ErioirE

It's funny how a lot of things in the bliss attractor/"awakened ai" cluster seem very similar to stuff generated by e.g. a markov chain new-age bullshit generator

Replying toDating Roundup #7: Back to Basics

ErioirE5mo

Dating Roundup #7: Back to Basics

I initially read this as a joke implying that your browsing history of encryption stuff might be too niche to be useful for matching against. I guess that's me projecting

ErioirE5mo*Quick Take

If wireheading is bad because it separates the reward signals from (evolved) behaviors and replaces them with less-intrinsically-useful ones that get Goodharted to (literal) death:
Would it be useful to use electrical stimulation on reward areas but instead of triggering it with a contrived condition we detect the body's normal reward signal activation and amplify it by a set proportion? (obviously you'd have to make sure it didn't feed back into itself in a loop etc.)
For example, if someone's depression was a ~50% deficiency in "normal" reward signal activity, manually increasing it by a proportional amount would theoretically fix it.

Prediction: A system like this tested in rodents would show similar and potentially better... (read more)

Replying toWhy Latter-day Saints Have Strong Communities

ErioirE6mo

Why Latter-day Saints Have Strong Communities

I'm surprised you frequent this site while still being Mormon because I had assumed the two were almost fundamentally mutually exclusive.

I am an ex-Mormon so yes I am biased etc etc.
I do agree that ward communities have a lot of positive attributes, I wish it was possible to create and sustain something secular like that. (Perhaps it is and I just haven't seen examples of it anywhere)

How do you justify believing in the religion on epistemic grounds?
I left primarily because I could not tell myself I was intellectually honest while knowingly using a double standard for evidence for religion vs science & everything else.
The way I see it, the entire belief system... (read more)

Replying toGeneralized Coming Out Of The Closet

ErioirE6mo

Generalized Coming Out Of The Closet

There's no kind way to inform someone that you think that they are fundamentally wrong about every belief they hold sacred and that they build their entire identity as an individual and a community upon

I grew up Mormon and remained so until my early 20s and this is very relatable. I do not explain my choices in depth to my family because any sufficiently detailed explanation would inevitably be interpreted as an attack on their beliefs.

Furthermore I'm not going to try to convince them of my point of view, not from fear of failure but fear of success: It would be devastating for their mental and emotional health.

Replying toAlcohol is so bad for society that you should probably stop drinking

ErioirE6mo

Alcohol is so bad for society that you should probably stop drinking

It's slightly disappointing and amusing whenever I have to admit my Mormon upbringing was correct about something.

While acknowledging the many harms alcohol does, I hope we can find alternatives that fill the niche of social lubricant with fewer side effects & less abuse potential.

Looking at the crippling social anxiety rampant among those near my age (28) and younger, we need all the help we can get.

In that vein :p, from what I've read nitrous oxide is both completely legal and almost completely harmless as long as it's mixed with oxygen so you don't suffocate (and if used frequently make sure you don't become deficient in vitamin B12).

I'm not sure if/how much it helps with social things as my last experience with it was a dental procedure when I was a kid.

Replying toThe Purpose of a System is what it Rewards

ErioirE7mo

The Purpose of a System is what it Rewards

A crux of the discussion around this topic seems to be the exact definition of "purpose" being used.

Is the purpose of a system defined as:
The original intent of those who designed and/or implemented it
Or
The various intents of those incentivized to maintain the system in its realized form
Or
Some combination of those?

Many times the original intent of a system will have little resemblance to its results, (hence the popular appeal of POSIWID), but it can be true that:
1. Most systems are not deliberately designed to be bad
and
2. Many systems create unintended bad incentives ala Goodhart
and
3. Systems that create bad incentives are likely to have their purposes co-opted by those benefiting from the incentives, making... (read more)

Replying toWhat are non-obvious class markers?

ErioirE7mo

What are non-obvious class markers?

If they were easily noticed and mimicked, they'd become useless for the purpose.

This is a good example of something anti-inductive

Replying toWhat are non-obvious class markers?

ErioirEJul 28, 2025

What are non-obvious class markers?

First off, a meta-answer: Asking "what are non-obvious x" is potentially less useful at capturing less-obvious examples of x than asking for as many distinct examples as possible. I think it is likely that of those who have some [less obvious observations] many will assume they are more obvious than they are for others.

In my case, I have a built-in bias to assume that any piece of knowledge I obtained without apparent effort must also be obvious to most other people.

