Posts I don't have time to write

habryka
Wed, 22 Apr 2026 06:29:41 GMT

I am a busy man and will die knowing I have not said all I wanted to say. But maybe I can at least leave some IOUs behind.

1) Blatant conflicts are the best kind

Ben Hoffman's "Blatant Lies are the Best Kind!" is maybe the best post title followed by the least clarifying post I have ever encountered. The title is honestly amazing, but the text of the post, instead of a straightforward argument that the title promises, is an extremely dense and almost meta-fictional dialogue about the title:

I think we probably should prosecute good lying more than bad lying, though of course that's tricky. I'd argue the same is true for other forms of conflict: passive aggression is worse than overt aggression, maybe, probably. I haven't written the post yet to figure it out, but it seems important to know.

2) Fire codes are the root of all evil

Fire accidents seem to have the unique combination of producing extremely strong emotional responses by people in a local community, while also often being traceable to an o-ring like failure that you can over-index on. Also, fire marshals are the closest to war heroes that local municipalities have, so good luck going up against them if they are lobbying for a fire code change. This makes fire code decisions often uniquely insane.

For example, did you know that American streets are probably 30% wider than they would otherwise be because American fire departments insist on having extremely needlessly large fire-trucks that couldn't navigate narrower streets? And that this has probably non-trivially contributed to larger cars which are the primary driver of greater road fatalities in the US compared to other countries, alone probably cancelling out practically all welfare gains from stricter fire codes in the last 20 years? At least that's what one fermi I made suggested, but I would need to double check it before I post this.

3) It is extremely easy to get people to vouch for you, this makes public character references not very helpful

In like 3 different high-stakes conflicts, I've watched people of questionable moral judgement successfully dispel suspicion by simply... asking someone they barely knew to vouch for them. Apparently you can just ask 10–20 well-respected people to vouch for you, or to say something that'll read to others like vouching for you, and one of them will say yes!

If you see someone publicly under attack, don't update too much if someone you know and respect says something vague like "I have only had good experiences with this person and think they are a high integrity kind of guy".

4) Public criticism need not pass the ITT of the people critiqued

People are basically never the villain of their own story. The concepts and frames that people use to view the world are practically always structured such that there is no simple logical argument or plausible empirical fact that would show that what they are doing is morally wrong, both because of selection effects, and because that would open them up to social attack.

This means if you try to just honestly answer the question of whether what someone is doing is bad for the world, you will almost certainly not do it in a way that makes sense from inside of their frame. Therefore, a discussion standard in which you consistently request that people characterize others in a way that passes their Intellectual Turing Test will systematically fail to notice when people are causing harm.

5) Courts are amazing

Courts are probably the most prevalent formal form of social conflict resolution — it's almost hard to imagine a "legal" system without them. Practically all religions, municipalities, countries, professional communities, and even a substantial fraction of large companies have internal courts.

Unfortunately there are a few things that make courts pretty tricky to implement in practice for things like the rationality, AI safety and EA communities. Badly implemented courts also can just make things worse by creating a clear target for attack and pressure. Seems very tricky, but probably we should have more courts (or maybe not, I would need to write the post to figure it out).

6) If your room still sucks after fixing your lights, put some plants in it

If a room feels off the lighting is probably too "spiky" or too blue. Now good lighting is not sufficient for good interior design. But do you know what is? Good lighting and live plants.

A room with good lighting and a bunch of plants practically cannot have bad vibes. Brutalist architecture has shown that even a dirty concrete block, wrapped in nice lighting filtered through plants, will look amazing:

Prison cell

Immediate modern interior decoration design contest winner

7) Is Switzerland the perfection of American Freedom?[1]

As we all agree after my previously completely uncontroversial post "Let goodness conquer all that it can defend", America invented freedom. Switzerland then took those ideals and tried to refine them. The obvious big difference: Switzerland built its system on civil rather than common law. Did Switzerland perfect freedom or corrupt it? A comparative study of two relatively libertarian successful economies.

8) Most arguments are not in good faith, of course

Look, I love good faith discourse (here meaning "conversation in which the primary goal of all participants is to help other participants and onlookers arrive at true beliefs"). I try really hard all day to create environments where people can have something closer to good faith discourse. But do you know what is a core requirement for creating environments that can sustain good faith discourse? The ability to notice if what is going on is obviously not good faith discourse.

Good faith discourse is rare! People are often afraid and triggered and trying to push towards their preferred policies in underhanded ways. Of course most discussion on Twitter, even among well-meaning participants, is not in good faith. And just because a discussion is not in good faith doesn't mean it isn't valuable, it just means that the conversation is a bit more like two lawyers arguing their case, instead of two trusted colleagues exploring the space of considerations together.

9) Please, for the love of god, optimize the title and first paragraph of your post

If I see another person complaining that no one reads their post when it starts with a 15-sentence epistemic status meta-commentary that doesn't give me any reason to want to keep reading, I will explode into a violent burst of fury and laser beams. Please, your title and your first paragraph need to give me a reason to keep reading. I have a shit ton of stuff to read, as has everyone else. If you haven't somehow communicated that I will get something valuable out of reading your post by the end of your first paragraph, I will not keep reading.

10) A story of my involvement in EA and AI Safety

I've been around for a while! I have pushed for various community policies and priorities. Sometimes I was dumb and wrong, sometimes I was right and prescient and you all owe me so many Bayes points. It would be helpful to have a post of my history with this broad ecosystem.

In short: Luke Muehlhauser told me to do EA community building instead of rationality community building, so I went to work at CEA, had a terrible time and got soured on Oxford EA[2], started LW 2.0, became friends with lots of Bay Area EAs, some of my old colleagues at CEA went to found FTX which was a Very Bad Sign but I felt like saying something publicly was a big no no by EA norms, then FTX exploded and I fucking told you so, then OpenAI and Anthropic seemed like really bad bets, then OpenAI exploded and I fucking told you so, then Anthropic's RSP seemed really dubious, and then that exploded and I fucking told you so, and now here we are.

Honorable mentions of even earlier stage post ideas that didn't make the list:

The tension between a culture that values really good dialogue, vs a culture that values thinking for yourself and not needing stuff spelled out to you by other people.

Top 5 historical figures ranked by how much LW karma they would have today

The virtues of telling people to fuck off

1. ^

Daniel Filan pitched me on this post, but I am intrigued enough that I would actually like to write it.

2. ^

And Leverage Research

Discuss