Lucie Philippon

LESSWRONG
LW

Lucie Philippon — LessWrong

Camille Berger, Jérémy Andréoletti, elisareine, Charbel-Raphaël, Lucie Philippon, RationalHippy, T-bo🔸

13d

One year ago, we nearly died.

This is maybe an overdramatic statement, but long story short, nearly all of us underwent carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning^[1]. The benefit is, we all suddenly got back in touch with a failure mode we had forgotten about, and we decided to make it a yearly celebration.

Usually, when we think about failure, we might think about not being productive enough, or not solving the right work-related problem, or missing a meeting. We might suspect that our schedule could be better organized or that one of our habits really sucks. We might fear not to spot an obvious psychological flaw or a decision-making issue.

We often forget that the single... (read 1047 more words →)

101

French Municipal Ballot Meetup

Lucie Philippon

17d

The elections are coming!

Following the tradition of the Ballots Everywhere meetups organized by Scott Alexander, we'll examine the candidates for the municipal election, and make our voting recommendation as a group.

Personally, I'm not so clear as to what are the actual powers off the mayors in France, nor how the election works (especially for Paris), so we can start by doing some research on how all of this works and which decisions can mayors really influence.

See https://open.substack.com/pub/astralcodexten/p/ballots-everywhere-times-and-places and https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/my-california-ballot-2022 for inspiration

RSVP and find the exact location on Partiful.

Replying toWhy I Transitioned: A Case Study

Lucie Philippon21d

Why I Transitioned: A Case Study

Agree with this.

Though, in my, case it was not through the binary presentation of gender from transmedicalists, but through the general binary representation of gender in media and in everyone I met in person.

I now have multiple cis guy friends who have pretty cool genders, and if I knew being like them was a thing I could do as a teen, I might not have transitioned.

Replying toWhy I Transitioned: A Case Study

Lucie Philippon22d

Why I Transitioned: A Case Study

This post feels very close to how I decided to transition. I was also a lonely nerdy teen stuck on the Internet most of the time, who fixated on transitioning once it became the default strategy in my internet circles to cope with depression (which was mostly social contagion on my side. I never got depressed since leaving this group).

However, I was also an obvious biological outlier, so I agree with @marisa that the social setting is compatible with biological factors. In my case, I had a very mild puberty: barely any hair growth, erectile dysfunction, even some breast growth for a few months. I had no trouble passing when I socially... (read more)

ACX/LW January Paris Meetup

Lucie Philippon

1mo

Do you enjoy reading Scott Alexander’s blog ACX, or any of the other authors on LessWrong? Do you enjoy the kind of topics discussed in rationalist circles? (rationality, AI, psychiatry, effective altruism, science, etc.)? Do you want to have interesting conversations with people who enjoy that stuff?

If so, come and join us to chat about cool things! We'll have drinks, snacks, and lots of good vibes!

Please feel free to come even if you feel awkward about it, even if you’re not ‘the typical ACX reader’, even if you’re worried people won’t like you, etc.

I'll have an ACX Meetup sign. You can ping me on Signal if needed: @aelerinya.49

End time is marked as 6pm, but people might hang out for longer. Come whenever you're available!

RSVP and find the exact location on Partiful.

Replying toIn My Misanthropy Era

Lucie Philippon1mo

In My Misanthropy Era

Some of my experiences meeting people at bars when going with one or more friends:

With two friends in a lefty bar in Berlin. We started talking French, the group next to us joined our conversation because they spoke French too.
In another lefty bar, as part of a weekly meetup of an online social group. This group evolved all the time, so there was a smooth boundary between regulars we knew, newbies to the group, and people just in the bar, so we could smoothly move to conversations with random people.
With a friend at a nerd bar in Paris. We decided to play a board game, chose one for four people, and asked

Lucie Philippon1mo

Toss a bitcoin to your Lightcone – LW + Lighthaven's 2026 fundraiser

I am in this picture, and I'm unsure how to feel about it

Replying toWuckles!

Lucie Philippon1mo

Wuckles!

They casually-but-frantically google "wuckles" in the background to try to figure out what I meant.

I now need the "I'm in this picture and I am uncertain how to feel about it" react

Yearly review

Lucie Philippon

2mo

The end (of 2025) is near! It's time to honor your successes and repent for the dreams you failed to pursue.

Figure out what you did right so you can do more dakka.
Figure out what you did wrong and why so you can zag instead of zig.

You can use any year review format you'd like. Personally, I'll use the Intend year review. For example, you could use the Clearer Thinking quarterly review.

Come any time you want! 2pm is only a starting time.

RSVP and find the exact location on Partiful.

