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manueldelrio

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manueldelrio

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English teacher for adults and teacher trainer, a lover of many things (math, truth, literature(s), art, physics, history, languages) and people.

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18

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manueldelrio

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If Anyone Builds It Everyone Dies, another semi-outsider review

Hello there! This is my first post in Less Wrong, so I will be asking for your indulgence for any overall silliness or breaking of norms that I may inadvertently have fallen into. All feedback will be warmly taken and (ideally) interiorized. A couple of months ago, dvd published a semi-outsider review of IABIED which I found rather interesting and gave me the idea of sharing my own. I also took notes of every chapter, which I keep in my blog. My priors I am a 40-ish year old Spaniard from the rural, northwest corner of the country, so I've never had any sort of face-to-face with the Rationalist community (with the partial exception of attending some online CFAR training sessions of late). There are many reasons why I feel drawn to the community, but in essence, they distill to the following two: 1. My strongest, most inflexible, self-perceived terminal value is truth-seeking as the most valuable and meaningful human endeavor, with a quasi-religious, quasi-moral attachment to it. 2. I am also an introverted, bookish nerd. On the other hand, there are lots of things I find unpalatable. Top of the list would likely be polyamory. In second place, what from the outside looks like a highly speculative, nerd-sniping obsession with AI apocalyptic scenarios. But these are people whom I consider overall both very intelligent and very honest, which means I feel I really need to give a fair trial to their arguments (at least with respect to superintelligence), but this is easier said than done. It is an understatement on the scale of the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy to say that Eliezer Yudkowsky is a prolific writer. His reflections on AI are mostly dispersed amongst the ~1.2 to 1.4 million words of his Sequences. There are lots of posts, summaries, debates and reflections by many other people, mostly on LessWrong often technical and assuming familiarity with Yudkowsky’s concepts. There are some popular books that offer a light introduction to th

50Dec 11, 2025

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manueldelrio

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English teacher for adults and teacher trainer, a lover of many things (math, truth, literature(s), art, physics, history, languages) and people.

76

5

18

1y

Map and Territory, Predictably Wrong (2)

Crossposted (with small tweaks) from my Substack. Burdensome Details * This post explains the conjunction fallacy, i.e., people sometimes assign a higher probability to A and B together than to either A or B alone. This is usually motivated by the fact that adding more details tends to make scenarios...

Aug 23

Map and Territory, Predictably Wrong

Crossposted (with small tweaks) from my Substack. What Do I Mean By “Rationality”? * We distinguish epistemic rationality (making your beliefs more accurate) from instrumental rationality (succeeding at getting what you want). * “rationality is about forming true beliefs[1] and making winning decisions” * Main tools for this: probability theory...

Jul 181

Starting The Sequences: Some brief notes from the preface and the introduction

Crossposted (with small tweaks) from my Substack. I have started, as a side read, Rationality: From AI to Zombies, which I believe contains the heart of the Sequences. On my e-reader, it adds up to about 1,750 pages, which is less than I expected. Still, I will be progressing little...

Jul 1312

If Anyone Builds It Everyone Dies, another semi-outsider review

Hello there! This is my first post in Less Wrong, so I will be asking for your indulgence for any overall silliness or breaking of norms that I may inadvertently have fallen into. All feedback will be warmly taken and (ideally) interiorized. A couple of months ago, dvd published a...

Dec 11, 202550

Top postsTop post

If Anyone Builds It Everyone Dies, another semi-outsider review

Hello there! This is my first post in Less Wrong, so I will be asking for your indulgence for any overall silliness or breaking of norms that I may inadvertently have fallen into. All feedback will be warmly taken and (ideally) interiorized. A couple of months ago, dvd published a semi-outsider review of IABIED which I found rather interesting and gave me the idea of sharing my own. I also took notes of every chapter, which I keep in my blog. My priors I am a 40-ish year old Spaniard from the rural, northwest corner of the country, so I've never had any sort of face-to-face with the Rationalist community (with the partial exception of attending some online CFAR training sessions of late). There are many reasons why I feel drawn to the community, but in essence, they distill to the following two: 1. My strongest, most inflexible, self-perceived terminal value is truth-seeking as the most valuable and meaningful human endeavor, with a quasi-religious, quasi-moral attachment to it. 2. I am also an introverted, bookish nerd. On the other hand, there are lots of things I find unpalatable. Top of the list would likely be polyamory. In second place, what from the outside looks like a highly speculative, nerd-sniping obsession with AI apocalyptic scenarios. But these are people whom I consider overall both very intelligent and very honest, which means I feel I really need to give a fair trial to their arguments (at least with respect to superintelligence), but this is easier said than done. It is an understatement on the scale of the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy to say that Eliezer Yudkowsky is a prolific writer. His reflections on AI are mostly dispersed amongst the ~1.2 to 1.4 million words of his Sequences. There are lots of posts, summaries, debates and reflections by many other people, mostly on LessWrong often technical and assuming familiarity with Yudkowsky’s concepts. There are some popular books that offer a light introduction to th

50Dec 11, 2025

Starting The Sequences: Some brief notes from the preface and the introduction

12Jul 13

Map and Territory, Predictably Wrong (2)

3Aug 2

Map and Territory, Predictably Wrong

1Jul 18