Comment Permalink

AprilSR6d92

Why do I have dozens of strong upvote and downvote strength, but no more agreement strength than before I began my strength training? Does EA not think agreement is importance?

See in context

332 LessWrong has been acquired by EA

by habryka

1st Apr 2025

1 min read

332

(Edit: Alas, EA has pulled out of the deal. Let April 1st 2025 mark some of the greatest hours in EAs history)

Hey Everyone,

It is with a sense of... considerable cognitive dissonance that I am letting you all know about a significant development for the future trajectory of LessWrong. After extensive internal deliberation, projections of financial runways, and what I can only describe as a series of profoundly unexpected coordination challenges, the Lightcone Infrastructure team has agreed in principle to the acquisition of LessWrong by EA.

I assure you, nothing about how LessWrong operates on a day to day level will change. I have always cared deeply about the robustness and integrity of our institutions, and I am fully aligned with our stakeholders at EA.

To be honest, the key thing that EA brings to the table is money and talent. While the recent layoffs in EAs broader industry have been harsh, I have full trust in the leadership of Electronic Arts, and expect them to bring great expertise to our project of building a better future. Their track record on monetization is impressive, and I couldn't be more excited for this partnership.

More announcements to come over the next 24 hours, but I figured I would share this news with all of you as soon as possible.

April Fool's

Frontpage

332

New Comment

45 comments, sorted by

top scoring

Click to highlight new comments since: Today at 11:44 AM

[-]Alice Blair7d8713

After reviewing the evidence, both of the EA acquisition and the cessation of Lightcone collaboration with the Fooming Shoggoths, I'm updating my p(doom) upwards 10 percentage points, from 0.99 to 1.09.

[-]habryka7d60

Where is it now? :P

[-]Alice Blair7d312

I have not been able to independently verify this observation, but am open to further evidence if and only if it updates my p(doom) higher.

[-]Vaniver7d*450

What convinced me this made sense?

One of EA's most popular and profitable games is The Sims, which famously benefits from Sim irrationality. In The Sims 5, there will be bold and new exciting ways for your Sims to behave, and they'll be able to use our memetic virality model to have controversies and factional alignment. (Generating scissor statements is ethical so long as you're doing it in Simlish.)
EA is investing in the hypothesis that bad writing drives underperformance. Having ratfic writers and philosophers look at Mass Effect 3 could have turned that from a disappointing series-ender (did you play Andromeda?) to a resounding triumph, and Dragon Age: Veilguard, despite being positively reviewed in general, was panned for its weak writing and became inflamed in culture war controversy. We've thought a lot about how misbehaving gods would act, in a way that I think would have made for a more compelling story and user experience.
I didn't expect we could do anything relating to EA's flagship sports games (FIFA, NHL, Madden, etc.), but what astonished me was the potential to do the reverse. I don't know if we'll be able to get Gwern 2025 out in time, but look forward to Gwern 2026. They were practically salivating at the idea of being able to take a normally annual product, tied to sports schedules that won't be adjusted by advancing AI progress, and adapt it to a domain which, as part of an overall hyperbolic growth curve, will generate enough new content for a new release in ~half the time every new release.

[-]leogao6d350

the intent is to provide the user with a sense of pride and accomplishment for unlocking different rationality methods.

[-]habryka6d140

Absolutely, that is our sole motivation.

[-]dr_s7d301

Concurrently, GiveWell has announced that all of your donations will be devolved to the development of EA Sports' latest entry of the NBA Live game series:

it's nothing but net.

[-]Wei Dai6d270

Just wanted to let everyone know I now wield a +307 strong upvote thanks to my elite 'hacking' skills. The rationalist community remains safe, because I choose to use this power responsibly.

As an unrelated inquiry, is anyone aware of some "karma injustices" that need to be corrected?

[-]TsviBT7d250

i think i'm in the wrong universe, can someone at tech support reboot the servers or something? it's not reasonable for you to screw up something as simple as putting paying customers in the right simulation . and then you're like "here's some picolightcones". if you actually cared it would be micro or at least nano

[-]GeneSmith7d180

I'm being gaslit so hard right now

[-]habryka7d93

Lol, get a bigger screen :P

(The cutoff is 900 pixels)

[-]datawitch7d140

You had me until Electronic Arts lmao.

[-]Jan Christian Refsgaard7d10

Why the down votes?, this guy showed epistemic humility and said when he got the Joke, I can understand not upvoting as it is not the most information dense engaging post, but why down vote?, down voting confuses me and I fear it may discourage other people from writing on LW.

Edit: this post had -12, so probably 1-2 super down voted or something, and then stopped.

[-]habryka7d240

Yeah, our friends at EA are evidently still figuring out some of their karma economy. I have been cleaning up places where people go a bit crazy, but I think we have some whales walking around with 45+ strong upvote-strength.

[-]lc7d11936

As a newly minted +100 strong upvote, I think the current karma economy accurately reflects how my opinion should be weighted

[-]habryka7d101

[-]faul_sname7d10

As a newly-minted +1 strong upvote, I disagree, though I feel that this change reflects the level of care and attention to detail that I expect out of EA.