Replying toParis ACX/LW Meetup: December

Lucie Philippon2mo

Paris ACX/LW Meetup: December

Great to know! Thank you for taking the time to tell me.

I'm currently building scripts to automate cross-platform event creation, so it takes less time for me to send to so many different platforms. I'll always try to keep LW + Discord, so if you Subscribe to the LW group you should receive notifications.

Replying toUnknown Knowns: Five Ideas You Can't Unsee

Lucie Philippon2mo

Unknown Knowns: Five Ideas You Can't Unsee

¹

Noting that your footnotes redirect to the substack version of your article instead of the LW footnotes

Paris ACX/LW Meetup: December

Lucie Philippon

2mo

If so, come and join us to chat about cool things! We'll have drinks, snacks, and lots of good vibes!

Please feel free to come even if you feel awkward about it, even if you’re not ‘the typical ACX reader’, even if you’re worried people won’t like you, etc.

Exact location: https://plus.codes/8FW4V95F+4C

Paris Secular Solstice

Lucie Philippon

Lucie Philippon, Camille Berger

2mo

Venez fêter la nuit la plus longue de l'année, en alternant chants et témoignages sur le thème du progrès humain, des défis auxquels nous faisons face, et de l'espoir !

Come celebrate the longest night of the year at the Paris Secular Solstice!

It will be run in French with English translation.

Please RSVP on Partiful, spots are limited. Exact location on Partiful.

Replying toFollow-through on Bay Solstice

Lucie Philippon2mo

Follow-through on Bay Solstice

In https://secularsolstice.vercel.app/feedback, "2022 (Or, "Where Ray's Coming From")" has the lyrics of "Five Thousand Years", which seems incorrect.

Replying toUnless its governance changes, Anthropic is untrustworthy

Lucie Philippon2mo

Unless its governance changes, Anthropic is untrustworthy

Edited to say it is not your position. I'm sorry for having published this comment without checking with you.

-2

Replying toUnless its governance changes, Anthropic is untrustworthy

Lucie Philippon2mo*

Unless its governance changes, Anthropic is untrustworthy

EDIT: Originally I said that was my best understanding of Mikhail's point. Mikhail has told me it was not his point. I'm keeping this comment as that's a point that I find interesting personally.

Before Mikhail released this post, we talked for multiple house about the goal of the article and how to communicate it better. I don't like the current structure of the post, but I think Mikhail has good arguments and has gathered important data.

Here's the point I would have made instead:

Anthropic presents itself as the champion of AI safety among the AI companies. People join Anthropic because of their trust that the Anthropic leadership will take the best decisions to... (read 359 more words →)

-2

Signals of Competence

Draft post made during Inkhaven. Interested in feedback.

Signals of Competence is the model I use to advise friends on how to build career capital.

When deciding who to hire, an organization will assess the competence of the candidates by looking at various signals that they sent in their CV, cover letter, interview or work test.

Those signals are a point on those two main dimensions:

Reach/Breadth: how wide of a population understands the signal. Harvard degree is high. Having made a specific niche software is narrow.
Detail/Depth: how much of a detailed picture of your competence does it paint. Degree only signals you’re in the degree-holder distribution, it’s very shallow. A portfolio shows specific

... (read 396 more words →)

France is ready to stand alone

Lucie Philippon

3mo

First part of a series of article on French AI Policy that I’m currently writing as part of the Inkhaven Residency.

EDIT: Those are my views of how French government and tech elites see the world. I am personally skeptical that France can stay relevant. I'm offering here a lens through which to understand the motivation behind France's AI strategy.

For three centuries, France has stood among the great powers of the world, and there it wants to stay. Now, far from the heyday of La Belle Époque, where the French Empire stood shoulder to shoulder with the British Empire, France has resisted the pressures to align too closely with the world superpowers, lest... (read 416 more words →)

ACX/LW October Paris Meetup

Lucie Philippon

5mo

Let's keep the momentum of the ACX everywhere going! I'll aim for a monthly meetup from now on.

Location: Ground Control, Paris – https://plus.codes/8FW4R9VJ+CP

Group Link: https://discord.gg/JUHTZRYp3k

You can RSVP on Partiful to add the meetup to your calendar, see any location or date change, and get notified of the future meetups: https://partiful.com/e/ggPn6aU4iM0uHfwgzhmT

Contact: aelerinya@gmail.com

Paris – ACX Meetups Everywhere Fall 2025

Lucie Philippon

5mo

This year's Spring ACX Meetup everywhere in Paris.

