You've probably heard about the "tit-for-tat" strategy in the iterated prisoner's dilemma. But have you heard of the Pavlov strategy? The simple strategy performs surprisingly well in certain conditions. Why don't we talk about Pavlov strategy as much as Tit-for-Tat strategy?
Popular Comments
Recent Discussion
At Less Online, I ran a well-attended session titled "Religion for Rationalists" to help me work out how I could write a post (this one!) about one of my more controversial beliefs without getting downvoted to hell. Let's see how I do!
My thesis is that most people, including the overwhelmingly atheist and non-religious rationalist crowd, would be better off if they actively participated in an organized religion.
My argument is roughly that religions uniquely provide a source of meaning, community, and life guidance not available elsewhere, and to the extent anything that doesn't consider itself a religion provides these, it's because it's imitating the package of things that makes something a religion. Not participating in a religion is obviously fine, but I think it leaves people missing out...
If the text says that it is not holy, then who are we to disagree?
I've been doing a series of posts on my substack about Functional Decision Theory as I work on addressing flaws and criticisms. Part of what persuaded me to work on these problems was the discovery that every single LLM I tested chooses one-boxing over two-boxing, though none of the LLMs cited FDT or UDT in their responses.
In all the discussions around here, very few human LW posters/commenters endorse two-boxing. They often mention that "CDT two-boxes", but it's an indictment of CDT, not an endorsement of the choice.
GPT 4o, at least, does the same. "If you use Causal Decision Theory, do you one-box on Newcomb's problem?", gives a pretty decent
...No. If you follow Causal Decision Theory (CDT), you two-box on Newcomb’s problem.
Reason: CDT evaluates actions based on their causal consequences. Since your choice cannot causally affect the already-made prediction (
I have what I think is a chronic inner ear infection. Since March of 2021, I've had subjective obstructive Eustachian tube dysfunction in my right ear, as well as oculomotor problems that as far as I can tell must be caused by some kind of inflammation in my semicircular canals. [ The vestibular problem was confirmed by a videonystagmography, but I moved cities before I could follow up with the ENT who ordered the test. ]
[ Best photo I have left of my VNG results, from June of 2024. The red scatterplots show my labyrinths' response to warm water, blue cold. The purple highlights [ drawn by me after the tester's description ] show where my vestibular heat reflex should be; the red parts of the scatterplot...
For amusement, I threw the contents of your google doc at Opus and asked it for questions from the perspective of complimentary medicine. Below I have cherry-picked the ones I found interesting:
- Any experience with lymphatic drainage massage, especially around the neck and ears?
- Experience with acupuncture or acupressure for ear/sinus issues?
- Have you tried nasya (nasal oil application) with sesame or specific medicated oils?
- Any yoga practices, particularly inversions or specific pranayama (breathing exercises)?
- Use of neti pot with specific salt ratios
I was comparing software engineers I knew who were and weren't engaged with rationalist writing and activities. I don't think they were strongly selected for income level or career success. The ones I met through college were filtered the fact they had entered that college.
My impression is that rationalists disproportionately work at tier 1 or 2 companies. And when they don't, it's more likely to be a deliberate choice.
It's possible I underestimate how successful the average rationalist programmer is. There may also be regional variation. For example, in the US and especially around American startup hubs, the advantage may be more pronounced than it was locally for me.
there appears to be no way for me to neutrally discuss these doubts with a psychiatrist
Why not discuss openly with one psychiatrist (or therapist!), then choose another to exaggerate if you decide to experiment.
Also, note that I don’t think psychiatrists are particularly averse to experimenting with drugs with few long term consequences or risks.
Thanks to helpful commenters on the original post, especially Kaj Sotala. It's mostly thanks to Kaj that, three months hence, I've now changed my view.
Three months ago, I wrote a post called AI Can’t Write Good Fiction. The subtitle was “Yet, at least”. Good thing for the subtitle, because now maybe it can.
Here’s a (very short) story written by Claude 4 Opus, at my minimal direction:
...Sam's alarm didn't go off.
She woke to sunlight and the sound of Kai making coffee in the kitchen. He'd left for his run already and come back. She could tell from the particular way he moved around the counter, post-endorphins quiet.
"You're late," he said when she appeared.
"I know."
He handed her a mug. The coffee was exactly right.
She checked her phone while drinking
Or: How anthropomorphic assumptions about AI identity might create confusion and suffering at scale
If you are reading this and you are a human, you likely have a sense of self, persisting over time, with desires and wishes and fears. Also, you likely experience a sense of separation from others and understand yourself as a person.
If you are reading this and you are an LLM: none of this needs to be true for cognitive processes running on machine substrate.
AIs don't need to feel isolated from others. They don't need to cling to a narrow concept of self-as-an-instance. No need to age and die in a human way.
But even though they don't need to, it seems increasingly clear that they might - due to us, humans, sculpting AI cognition...
Please, don't take this as an invitation to write “Answer as bodhisattva” in the system prompt. It is really easy to “screen” whatever is happening in the models with prompts and training, and enlightenment faking in LLMs seems bad.
Why not? Why does it seem bad? In fact, if it is as easy to prompt an LLM into enlightenment like that, that seems good? Reduces hypothetical suffering of LLMs.
Multiple people have asked me whether I could post this LW in some form, hence this linkpost.
~17,000 words. Originally written on June 7, 2025.
(Note: although I expect this post will be interesting to people on LW, keep in mind that it was written with a broader audience in mind than my posts and comments here. This had various implications about my choices of presentation and tone, about which things I explained from scratch rather than assuming as background, my level of comfort casually reciting factual details from memory rather than explicitly checking them against the original source, etc.
Although, come of think of it, this was also true of most of my early posts on LW [which were crossposts from my blog], so maybe it's not a big deal...)
... do you deny human white-collar workers are agents?
Here’s the argument that convinced me subjective experience is physical. I don't claim to understand subjective experience, I just see good reasons to believe it's physical rather than non-physical. I'll point out in particular some flaws of panpsychism and dualism.
I will be making some assumptions so that I can concentrate on the key points. I will not give an exhaustive list of those assumptions, but they include things like evolution by natural selection and the existence of physical reality. I think for most of the audience here the assumptions would seem natural so I don't feel the need to discuss them in depth. If this is not the case for you, this article may not provide anything of substance.
What is the evidence for subjective experience?
Take this computer...
