Arjun Panickssery

Five Re­cent AI Tu­tor­ing Studies

Aris­toc­racy and Hostage Capital

• Arjun PanicksseryDec 16, 2024, 2:17 AM

  4 points

  0

  on: Why You Should Never Up­date Your Beliefs

  I think this post is very funny (disclaimer: I wrote this post).

  A number of commenters (both here and on r/​slatestarcodex) think it’s also profound, basically because of its reference to the anti-critical-thinking position better argued in the Michael Huemer paper that I cite about halfway through the post.

  The question of when to defer to experts and when to think for yourself is important. This post is fun as satire or hyperbole, though it ultimately doesn’t take any real stance on the question.

• Arjun PanicksseryDec 7, 2024, 10:35 PM

  24 points

  2

  on: Niet­zsche’s Mo­ral­ity in Plain English

  I think this post is very good (note: I am the author).

  Nietzsche is brought up often in different contexts related to ethics, politics, and the best way to live. This post is the best summary on the Internet of his substantive moral theory, as opposed to vague gesturing based on selected quotes. So it’s useful for people who

  • are interested in what Nietzsche’s arguments, as a result of their secondhand impressions

  • have specific questions like “Why does Nietzsche think that the best people are more important”

  • want to know whether something can be well-described as “Nietzschean”

  It’s able to answer questions like this and describe Nietzsche’s moral theory concisely because it focuses on his lines of argument and avoids any description of his metaphors or historical narratives: no references are made to the Ubermensch, Last Man, the “death of God,” the blond beast, or other concepts that aren’t needed for an analytic account of his theory.

• Arjun PanicksseryNov 12, 2024, 4:43 AM

  2 points

  0

  in reply to: martinkunev’s comment on: Per­sonal AI Planning

  By “calligraphy” do you mean cursive writing?

• Arjun PanicksseryNov 7, 2024, 11:42 AM

  12 points

  0

  on: Should CA, TX, OK, and LA merge into a gi­ant swing state, just for elec­tions?

  So why don’t the four states sign a compact to assign all their electoral votes in 2028 and future presidential elections to the winner of the aggregate popular vote in those four states? Would this even be legal?

  It would be legal to make an agreement like this (states are authorized to appoint electors and direct their votes however they like; see Chiafalo v. Washington) but it’s not enforceable in the sense that if one of the states reneges, the outcome of the presidential election won’t be reversed.

• Arjun PanicksseryOct 21, 2024, 10:52 PM

  2 points

  0

  in reply to: Yoav Ravid’s comment on: Over­com­ing Bias Anthology

  lol fixed thanks

• Arjun PanicksseryOct 20, 2024, 8:00 PM

  7 points

  3

  in reply to: xpym’s comment on: Over­com­ing Bias Anthology

  Yeah it’s for the bounty. Hanson suggested that a list of links might be preferred to a printed book, at least for now, since he might want to edit the posts.

Over­com­ing Bias Anthology

• Arjun PanicksseryOct 16, 2024, 9:35 PM

  2 points

  0

  in reply to: Error’s comment on: What are your fa­vorite books or blogs that are out of print, or whose do­mains have ex­pired (es­pe­cially if they also aren’t on LibGen/​Way­back/​etc, or on Ama­zon)?

  What was it called

[Question] What are your fa­vorite books or blogs that are out of print, or whose do­mains have ex­pired (es­pe­cially if they also aren’t on LibGen/​Way­back/​etc, or on Ama­zon)?

Ex­cerpts from “A Reader’s Man­i­festo”

• Arjun PanicksseryAug 22, 2024, 5:25 AM

  18 points

  1

  in reply to: michael_mjd’s comment on: Please do not use AI to write for you

  Brief comments on what’s bad about the output:

  The instruction is to write an article arguing that AI-generated posts suffer from verbosity, hedging, and unclear trains of thought. But ChatGPT makes that complaint in a single sentence in the first paragraph and then spends 6 paragraphs adding a bunch of its own arguments:

  1. that the “nature of conversation itself” draws value from “human experience, emotion, and authenticity” that AI content replaces with “a hollow imitation of dialogue”

  2. that AI content creates “an artificial sense of expertise,” i.e. that a dumb take can be made to seem smarter than it is

  3. that the option to use AI content discourages posters from “engag[ing] deeply with the topic themselves”

  It wasn’t instructed to make these arguments and they aren’t really defended as important.

  Then lastly ChatGPT offers a “solution”: that people just disclose when they’re using AI assistance. But it’s not explained how this actually prevents the problems above, besides I guess allowing people downvote AI content or scrutinize it more. Importantly this proposed solution wouldn’t solve the concern the model was instructed to present.

  So in general instructions aren’t followed and the thinking/​argumentation isn’t clear.

• Arjun PanicksseryAug 22, 2024, 5:16 AM

  11 points

  0

  on: Please do not use AI to write for you

  I added to your prompt the instructions

  Be brief and write concise prose in the style of Paul Graham. Don’t hedge or repeat yourself or go on tangents.