Location: Ground Control, Paris – https://plus.codes/8FW4R9VJ+CP

Group Link: https://discord.gg/JUHTZRYp3k

You can RSVP on Partiful to add the meetup to your calendar, and get notified of the future meetups: https://partiful.com/e/ZumH1DtmgOxLqSFy34jL

Contact: aelerinya@gmail.com

French Non-Profit Law: Associations are as cool as American churches

Lucie Philippon

6mo

Edit: I made some claims about American non-profit law which were wrong or incomplete. See River's comment for corrections.

In the latest Bayesian Conspiracy episode (How and Why to Form a Church, with Andrew Wilson), Andrew describes all the great perks churches get compared to normal 501c3. Coming from France myself, it made me realize just how many of those awesome perks are just the default non-profit perks here. More people should build cool non-profits in France! Or not, you do you.

So, here's a short intro to French non-profit law.

The French "Association"

The default French non-profit model is the "Association loi de 1901", defined... in a law from 1901. There are a few other... (read 685 more words →)

I'm looking for websites tracking the safety of the various frontier labs. For now, I found those:

Seoul Commitment Tracker → Whether frontier AI companies have published their "red line" risk evaluation policy, in accordance with their commitments at the Seoul AI Action Summit
AI Lab Watch → Tracker of actions frontier AI companies have taken to improve safety
Safer AI Risk Management Ratings → Ratings of frontier AI companies' risk management practices

Do you know of any other?

I'm currently writing a grant application to build websites specifically tracking how frontier AI Labs are fulfilling the EU Code of practice, how close are frontier models from each lab from various red lines, and how robust are the evaluation methodologies of each lab (probably as separate websites). I'd be interested to any pointer to existing work on this.

There was this voice inside my head that told me that since I got Something to protect, relaxing is never ok above strict minimum, the goal is paramount, and I should just work as hard as I can all the time.

This led me to breaking down and being incapable to work on my AI governance job for a week, as I just piled up too much stress.

And then, I decided to follow what motivated me in the moment, instead of coercing myself into working on what I thought was most important, and lo and behold! my total output increased, while my time spent working decreased.

I'm so angry and sad at the inadequacy... (read more)

Yesterday, I was searching for posts by alignment researchers describing how they got into the field. I was searching specifically for personal stories rather than guides on how other people can get into the field.

I was trying to perform Intuition flooding, by reading lots of accounts, and getting intuitions on which techniques work to enter the field.

I only managed to find three which fit somewhat my target:

Neel Nanda: How I Formed My Own Views About AI Safety
Kevin RoWang: Lessons After a Couple Months of Trying to Do ML Research
TurnTrout: Lessons I've Learned from Self-Teaching
Nate Soares: The mechanics of my recent productivity

Neel Nanda's post was the central example of what I was looking for, and I was surprised to not find more. Does anyone know where I can find more posts like this ?

TIL that the expected path a new user of LW is expected to follow, according to https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rEHLk9nC5TtrNoAKT/lw-2-0-strategic-overview, is to become comfortable with commenting regularly in 3-6 month, and comfortable with posting regularly in 6-9 month. I discovered the existence of shortforms. I (re)discovered the expectation that your posts should be treated as a personal blog medium style ?

As I'm typing this I'm still unsure whether I'm destroying the website with my bad shortform, even though the placeholder explicitly said... (\*right click inspect\*)

Write your thoughts here! What have you been thinking about?
Exploratory, draft-stage, rough, and rambly thoughts are all welcome on Shortform.

I'm definitely rambling ! Look ! I'm following the instructions !

I feel... (read more)

LESSWRONG
LW

LESSWRONG
LW

Introduction to French AI Policy

Basics of How Not to Die

How I switched careers from software engineer to AI policy operations

French Non-Profit Law: Associations are as cool as American churches

Lucie Philippon

Lucie Philippon

Basics of How Not to Die

France is ready to stand alone

French Non-Profit Law: Associations are as cool as American churches

How I switched careers from software engineer to AI policy operations

Building Communities Beyond the Bay

Index of rationalist groups in the Bay Area June 2025

Determining the power of investors over Frontier AI Labs is strategically important to reduce x-risk

Lucie Philippon

Introduction to French AI Policy

Basics of How Not to Die

How I switched careers from software engineer to AI policy operations

French Non-Profit Law: Associations are as cool as American churches

Lucie Philippon

Lucie Philippon

Basics of How Not to Die

France is ready to stand alone

French Non-Profit Law: Associations are as cool as American churches

How I switched careers from software engineer to AI policy operations

Building Communities Beyond the Bay

Index of rationalist groups in the Bay Area June 2025

Determining the power of investors over Frontier AI Labs is strategically important to reduce x-risk

The French "Association"