: use your identity carefully.) Things like “I am the kind of person who does X” communicate to your System 1 that you want to do X.
This requires some more thought on how to keep these two separate; how to prevent the kind of failure where identifying as “someone who does X” makes me believe that “I do X”… even if I actually don’t, or only do rarely. It probably help to keep records on how often you do X, so that your beliefs come from the records, not the identity itself, but I am not sure whether this is the entire answer, or I missed something important.

Viliam 12 Jan 2026 9:28 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Raemon’s comment on: Zach Stein-Perlman’s Shortform
Some things are more legible than others. If I believe something based on dozen pieces of evidence all pointing in the same direction, removing one piece of evidence wouldn’t significantly change the outcome.
(Of course, removing all of them would change my mind; and even removing a few of them would make me suspicious about the remaining ones.)
So sometimes it makes sense to write things that are not cruxy.

Viliam 12 Jan 2026 8:21 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Czynski’s comment on: In My Misanthropy Era
The concept has a specific definition, but yeah, many people just use it as an excuse to call their opponents idiots. Not sure how much to blame Taleb for that, and how much it’s just that every concept gets diluted when the masses notice it. Would different words be more resistant against misinterpretation, but perhaps less memetically virulent? Probably yes; calling your opponents “idiots” is just too tempting.
The originally intended meaning is something like “people who fail/refuse to notice second-order effects, and often fail to do even the most obvious sanity checks, because they are completely focused on the fact that their first-order conclusions are supported by ScienceTM”. (Imagine a less stupid version of someone claiming that it impossible to clean up their room, because it is a scientifically proven fact that entropy always increases. But the statement would typically be made about e.g. economy.)
Taleb—who is an idiot in some different ways—does not match this. He has eyes on the ball; his goal is to increase the sales of his books, and he is doing that skillfully.
Hm, I wonder what would be better words for the concept. A “first-order intellectual”?

Viliam 11 Jan 2026 22:13 UTC
4 points
0
in reply to: Adam Zerner’s comment on: adamzerner’s Shortform
Yes, it seems like there is a difference between “inwards stubbornness” and “outwards stubbornness”, whether people refuse to change their minds for reasons private or social.
I know some people such that if you tell them they are wrong, they will double down and get angry at you… but if you meet them a few days later, they have updated their opinion. So it seems like they are willing to update, but not to admit that they did.
Similarly, you tell some people a good idea, and they will tell you that it is stupid. The next day, they will come and propose the same idea as their own. I think many books on ~~manipulation~~ social skills recommend that the best way to change someone’s mind about something is to let them believe that it was their own idea.
Then again, maybe this is a smaller difference than it seems, and some people are just better at remembering what was their opinion yesterday, or better at convincing themselves that yesterday was different.

Viliam 11 Jan 2026 21:55 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Jacobson’s comment on: Daniel Jacobson’s Shortform
A well-designed simulation is inescapable. Suppose that you are inside Conway’s game of life, and you know that fact for sure. How specifically are you going to use this knowledge to escape, if all you are is a set of squares on a simulated grid, and all that ever happens in your universe is that some squares are flipped from black to white and vice versa?
To answer your first question, some kinds of pseudo-randomness are virtually indistinguishable from actual randomness, if you do not have a perfect knowledge of the entire universe. For example, in cryptography, changing one bit in the input message can on average flip 50% of bits in the output message. Imagine that the next round of pseudo-random numbers is calculated the same way from the current state of the universe—the slightest change in the position of one particle on the opposite side of the universe could change everything.

Viliam 11 Jan 2026 21:42 UTC
2 points
0
on: The surprising adequacy of the Roblox game marketplace
I am surprised to read such positive review of Roblox, because so far all information I got was negative. People basically describe it as a system optimized to extract money from children through various dark patterns.
There is the virtual currency “robux” that various games try to extract from you at almost every step; for example you have a sequence of trivial puzzles and there is always an option to pay 1 robux to skip a puzzle—I think 1 robux is less than a cent, so it feels like nothing, but the point is that when there is an opportunity to pay 1 robux almost everywhere you look at, the numbers will quickly add up. (And generally, I think that in-app purchases aimed at children are an evil invention.)
Recently my daughter started playing under strong social pressure from her classmates. I should ask her about the details now that she has some experience, but from outside, my impression is that she spends a lot of time in the system but not at any particular game, not because any game is especially good, but because another game in the system is always only a click away. (Kinda like she used to spend a lot of time watching YouTube videos, again not because any video was particularly good, but because at every moment there were ten more potentially interesting videos advertised on the sidebar.)
Yes, it is very convenient that once you install the Roblox itself, you don’t need to install anything more to get more games, and all the games have the same controls, the same chat to talk to your friends, etc.

Viliam 10 Jan 2026 22:57 UTC
4 points
2
in reply to: johnswentworth’s comment on: The Weirdness of Dating/Mating: Deep Nonconsent Preference
I’d say that different people want/do different things (otherwise we probably wouldn’t have this debate right now; no one makes LW posts with convincing evolutionary arguments for why people breathe), therefore you should be suspicious of theories that predict that everyone wants the same thing.

Viliam 10 Jan 2026 22:38 UTC
7 points
5
in reply to: habryka’s comment on: The Weirdness of Dating/Mating: Deep Nonconsent Preference
Maybe it’s related to being on the autistic spectrum, or something like that? Normies have their complicated social games; aspies complain about people “playing mind games” and would prefer to communicate things explicitly. Then people form bubbles where they find their opinions “obvious”.
There are bubbles where women upvote/retweet things like “if he stops when you say ‘no’, he clearly doesn’t care about you”. I was never in such bubble, but my wife was horrified to find similar things when she randomly checked some profiles of her former classmates.

