Computer scientist, applied mathematician. Based in the eastern part of England.
Fan of control theory in general and Perceptual Control Theory in particular. Everyone should know about these, whatever subsequent attitude to them they might reach. These, plus consciousness of abstraction dissolve a great many confusions.
I wrote the Insanity Wolf Sanity Test. There it is, work out for yourself what it means.
Change ringer since 2022. It teaches learning and grasping abstract patterns, memory, thinking with your body, thinking on your feet, fixing problems and moving on, always looking to the future and letting both the errors and successes of the past go.
I first found an LLM useful (other than for answering the question "let's see how well the dog can walk on its hind legs") in September 2025. As yet they do not form a regular part of anything I do.
What is valence, and is there such a thing?
I'm currently studying a paper that talks about the concept of "valence", but I have not been able to discern the reasons for thinking that there is such a thing. I recalled that there was a sequence on Valence on LessWrong a few years ago. I passed it by at the time, but on reading it now, I have not found in it a reason to think that the thing is a thing. Nor am I satisfied by the references cited in the paper I am studying, which include these: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. (Valence is not the subject of the paper, just something it touches on, so I am not expecting it to itself justify the concept beyond citing that literature.)
The hand-waving I see in the Valence sequence and in those references strikes me as similar to saying "phlogiston is the stuff that comes out of things when they burn". [[1]]
What is meant by "valence"? What is the evidence that such an entity exists? How can it be measured in particular cases?
No, retconning phlogiston as nitrogen, carbon, negative oxygen, or electrons does not work. There just isn't anything corresponding to the concept as it was formulated in its time. No-one ever made a phlogistonometer. In fact, it was efforts to measure the things that could be measured in combustion that led to the concept being abandoned. ↩︎
How does the Dom handle their own akrasia? Find a bigger Dom to Sub to, and so ad infinitum?
Doing something with another person or a group is also effective. For example, gym buddies, startup cofounders, artist groups, marriages (if done right), etc. As Alex_Altair says in another comment, it's about accountability.
Have you seen "Two Arms and a Head"?
ETA: For those who haven't, it is not a work of fiction. Also reviewed on Astral Codex Ten.
Is France a third-world country in terms of internet service?
Always has been.
I've never lived there, but I remember that in the 1980s, the speed of email was primarily dependent not on distance but on the amount of government regulation of the telecoms business. Within the US, very little, so email only (!) took minutes. In the UK, not much compared with France, so email between the UK and the US would take no more than a few hours. Email with France, on the other hand, could take days and often would never arrive at all, without even a notification of failure.
Trumped-up process would itself be a process crime.
From the perspective of this agent, i.e. me, the world and my model of it are very much distinguishable. Especially when the world surprises me by demonstrating that my model was inaccurate. Have you never discovered you were wrong about something? How can this happen if you cannot distinguish your model of the world from the world itself?
Ideally, one would also want to find a volunteer with a typical faculty of love, to try the same spray and compare effects.
If there's anyone who has tried oxytocin, I'd be interested in an account of the experience. The OP moved me to obtain some, but at a dose of 24 IUs I experienced no effect.
What is there to like about this heaven-posting?
Inspiration. “Live this way, not the other way.” What is there to like about a beautiful picture? Is it the artist’s job to do more than create it?
What was your response to the hell posting? It too has nothing actionable, except the implicit “don’t live that way”.
Or to put that another way, shouldn't the title be instead "Submission: The Standard Everyday Solution To Akrasia"? As it comes close to saying in the second-last paragraph.