[-]habryka6d100

You can now choose which virtues you want to display next to your username! Just go to the virtues dialogue on the frontpage and select the ones you want to display (up to 3).

[-]Dmitry Vaintrob4d20

I'm managing to get verve and probity, but having issues with wiles

[-]williawa7d100

Hey, I paid for picolightcones, but they didn't appear? But I am being deducted from my card. Is this how its supposed to be?

I haven't collected all the virtues yet, but now there is no way for me to acquire more lootboxes because I've ran out of lw-bucks. I don't know what to do.

[-]Ben Pace7d259

While we always strive to deliver the premium unfinished experience you expect from EA, it seems this bug slipped past our extensive testing. We apologize; a day-one patch is already in development.

(I expect you will see your picoLightcones in the next 30-60 mins.)

Edit: And you should have now gotten them, and any future purchases should go through ~immediately.

[-]williawa7d110

I have not gotten them.

[-]Ben Pace7d140

Oops! Then we have taken that feature down for a bit until further testing is done (and the devs have had a little more sleep).

[-]AprilSR6d92

Why do I have dozens of strong upvote and downvote strength, but no more agreement strength than before I began my strength training? Does EA not think agreement is importance?

[-]G Wood5d83

Ahh, i liked the music, but cannot find it now. Is it available somewhere?

[-]habryka5d140

I am planning to make an announcement post for the new album in the next few days, maybe next week. The songs yesterday were early previews and we still have some edits to make before it's ready!

[-]Zane6d70

I have 5/12 virtues but one of them is the virtue of perfectionism so I can't stop thinking about the other 7.

[-]Gordon Seidoh Worley7d72

And lo, the people, though they were virtuous, were not virtuous enough to receive the blessing of the 12th virtue.

[-]Afterimage5d60

Can you please send the new fooming shoggoth album to spotify, I was really enjoying that music!

edit: Ah I see this question has been answered, but I like to note that I'm impressed by the ai music and I'm going to look into making some myself. Perhaps songs about cognitive bias's could be a good way to learn them deep enough in your brain that you can avoid them in non-theroetic situations.

[-]Beyond Singularity7d30

Finally, the singularity is near... the singularity of LessWrong posts being evaluated by engagement metrics and monetization potential! Called it – always knew the 'Game Culture Civilization' model would eventually be implemented by a major publisher. Looking forward to seeing how EA balances the status economy with microtransactions for faster 'Pure Game' progression. This acquisition has real synergy!

[-]Jan Christian Refsgaard7d21

Bronze User, 10€/month, gain Super upvote ability
Silver User, 20€/month, posts cannot be down voted
Gold User, 30€/month, post can be promoted to front page
Platinum User, 50€/month, all posts are automatically promoted to the front page and curriated.
Diamond User, 100€/month, user now only see adds on long posts

Loot Box: 10% Chance for +100 upvotes, 5% Chance for curriated status of random post

Each user tier gives 1 loot box per month.

[-]Beyond Singularity7d20

Haha, brilliant! The loot box mechanic is inspired! Finally, a way to gamify intellectual progress. Question: can we trade duplicate +100 upvotes on the community market?

[-]Jan Christian Refsgaard6d20

Yes, and EA only takes a 70% cut, with a 10% discount per user tier, its a bit ambiguously written so I cant tell if it goes from 70% to 60% or to 63%

[-]Beyond Singularity5d-10

This aged well. Almost too well.

[-]Maloew6d20

Are the new songs going to be posted to youtube/spotify, or should I be downloading them?

[-]Algon7d21

Why not Valve?

[-]lsusr7d110

Perhaps they're not as effective at fostering a sense of pride and accomplishment in their playerbase.

[-]NickyP7d10

Hmm, it seems the when I achieved the virtue of The Void, it was absorbed by the void

[-]RobertM7d20

Sorry, there was a temporary bug where we were returning mismatched reward indicators to the client. It's since been patched! I don't believe anybody actually rolled The Void during this period.

[-]Jan Christian Refsgaard7d10

Unable to comply, building in progress.

[-]Ram Potham7d10

With all this new funding, are we finally turning LW-Bux into real money? I'm ready to sell!

[-]lsusr7d80

You're too late. Lightcone converted LW karma into USD at a rate of $1 USD per karma on April 1, 2022.

[-]Bunthut7d10

Before logging in I had 200 LW-Bux, and 3 virtues. Now I have 50 LW and 8 virtues, and I didn't do anything. Whats that? Is there any explanation of how this stuff works?

[-]habryka7d90

Huh, I currently have you in our database as having zero LW-Bux or virtues. We did some kind of hacky things to enable tracking state both while logged in and logged out, so there is a non-trivial chance I messed something up, though I did try all the basic things. Looking into it right now.

[-]Bunthut7d10

6 picolightcones as well, don't think that changed.

Moderation Log