Creation Date: 2024-09-09T14:09:21Z

Nice one

Now if we could just make not mining cryptocurrency more profitable than mining cryptocurrency 100% of the time, that would be really good.

The only thing I've seen from Lex Friedman was his interview of Brian Kernighan. For most of it I just thought it was very kind of BWK to patiently indulge this kid, who was clearly still new and unaccustomed to public speaking or researching his interview subjects, despite the weirdly professional gear setup and production.

Uhm, actually the correct term is epheb oligopoly.

I think it's less america-brained and more just straight up cryptomonarchist.

For what it's worth STAR looks like something Yud wishes he would design, or would design if he could. A complicated system that assumes a highly informed electorate and allows for counterintuitive victory conditions sounds exactly like something appealing to him.

It's not that he invented anything, even something that was already invented. He claimed he could invent a new system if he wanted to and when asked to deliver, just namedropped an existing system.

Addendum: Today I remembered Microsoft Defender for Business exists, so fuck them and the anticompetitive horse they rode here on lmao.

Also, that Musk proofread the article is just the cherry on top

Well, he is a founder of companies like PayPal and Tesla, legally speaking.

When pressed about the kind of system he could invent, he says STAR voting.

Has anyone asked Mark Frohnmayer if he also used the eating a bowl full of paper and vomiting technique when creating the STAR system?

I could invent a state of the art cryptographic hashing function after half a litre of vodka with my hands tied behind my back. Coincidentally the algorithm I'd independently invent from first principles would happen to be exactly the same as BLAKE3 so instead of me having to explain it, you can just skim the Wikipedia page like I did.

You think wood glue in your pizza sauce is great? Try prions!

I'm almost surprised Yud is so clueless about election systems.

He's (lol) supposedly super into math and game theory so the failure mode I expected was for him to come up with some byzantine time-independent voting method that minimizes acausal spoiler effect at the cost of condorcet criterion or whatever. Or rather, I would have expected him to claim he's working on such a thing and throwing all these buzzwords around. Like in MOR where he knows enough advanced science words to at least sound like he knows physics beyond high school level.

Now I have to update my priors to take into account that he barely knows what an electoral system is. It's a bit like if the otherwise dumb guy who still seems a huge military nerd suddenly said "the only assault gun worse than the SA80 is the .223". For once you'd expect him to know enough to make a dumb hot take instead of just spouting gibberish but no.

Skeleton warriors!

It's fractally wrong and bonkers even by Yud tweet standards.

The worst common electoral system after First Past The Post - possibly even a worse one - is the parliamentary republic

I'll charitably assume based on this he just means proportional representation in general. Specifically he seems to be thinking of a party list type method, but other proportional electoral systems exist and some of them like D'Hondt and various STV methods do involve voting for individuals and not just parties.

with its absurd alliances and frequently falling governments

The alliances are often thought of as a feature, but it's also a valid, if subjective, criticism. Not sure what he means by "frequently falling governments", though. The UK uses FPTP and their PMs seem to resign quite regularly.

A possible amendment is to require 60% approval to replace a Chief Executive; who otherwise serves indefinitely, and appoints their own successor if no 60% majority can be scraped together.

Why 60%? Why not 50% or 70% or two thirds? Approval of whom, the parliament or the population? Would this be approval in the sense of approval voting where you can express approval for multiple candidates or in the sense of the candidate being the voter's first choice à la FPTP? What does the role of a dictator Chief Executive involve? Would it be analogous to something like POTUS, or perhaps PM of the UK or maybe some other country?

The parliament's main job would be legislation, not seizing the spoils of the executive branch of government on a regular basis.

Good news! In most parliamentary republics that is already the main job of the parliament, at least on paper. If you want to start nitpicking the "on paper" part, you might want to elaborate on how your system would prevent this kind of abuse.

Anything like this ever been tried historically?

Yea there's a long historical tradition of states led by an indefinitely serving chief executive, who would pass the office to his chosen successor. A different candidate winning the supermajority approval has typically been seen as the exception rather than the rule under such systems, but notable exceptions to this exist. One in 1776 saw a change of Chief Executive in some British overseas colonies, another one in late 18th century France ended the dynasty of their Chief Executive, and a later one in 1917 had the Russian Chief Executive Nikolai Alexandrovich Romanov lose the office to a firebrand progressive leader.

ChatGPT was incapable of understanding the question.

Now to be fair to ChatGPT, it seems that even the famed genius polymath Eliezer Yudkowsky failed to understand his own question.

Design principles for a time machine

Yes, a real, proper time machine like in sci-fi movies. Yea I know how to build it, as this design principles document will demonstrate. Remember to credit me for my pioneering ideas when you build it, ok?

1. Feasibility: if you want to build a time machine, you will have to build a time machine. Ideally, the design should break as few laws of physics as possible.
2. Goodness: the machine should be functional, robust, and work correctly as much as necessary. Care should be taken to avoid defects in design and manufacturing. A good time machine is better than a bad time machine in some key aspects.
3. Minimize downsides: the machine should not cause exessive harm to an unacceptable degree. Mainly, the costs should be kept low.
4. Cool factor: is the RGB lighting craze still going? I dunno, flame decals or woodgrain finish would be pretty fun in a funny retro way.
5. Incremental improvement: we might wanna start with a smaller and more limited time machine and then make them gradually bigger and better. I may or may not have gotten a college degree allowing me to make this mindblowing observation, but if I didn't, I'll make sure to spin it as me being just too damn smart and innovative for Harvard Business School.

Founder? I never even lost 'er!

what if my init system was a Prolog runtime?

Not only can you describe the desired system state and have your init figure out dependencies, you can list just the dependencies and have your init set up all possible system states until you find one to your liking!

what if it too was emacs?

Emacs as pid 1 is a classic of the genre, but a prolog too? Wouldn't a Kanren make more sense or is elisp not good for that?

Sounds like the real horseshoe theory is that nerds of all kinds of heterodox political stripes will eventually reinvent/discover Lisp and get freaky with it. A common thread connecting at least RMS, PG, Eich, Moldbug, suzuran, jart, Aphyr, self and me.

working for OpenAI

You probably are, if not by choice.

So it's called the National Novel Writing Month, but like what nation? Should non-US writers have their own ones?

Also I just saw they have a logo and it's an insult to heraldry.

NoNoNo

If it were about that, maybe they hadn't decided I'm NCO material and forced me into a full year of service instead of half.