Favored Prisoner

@TaylorPearsonMe Cool. Do you mind sharing this skill so others can use it?

I built a slash command in Claude Code that sends the same research query to three different AI models (Claude, Gemini, GPT) in parallel, then synthesizes where they agree and disagree. When I type /multi-model-research and a topic, three agents spin up simultaneously — each does its own web searches, reads its own sources, writes findings to a separate file. Then a synthesis step reads all three and builds a cross-reference matrix. These are all LLMs trained with reinforcement learning, so they share structural blindspots that none of them are going to catch. It isn't like triangulating across genuinely independent sources. But there are real jagged differences between models. They weight evidence differently, they find different sources, they frame tradeoffs differently. None of the answers is "right," but they help surface tradeoffs and calibrate confidence in particular decisions. An interesting behavior change I've noticed in myself: the marginal cost of throwing AI at a question is now so low that the old "is this worth researching?" calculation has basically flipped. I used deep research to pick an iPad case. At one level, this is completely overkill. But its marginal cost is close to zero and it saved me 20 minutes of reading Amazon reviews, so why wouldn't I?

@strikerglows @tszzl They were very early on both crypto and covid. Hal Finney and Vitalik and Wei Dai and Arthur Brietman are all lesswrongers, among others. On AI, look how influential AI xrisk concerns have gotten. At the very least they were early on treating it as the most important thing.

@favoredprisoner @tszzl Care to elaborate because on the first 2 I don't think they had any novel beliefs. On AI I have a hard time seeing them as having really been correct, especially someone lie Yud.

the rationalists writ large were mostly right about most things btw. if you instinctively snicker about yudkowsky, scott, or whomever i take you to be a fish who’s unaware of the water

@strikerglows @tszzl crypto, covid, AI

@tszzl Can I get a few examples of things the rationalists got right that weren't widely believed by smart people who weren't rationalists?

@johnennis How do you see them evolving without online learning? You think being able to alter their context and leave their weights unchanged is enough?

It does seem like the openclaw stuff is the singularity Because now you have potentially millions of these things all around the world working together and learning from each other with human input, so now there’s an evolutionary environment on top of the self-improvement

@mbateman If we’re getting AGI in a few years like Dario believes, then initiatives like this don’t really matter on the object level. The real purpose is likely for Anthropic to ingratiate itself to the left so that they don’t get regulated too hard before they achieve AGI.

My emotional reaction to Anthropic forming an education team with a KPI of reach in underserved communities, and with a job ad emphasizing “raising the floor” and partnerships in the poorest parts of the world, is: a generational opportunity is being blown.

@ilex_ulmus @slatestarcodex I think if we get a human emperor of the universe picked from the current frontier lab CEOs we’re pretty safe from suffering. Even Altman would almost certainly pay a penny of his billions of $ so that everyone could have a comfortable life.

This entire @slatestarcodex post is insane raving about the reflected glory of the imminent Singularity, but this endorsement of oligarch charity as a social safety net took the cake for me. “But he said he’s a good guy 🥺”

@parakeetnebula @baitman421170 @scout_www Both people should realize divorce is a possibility unless they’re delusional. So it’s a matter of how likely they think that is, and how unlikely something needs to be to not plan for it. Planning for things that are only 2% likely can make sense.

@baitman421170 @scout_www I just think planning for divorce means divorce is on the table rather than the nuclear option

The idea of having kids with a guy who asked you to sign a prenup is absolutely insane

@ZyMazza Michael Huemer. He believes “moral facts” are discoverable via reason.

Are there any atheist moral realists? How would that even work?

@BtcBlackthorne @TrustlessState As others have said, it depends on how Bitcoin dies. If it dies because of its dwindling security budget and lack of privacy, flaws people have been pointing to for over a decade, then preferring a network where people actually try to solve problems makes sense.

If bitcoin "dies", the market is not going to say "ok cool, now we trust a more complex, more governable chain instead". If the most conservative, ossified, simplest design could not hold the non-sovereign money mantle, the whole category of credibly neutral blockchains gets psychologically de-rated. Bitcoin is not just a tech stack, it is the Schelling point for censorship resistance, regulatory treatment, macro adoption, and nation state level game theory. Ethereum benefits from that perimeter, liquidity, and narrative more than it likes to admit. If bitcoin failed at its job, the conclusion most serious capital would draw is not "rotate to ETH", it is "the non-sovereign money experiment is weaker than we thought". In that world, ETH trades even more like high beta tech, with higher regulatory risk, not like a resilient alternative foundation. Ethereum's opportunity is in expressivity and applications, sure, but its monetary and security premium are downstream of bitcoin proving the category is real.

I don’t believe the narrative “if bitcoin dies, then crypto dies with it”. Bitcoin’s technical shortcomings have always been Ethereum’s opportunity. As other chains rattle apart with age, or the curse of taking shortcuts, Ethereum’s long-term focus will shine

@KnowledgeNervos @allie__voss Awkward people are often awkward because of anxiety, and for these people once they get comfortable around you they can seem a lot more endearing than in their natural anxious social state.