So, all the examples I can think of, most of which I think are obvious:

Financial skills/credit score
Level of effort spent to save insignificant amounts of money (and the significance threshold is often

... (read 383 more words →)

Replying toChildhood and Education #11: The Art of Learning

ErioirE7mo

Childhood and Education #11: The Art of Learning

Where I do think this would be a terrible idea is if the 7 year old is a prodigy, and if the 17 year olds hate math and don't want to be there.

Exactly.
In a 12th-grade/early college class with generally friendly students: I imagine if there was some very young prodigy attending they would quickly become the beloved "class mascot" kind of micro-celebrity.

Necessity may be the mother of invention, but at this point we're pretty sure the father was Laziness.

For complex topics on which I do not have deep knowledge E.G. AI Alignment, I find my opinion is easily swayed by any sufficiently well-written, plausible-sounding argument. And so I recognize that I do not have the necessary knowledge and perspective to add value to the discussion and I purposefully avoid making any confident claims on the subject until if and when I decide to dedicate significant effort to closing the inferential distance.

We should have a game where we create a list of interesting questions and then have a few notable writers here answer them, but then also generate some responses from LLMs (with prompts tailored to getting a less-obviously AI response).
Writers would get points for how well they fool people and it has all sorts of fun mind games like
"This has an AI-smelling mistake, but is it the human faking a mistake they know an AI might make?"

Inefficiencies in Pharmaceutical Research Practices

ErioirE

Epistemic status: I'm attempting to relate my observations, as well as some of those shared with me by my coworkers at the small CRO^[1] where I work. I will try to make the distinction clear between object-level observations and speculative interpretations of the former.

The process of developing a new drug or medical device follows these approximate steps:

Novel Compound Phlebotinum is selected from a pool of candidate molecules^[2] as most promising for clinical uses
In vitro experiments are performed in labs to confirm that the substance behaves as predicted
Assuming step 2 results were promising, animal trials are conducted in hopes that fruit flies/rats/pigs/monkeys will have enough biological similarity with us to provide meaningful information about how

... (read 1302 more words →)

Strange variant of Monte Hall problem I managed to confuse myself with:
You are presented with the three doors but do not know if you will have a chance to switch later. You know the host can decide to open one of the losing doors and give you the opportunity to switch or not, and does not wish to give away the prize.

If the player chooses the correct door first he is incentivized to open one and give you the option to switch, but since the player is informed of the rules that may convince the player not to switch.
If the player chooses an incorrect door first he disincentivized to give you the... (read more)

The National Association of Realtors is a rent-seeking organization. This is because commissions should be ~~strictly proportional to the amount of work required for the specific task~~ able to change with market forces rather than an arbitrary percentage of the value of a particular property, since the effort needed to sell a property is not necessarily proportional to the value of said property.

I'm disgusted that they've managed to make a percentage of property value the accepted norm for commissions. How were people suckered into that rather than demanding per-hour rates?

Edited to reflect insight gained from comments.

What does a Gambler's Verity world look like?

ErioirE

Status: Thought experiment for fun

Imagine a world in which the gambler's fallacy is fundamentally true. Functionally, lets suppose there's a magical force that tracks a thinking being's expectation of any particular outcome, and then mysteriously increases the likelihood of said outcome the more often it had physically plausible opportunity to occur and did not^[1]. (This resets upon event occurrence).

In what ways do you expect this world would differ from ours?^[2]

A few of my thoughts:

Depending on the tuning of the balance numbers & mechanics (I.E. What would determine the degree to which expectation shifts probability?) It might become optimal to learn about and deliberately consider the possibility of as many good things as

ErioirE

Status:
I don't have much to give in the way of answers. I try asking useful questions.

How do we efficiently determine the optimal amount of resources to allocate for accessibility purposes in public spending/business requirements?

What proportion of the general population is [blind|deaf|wheelchair bound|highly allergic to common additive], and are we currently doing an appropriate amount of accommodation for those things relative to the costs of doing so?

A city I've lived near has several large pedestrian bridges crossing a few major streets, some or most of them near schools. I'm sure these provide some utility in convenience and safety but I question the efficiency of their cost, particularly because they were built with huge... (read 426 more words →)

How can I make the most of Less Online/Camp/Manifest?

