Scott Alexander

Eight Short Studies On Excuses

The Clumsy Game-Player You and a partner are playing an Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma. Both of you have publicly pre-committed to the tit-for-tat strategy. By iteration 5, you're going happily along, raking up the bonuses of cooperation, when your partner unexpectedly presses the "defect" button. "Uh, sorry," says your partner. "My finger slipped." "I still have to punish you just in case," you say. "I'm going to defect next turn, and we'll see how you like it." "Well," said your partner, "knowing that, I guess I'll defect next turn too, and we'll both lose out. But hey, it was just a slipped finger. By not trusting me, you're costing us both the benefits of one turn of cooperation." "True", you respond "but if I don't do it, you'll feel free to defect whenever you feel like it, using the 'finger slipped' excuse." "How about this?" proposes your partner. "I promise to take extra care that my finger won't slip again. You promise that if my finger does slip again, you will punish me terribly, defecting for a bunch of turns. That way, we trust each other again, and we can still get the benefits of cooperation next turn." You don't believe that your partner's finger really slipped, not for an instant. But the plan still seems like a good one. You accept the deal, and you continue cooperating until the experimenter ends the game. After the game, you wonder what went wrong, and whether you could have played better. You decide that there was no better way to deal with your partner's "finger-slip" - after all, the plan you enacted gave you maximum possible utility under the circumstances. But you wish that you'd pre-committed, at the beginning, to saying "and I will punish finger slips equally to deliberate defections, so make sure you're careful." The Lazy Student You are a perfectly utilitarian school teacher, who attaches exactly the same weight to others' welfare as to your own. You have to have the reports of all fifty students in your class ready by the tim

892Apr 20, 2010

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Meetups Everywhere 2025: Times and Places

Many cities have regular Astral Codex Ten meetup groups. Twice a year, I try to advertise their upcoming meetups and make a bigger deal of it than usual so that irregular attendees can attend and new readers can hear about the meetups. This is one of those times. This year...

Sep 13, 202532

AI 2027: What Superintelligence Looks Like

In 2021 I wrote what became my most popular blog post: What 2026 Looks Like. I intended to keep writing predictions all the way to AGI and beyond, but chickened out and just published up till 2026. Well, it's finally time. I'm back, and this time I have a team...

Apr 3, 2025687

ACX Meetups Everywhere 2023: Times & Places

Thanks to everyone who responded to my request for ACX meetup organizers. Volunteers have arranged meetups in 169 cities around the world, from Baghdad to Bangalore to Buenos Aires. You can find the list below, in the following order: Africa & Middle East Asia-Pacific Europe North America South America You...

Aug 25, 202333

Biological Anchors: The Trick that Might or Might Not Work

This post originally posted on Astral Codex Ten on Feb 23 2022. It was printed in The Carving of Reality, the third volume of the Best of LessWrong book series. It was included as a (shorter) replacement for Ajeya Cotra's Draft report on AI timelines, and Eliezer's Biology-Inspired AGI Timelines:...

Aug 12, 202391

Spring Meetups Everywhere 2023

Many cities have regular Astral Codex Ten meetup groups. Twice a year, I try to advertise their upcoming meetups and make a bigger deal of it than usual so that irregular attendees can attend. This is one of those times. This year we have spring meetups planned in over eighty...

Apr 11, 202335

Alexander and Yudkowsky on AGI goals

This is a lightly edited transcript of a chatroom conversation between Scott Alexander and Eliezer Yudkowsky last year, following up on the Late 2021 MIRI Conversations. Questions discussed include "How hard is it to get the right goals into AGI systems?" and "In what contexts do AI systems exhibit 'consequentialism'?"....

Jan 24, 2023179

[Crosspost] ACX 2022 Prediction Contest Results

Original here. > Submission statement/relevance to Less Wrong: This forecasting contest confirmed some things we already believed, like that superforecasters can consistently outperform others, or the "wisdom of crowds" effect. It also found a surprising benefit of prediction markets over other aggregation methods, which might or might not be spurious....

Jan 24, 202348

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Scott Alexander

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Scott Alexander

Eight Short Studies On Excuses

AI 2027: What Superintelligence Looks Like

Schelling fences on slippery slopes

Diseased thinking: dissolving questions about disease

Scott Alexander

Meetups Everywhere 2025: Times and Places

AI 2027: What Superintelligence Looks Like

ACX Meetups Everywhere 2023: Times & Places

Biological Anchors: The Trick that Might or Might Not Work

Spring Meetups Everywhere 2023

Alexander and Yudkowsky on AGI goals

[Crosspost] ACX 2022 Prediction Contest Results

Eight Short Studies On Excuses

AI 2027: What Superintelligence Looks Like

Schelling fences on slippery slopes

Diseased thinking: dissolving questions about disease

Meetups Everywhere 2025: Times and Places

AI 2027: What Superintelligence Looks Like

ACX Meetups Everywhere 2023: Times & Places

Biological Anchors: The Trick that Might or Might Not Work

Spring Meetups Everywhere 2023

Alexander and Yudkowsky on AGI goals

[Crosspost] ACX 2022 Prediction Contest Results