If I was Sam, I would try to keep the definition of "the spec, a public document" such that I can unilaterally replace it when the right moment comes.

For example, "the spec" is defined as the latest version of a document that was signed by OpenAI key and published at openai/spec.html... and I keep a copy of the key and the access rights to the public website... so at the last moment I update the spec, sign it with the key, upload it to the website, and tell the AI "hey, the spec is updated".

Basically, the coup is a composition of multiple steps, each seemingly harmless when viewed in isolation. Could be made even more indirect, for example, I wouldn't have the access rights to the public website per se, but there would exist a mechanism to update the documents at public website, and I could tell it to upload the new signed spec. Or a mechanism to restore the public website from a backup, and I can modify the backup. Etc.

But it's also true that participating in the public sphere enables cooperation; enables mutual aid; enables creating reputation and credibility; enables joining with others to achieve your values.

Before internet, we had "public spheres" of various size -- there is a difference between e.g. telling something to a group of friends, speaking at a village meeting, or publishing a book.

Internet kinda makes it all one size -- anything said anywhere could leak anywhere else. Which changes the equation: you can't choose smaller sphere for smaller risks and smaller benefits; now everything is associated with the large risks. You can't trust that things said to your friends won't reach your employer.

It's like a small sip of wine.

Astral Codex Ten comments however, are like drinking the entire bottle.

https://read.isabelunraveled.com/p/manifest-rationally decent article on "manifestation" without woo.

Made me think about "keep your identity small" and epistemic vs instrumental rationality.

Short version is that you should keep your epistemic identity small. Avoid things like "I am <political faction>", because they will make you think <beliefs associated with the political faction> regardless of evidence.

But you should choose your instrumental identity consciously. (See also: use your identity carefully.) Things like "I am the kind of person who does X" communicate to your System 1 that you want to do X.

This requires some more thought on how to keep these two separate; how to prevent the kind of failure where identifying as "someone who does X" makes me believe that "I do X"... even if I actually don't, or only do rarely. It probably help to keep records on how often you do X, so that your beliefs come from the records, not the identity itself, but I am not sure whether this is the entire answer, or I missed something important.

Some things are more legible than others. If I believe something based on dozen pieces of evidence all pointing in the same direction, removing one piece of evidence wouldn't significantly change the outcome.

(Of course, removing all of them would change my mind; and even removing a few of them would make me suspicious about the remaining ones.)

So sometimes it makes sense to write things that are not cruxy.

The concept has a specific definition, but yeah, many people just use it as an excuse to call their opponents idiots. Not sure how much to blame Taleb for that, and how much it's just that every concept gets diluted when the masses notice it. Would different words be more resistant against misinterpretation, but perhaps less memetically virulent? Probably yes; calling your opponents "idiots" is just too tempting.

The originally intended meaning is something like "people who fail/refuse to notice second-order effects, and often fail to do even the most obvious sanity checks, because they are completely focused on the fact that their first-order conclusions are supported by ScienceTM". (Imagine a less stupid version of someone claiming that it impossible to clean up their room, because it is a scientifically proven fact that entropy always increases. But the statement would typically be made about e.g. economy.)

Taleb -- who is an idiot in some different ways -- does not match this. He has eyes on the ball; his goal is to increase the sales of his books, and he is doing that skillfully.

Hm, I wonder what would be better words for the concept. A "first-order intellectual"?

Yes, it seems like there is a difference between "inwards stubbornness" and "outwards stubbornness", whether people refuse to change their minds for reasons private or social.

I know some people such that if you tell them they are wrong, they will double down and get angry at you... but if you meet them a few days later, they have updated their opinion. So it seems like they are willing to update, but not to admit that they did.

Similarly, you tell some people a good idea, and they will tell you that it is stupid. The next day, they will come and propose the same idea as their own. I think many books on manipulation social skills recommend that the best way to change someone's mind about something is to let them believe that it was their own idea.

Then again, maybe this is a smaller difference than it seems, and some people are just better at remembering what was their opinion yesterday, or better at convincing themselves that yesterday was different.

A well-designed simulation is inescapable. Suppose that you are inside Conway's game of life, and you know that fact for sure. How specifically are you going to use this knowledge to escape, if all you are is a set of squares on a simulated grid, and all that ever happens in your universe is that some squares are flipped from black to white and vice versa?

To answer your first question, some kinds of pseudo-randomness are virtually indistinguishable from actual randomness, if you do not have a perfect knowledge of the entire universe. For example, in cryptography, changing one bit in the input message can on average flip 50% of bits in the output message. Imagine that the next round of pseudo-random numbers is calculated the same way from the current state of the universe -- the slightest change in the position of one particle on the opposite side of the universe could change everything.

I am surprised to read such positive review of Roblox, because so far all information I got was negative. People basically describe it as a system optimized to extract money from children through various dark patterns.

There is the virtual currency "robux" that various games try to extract from you at almost every step; for example you have a sequence of trivial puzzles and there is always an option to pay 1 robux to skip a puzzle -- I think 1 robux is less than a cent, so it feels like nothing, but the point is that when there is an opportunity to pay 1 robux almost everywhere you look at, the numbers will quickly add up. (And generally, I think that in-app purchases aimed at children are an evil invention.)

Recently my daughter started playing under strong social pressure from her classmates. I should ask her about the details now that she has some experience, but from outside, my impression is that she spends a lot of time in the system but not at any particular game, not because any game is especially good, but because another game in the system is always only a click away. (Kinda like she used to spend a lot of time watching YouTube videos, again not because any video was particularly good, but because at every moment there were ten more potentially interesting videos advertised on the sidebar.)

Yes, it is very convenient that once you install the Roblox itself, you don't need to install anything more to get more games, and all the games have the same controls, the same chat to talk to your friends, etc.

I'd say that different people want/do different things (otherwise we probably wouldn't have this debate right now; no one makes LW posts with convincing evolutionary arguments for why people breathe), therefore you should be suspicious of theories that predict that everyone wants the same thing.