@allie__voss I understand you meant platonic love - but how did someone socially awkward endear themselves to you? ie is it someone you interact with on a professional level?

The modern sorting problem in a nutshell: Every time I'm like "I love this guy but I can't find anyone to set him up with" it's usually due to social skills and every time I'm like "I love this girl but I can't find anyone to set her up with" it's usually due to obesity

@ilex_ulmus FYI still very curious, but also if you didn't see this it made me appreciate what you're doing a bit more: vitalik.eth.limo/general/2025/1…

@ilex_ulmus I am sincerely curious.

I keep getting advice about “effective” or “productive” communication, but every time what the person means is “communication I can ignore” or “disagreement which affirms that my position is nonetheless virtuous”. No thanks.

@ilex_ulmus I’m worried that you’re not optimizing for the outcome we all want (not being killed by AGI), but are instead optimizing for a feeling you get when taking righteous action. As if you’re acting based on virtue ethics and it’s mainly a personal journey, rather than EV maxing.

Nothing feels better than doing the right thing. Nothing. Doing the right thing requires me to go through pain and fear and to walk alone sometimes. It’s still the greatest privilege there is to be able to follow my conscience. I’m proud of my strength and I have my reward.

@neats29 Being another person's #1 priority and feeling like your spot on that priority list is stable feels very nice. Spreading your attention over many friends will likely not have you being #1 to any of them (or if so, not for long), which is unsatisfying.

allow me to think out loud for a second… I’ve been saying that I’m not ready for a relationship ever since breaking up last year and when I think about it, I’m realising that perhaps I feel disillusioned by the promise of [marriage]. the promise of romance, the promise of a pair for whom the other person is the most important. If I’m not set on starting a family, and if I was looking at it from first principles, what does a romantic union offer anyways? what needs might that union fulfil that I couldn’t get from a community of people? what do I lose when I pour a larger chunk of my love and attentional energy into one person vs spreading it across a few different people. what do I gain when I do the opposite and invest it into one key relationship? why do we form romantic bonds anyways? how much of the purpose of a romantic union revolves around starting a family? do old people wish they had invested more into their union or into their friendships? maybe all it takes is to fall in love again. but what is the mechanism of falling in love driven by? If it’s not to have children, and it’s not to be “saved” by someone that “loves you no matter what”. If there were no illusions about an unconditionally loving partner whose daily presence might span across years or even decades, why might we fall in love nevertheless? has anyone ever truly suspended all of their hopes, illusions and expectations that are (often implicitly) placed on romantic unions? what might falling in love look like from that place? what might drive it then? what if no one never has and that’s ok? what might a union offer that no other relationship can? who do I become when I’m in a relationship and who do I become when I’m not? maybe all it takes is to fall in love again. why does falling in love feel the way it does? what is it hoping I feel or do? what is being born through me if not a child?

@nickcammarata In addition to the decoupling stuff, the existence of high status sex workers in the community makes becoming a sex worker seem more appealing.

is there a simple explanation for why rationalism and sex work are so intertwined

@RokoMijic Obviously we can't fully stop AGI, but your throwing up your hands seems like an overreaction. It's not like nothing humans can do will have any effect on how friendly the first ASI is.

I have been putting off writing a response to this because it's a subject very close to my heart... I think that if a technology is overwhelmingly negative then we should coordinate to stop people from developing it. Mirror life bacteria is a clear example. But I don't think that AI is like this. Trying to speed up or slow down the development of AI is probably pointless and hopeless. Intelligence is a thing, computers are a thing, and in any case a world without AI is likely going to go very badly because the expansion in both number and quality of humans is blocked behind some very weird and dysfunctional human political problems so our civilization is basically committing suicide on a ~century timescale.

@StefanFSchubert So Germany has ~1/4th the number of people who have the skills and temperament to create great companies as the US (proportional to population), but because they can’t aggregate as densely it happens way less than 1/4 as often?

Yes, US scale is important, but imo the main factor is not that the US thinks big (the mindset) but that it simply is big. European countries are much smaller. And no, "Europe" is not the relevant unit of analysis - individual countries are. We don't even speak the same language

@jon_charb It's true that the 'why' for ETH being the best digital gold is different than BTC's. It's more about the Ethereum platform winning and native SoVs having an inherent advantage (and also better security and privacy properties). But we shouldn't pretend ETH isn't digital gold.

@jon_charb Every L1 is competing for the store of value market, whether their narratives admit to it or not. If we think ETH is a better SoV than BTC (better "digital gold", which I think it is) then we should say that rather than making up some dumb narrative about oil.

I often see Ethereans saying “ETH is the next BTC”, & while maybe positive for short term trading, the underlying idea is not good for Ethereum long term You don’t see Solana saying “SOL is the next ETH” or Hyperliquid saying “HYPE is the next SOL” Build a unique identity