Viliam 10 Jan 2026 21:44 UTC
4 points
0
in reply to: Teerth Aloke’s comment on: Nisan’s Shortform
Dropping a nuke right on Stalin’s head would kill fewer Russians than not dropping it.

Viliam 31 Dec 2025 23:06 UTC
4 points
0
in reply to: AprilSR’s comment on: Halfhaven Forever
Well, yes. The question is, how much exactly. I mean, what are the points even supposed to reflect?
The thing I am trying to capture is “value for the reader”. As a reader of ACX, I prefer longer articles to shorter articles, assuming constant frequency. But I prefer two articles a week to one twice-as-long article.
Mathematically speaking, this means that the function “how many words for N points” should be growing, faster than linearly. But that still leaves many options. Intuitively, I chose 250n²+250n, as a quadratic (faster than linear) expression with backwards compatibility (results in 500 for n=1). If we extrapolate that further, it would be 5 points for 7.5k words, 6 points for 10.5k words, 7 points for 14k words, 8 points for 18k words, 9 points for 22.5k words, and 10 points for 27.5k words.
According to this extended scale, Scott would get 6+4+1+3+10+2+2+3+1+2+1+2+3+3+2+3+1+2= 51 points.
But that assumes that the particular quadratic function is the right one. If we chose an exponential function instead: 1 point for 500 words, 2 points for 1k words, 3 points for 2k words, 4 points for 4k words, 5 points for 8k words, and 6 points for 16k words, that would give slightly more points to articles below 4k, but fewer points above 10k, together 5+4+2+3+6+2+3+3+2+3+1+3+3+4+2+4+2+3= 55 points.
Both functions seem to pass the smell test—Scott should get more than 30 points, but not like an order of magnitude more (especially not after I have filtered out the links and contests and highlights). Getting about twice as much sounds about right. Still doesn’t answer which function to choose; both seem okay precisely because they give similar results.
Another question is, how often will Halfhaven participants produce articles longer than 5k words. I know I probably won’t, which makes the scoring of articles over 5k words seem irrelevant. I am open to changing my mind if someone actually starts writing the articles of such length, but at this moment it feels like if someone can write that kind of article repeatedly, they no longer need this project.
tl;dr—the choice is arbitrary, and probably irrelevant for Halfhaven participants, so although I kinda agree with you, I am not going to change it now (but might change it in April, dunno)

Viliam 31 Dec 2025 19:37 UTC
9 points
0
on: Halfhaven Forever
Out of curiosity, let’s see many points Scott Alexander would get for the last three months of 2025. Skipping the open threads and links and guest posts and highlights from comments and meetup announcements and contests and grant results...
- What Is Man, That Thou Art Mindful Of Him? (10k) 🪙🪙🪙🪙
- Book Review: If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies (6k) 🪙🪙🪙🪙
- Defining Defending Democracy: Contra The Election Winner Argument (1.3k) 🪙
- Sources Say Bay Area House Party (3.3k) 🪙🪙🪙
- The Fatima Sun Miracle: Much More Than You Wanted To Know (28k) 🪙🪙🪙🪙
- Fascism Can’t Mean Both A Specific Ideology And A Legitimate Target (1.7k) 🪙🪙
- Tech PACs Are Closing In On The Almonds (2.5k) 🪙🪙
- Model City Monday 10/27/25 (3.1k) 🪙🪙🪙
- Writing For The AIs (1.2k) 🪙
- The Bloomer’s Paradox (2.7k) 🪙🪙
- In What Sense Is Life Suffering? (800) 🪙
- What Happened To SF Homelessness? (2.3k) 🪙🪙
- The New AI Consciousness Paper (3.8k) 🪙🪙🪙
- Why AI Safety Won’t Make America Lose The Race With China (4.4k) 🪙🪙🪙
- The Good News Is That One Side Has Definitively Won The Missing Heritability Debate (1.7k) 🪙🪙
- Vibecession: Much More Than You Wanted To Know (4.2k) 🪙🪙🪙
- The Pledge (1.1k) 🪙
- Against Against Boomers (2.1k) 🪙🪙
Total: 43 points.

Viliam 31 Dec 2025 16:03 UTC
2 points
0
on: Halfhaven Forever
I didn’t make a postmortem of the original Halfhaven, so maybe let’s use this comment for a quick survey?
Please add a react (not vote) to this comment (by clicking the light-gray emoji in the bottom-right corner),
✔ - if you participated in the original Halfhaven and produced 30 posts during October and November 2025
✘ - if you participated in the original Halfhaven but failed to produce 30 posts

Halfhaven Forever

Viliam31 Dec 2025 15:59 UTC

22 points

4 comments4 min readLW link

Viliam 31 Dec 2025 12:13 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: abstractapplic’s comment on: abstractapplic’s Shortform
No specific suggestion, just a note that you should make sure that your very message does not become another public link to their identity. That would be ironic.

Viliam 30 Dec 2025 21:48 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: sarahconstantin’s comment on: sarahconstantin’s Shortform
AI agents are sending unwelcome “thank you” emails
Oh, that was a funny story!
Also there is a debate on Hacker News, and as usual, the people who don’t understand what happened, express the strongest opinions and get most upvotes.