ErioirE

I spent several weeks psyching myself into buying tickets to what is essentially my first 'vacation' in my adult life (I'm 27 and I typically dislike traveling and enjoy my job more than average).
I'm optimistic it will be enjoyable but social events are not something I'm particularly adept at navigating. I'm relatively new to LW but I've ravenously consumed a large portion of the curated library of content.
In the past few years I've made some significant updates in my lifestyle and worldview and I'm concerned that I'll feel out of my depth among those who are more 'in their element'.
My objectives are:

Learn new things and update existing knowledge
Meet and connect with people with common interests, skills and personalities
Avoid making a total fool of myself (partial is inevitable).

Also related, are there going to be any social events/activities aimed at singles so I can try some awkward attempts at meeting/flirting ~~and getting rejected in an efficient manner~~?

How much of the developed world's economy is devoted to aesthetic personalization of products rather than accomplishing the essential functions of [product here]?
I am not saying aesthetics or personalization are 'bad', however I suspect that if the cost were quantified and demonstrated to people along with examples of more productive things that could be done with that money, many people might prefer forgoing some of our more wasteful things.

Example:
The cost of having thousands of different styles of sink faucet, instead of a small number of highly efficient and optimized faucet designs for distinct use cases [small household kitchen, large household kitchen, small form factor, high throughput restaurant]. These costs are created via... (read more)

What would the minimal digital representation of a human brain & by extension memories/personality look like?

I am not a subject matter expert. This is armchair speculation and conjecture, the actual reality of which I expect to be orders of magnitude more complicated than my ignorant model.

The minimal physical representation is obviously the brain itself, but to losslessly store every last bit of information —IE exact particle configurations— as accurately as it is possible to measure is both nigh-unto-impossible and likely unnecessary considering the moment-to-moment changes living causes to the particles, while "self" appears constant.
So would the detailed information of cell positions and compositions be sufficient granularity? How practical would it be? I... (read more)

I was raised by devout Mormons, AMA [&|] Soliciting Advice

ErioirE

I was raised by devout Mormons in Mormon central (Northern Utah). It’s hard to accurately capture the scope of the conditioning via writing.

Standard tenets of Mormon doctrine include:

No tea/coffee/alcohol
No premarital sex
Keep the sabbath (Sunday) holy
Mandatory 10% tithe
Book of Mormon as “most correct of any book”
Follow (i.e. obey) Church leaders
The Church is the only one with the Truth, all others are wrong
Read scriptures every day, pray several times a day (guilt enforced)
You should gain a Spiritual Witness of the Truth by praying about it

In my case my parents are True Believers and devout even in comparison to the other Mormon families around. There’s no official list of “Things okay/not okay to do on... (read 349 more words →)

How can I boost real-life 'charisma checks' with int?
(For those less familiar with D&D lingo, I'll rephrase: What are some methods to become better at social skills using study and theory if one lacks the intuitive understanding that extroverts appear to naturally possess?)

For example:
In my case, attempting to get to know other students in my university classes is made more difficult by my aversion to small talk.
Why am I averse to small talk? Because while growing up I didn't see the value so I didn't bother to learn very many 'canned' questions and responses that other people seem to be equipped with. Since I don't have many cached patterns for things... (read more)

ErioirE's shortform:

ErioirE

This is a special post for quick takes (aka "shortform"). Only the owner can create top-level comments.

LESSWRONG
LW

LESSWRONG
LW

I was raised by devout Mormons, AMA [&|] Soliciting Advice

Inefficiencies in Pharmaceutical Research Practices

How can I make the most of Less Online/Camp/Manifest?

What does a Gambler's Verity world look like?

ErioirE

Inefficiencies in Pharmaceutical Research Practices

What does a Gambler's Verity world look like?

How does generalized accessibility compare to targeted accessibility?

How can I make the most of Less Online/Camp/Manifest?

I was raised by devout Mormons, AMA [&|] Soliciting Advice

ErioirE's shortform:

ErioirE

I was raised by devout Mormons, AMA [&|] Soliciting Advice

Inefficiencies in Pharmaceutical Research Practices

How can I make the most of Less Online/Camp/Manifest?

What does a Gambler's Verity world look like?

ErioirE

Inefficiencies in Pharmaceutical Research Practices

What does a Gambler's Verity world look like?

How does generalized accessibility compare to targeted accessibility?

How can I make the most of Less Online/Camp/Manifest?

I was raised by devout Mormons, AMA [&|] Soliciting Advice

ErioirE's shortform: