Fernand0

TL;DR: Some criticisms aimed at FDT are actually aimed at a self-contradictory "unembedded FDT," and are therefore irrelevant to any refutation of FDT. Functional Decision Theory (FDT) is a decision theory for a rational agent X who holds the rational belief "the probability that agent Y correctly predicts my actions...

TL;DR John Wentworth has written a great introduction to category theory for someone who wants to do something useful with categories. This post has a different goal: Assuming one is curious about the useless manifestations of category theory, what is a quick intuition to get started? This post's proposal: the...

Epistemic status: Speculative TL;DR: Narcissism in Lasch's sense is unhappiness with the essential embeddedness of agency in our universe, "solved" by a denial of agency that leads to non-agency. Three examples Person A works long hours. For years, they've wanted to find a long-term relationship, but they don't have much...

This post is a Cunningham's law draft, less than 50% finished, in some parts mere notes. Consider a) waiting until this notice has disappeared to read a more coherent post, or b) criticizing it with a focus on what would be right, not just what is wrong. I haven't strongly...

This post is a Cunningham's law draft, c. 75% finished. Consider a) waiting until this notice has disappeared to read a more coherent post, or b) criticizing it with a focus on what would be right, not just what is wrong. Science explains physical phenomena through mathematical theories. If an...

"Alignment is like rocket science" is, like all analogies including great ones[1], misleading[2] beyond a certain point[3]: in particular, it makes the obstinacy of some regarding Agent Foundations incomprehensible. Indeed, if one tries to imagine a situation in which rocket science is the unknown paradigm that has to be found,...

To better remember history, I try to find/create what I call "fun[1] clusters", i.e. sets of events with a tenuous but legitimate connection to a central hub.[2] This post presents six ways in which the 1890 Census is a fun cluster. 1. The end of the frontier. The Census Bureau...