  And the output is still bad, but now mostly for the flaw (also present in your output) that ChatGPT can’t resist making the complaint about “human authenticity” and “transparency/​trust” when that’s not what you’re talking about:

  I’ve noticed a troubling trend on online forums: a surge in posts that clearly seem to be generated by AI. These posts are verbose, meandering, and devoid of real substance. They present every argument with an opposing one, wrapped in so much “on the one hand” and “on the other” that they end up saying nothing at all.

  AI in its current form shouldn’t be used for this purpose. The problem isn’t just that these posts waste time, though they do. It’s that they dilute meaningful discourse. When an AI-generated post floods a forum, it clogs the flow of genuine ideas. The writing might seem polished, but it’s hollow, a shell of real thought. And that’s a disservice to any community that values actual discussion.

  Forums are places for people to exchange ideas, not for machines to simulate them. Using AI to generate content in this way erodes the authenticity of conversation. It’s a misuse of technology that contributes to the noise rather than to meaningful exchange.

  AI can be powerful, but that power should be wielded carefully. Right now, the tools aren’t good enough to replace real human input, and pretending they are does more harm than good.

  EDIT: Below is what it looks like if I replace “in the style of Paul Graham” with “in the style of LessWrong”:

  AI-generated content in online forums is a growing problem. These tools are designed to mimic human language, but they often fail to deliver meaningful or original contributions. Instead, they produce verbose, meandering prose that tries to cover all bases but ultimately says nothing. This kind of content is worse than useless—it clogs up discussions with noise, making it harder for genuine insights to emerge.

  AI, in its current state, lacks the ability to form and defend coherent, novel ideas. It doesn’t understand context, nuance, or the importance of taking a clear stance. The result is writing that hedges endlessly, offering a shallow imitation of thoughtful discourse but devoid of real substance. When forums are flooded with such content, it dilutes the value of the platform. It wastes the time of readers who are searching for real engagement and stifles the development of ideas that can only come from genuine human interaction.

  AI tools should not be used to generate content for forums, period. They don’t contribute to the quality of discussion and instead, undermine it. The promise of AI lies in its ability to augment human capabilities, not replace them in areas where human judgment, creativity, and insight are paramount. Until AI can meaningfully contribute to a discussion, we should resist the temptation to use it in contexts where clarity, originality, and human understanding are crucial.

Altru­ism and Vi­tal­ism Aren’t Fel­low Travelers

In­fer­ence-Only De­bate Ex­per­i­ments Us­ing Math Problems

• Arjun PanicksseryJul 28, 2024, 7:29 AM

  6 points

  0

  in reply to: Richard_Kennaway’s comment on: Ar­jun Pan­ickssery’s Shortform

  Is this word long or short? Only say “long” or “short”. The word is: {word}.

  Code: https://​​github.com/​​ArjunPanickssery/​​long_short

• Arjun PanicksseryJul 28, 2024, 5:37 AM

  11 points

  1

  on: Ar­jun Pan­ickssery’s Shortform

  To test out Cursor for fun I asked models whether various words of different lengths were “long” and measured the relative probability of “Yes” vs “No” answers to get a P(long) out of them. But when I use scrambled words of the same length and letter distribution, GPT 3.5 doesn’t think any of them are long.

  

  

  Update: I got Claude to generate many words with connotations related to long (“mile” or “anaconda” or “immeasurable”) and short (“wee” or “monosyllabic” or “inconspicuous” or “infinitesimal”) It looks like the models have a slight bias toward the connotation of the word.

  

  

• Arjun PanicksseryJul 25, 2024, 9:38 PM

  9 points

  1

  on: Ar­jun Pan­ickssery’s Shortform

  What’s the actual probability of casting a decisive vote in a presidential election (by state)?

  I remember the Gelman/​Silver/​Edlin “What is the probability your vote will make a difference?” (2012) methodology:

  1. Let E be the number of electoral votes in your state. We estimate the probability that these are necessary for an electoral college win by computing the proportion of the 10,000 simulations for which the electoral vote margin based on all the other states is less than E, plus ¹⁄₂ the proportion of simulations for which the margin based on all other states equals E. (This last part assumes implicitly that we have no idea who would win in the event of an electoral vote tie.) [Footnote: We ignored the splitting of Nebraska’s and Maine’s electoral votes, which retrospectively turned out to be a mistake in 2008, when Obama won an electoral vote from one of Nebraska’s districts.]

  2. We estimate the probability that your vote is decisive, if your state’s electoral votes are necessary, by working with the subset of the 10,000 simulations for which the electoral vote margin based on all the other states is less than or equal to E. We compute the mean M and standard deviation S of the vote margin among that subset of simulations and then compute the probability of an exact tie as the density at 0 of the Student-t distribution with 4 degrees of freedom (df), mean M, and scale S.

  The product of two probabilities above gives the probability of a decisive vote in the state.

  This gives the following results for the 2008 presidential election, where they estimate that you had less than one chance in a hundred billion of deciding the election in DC, but better than a one in ten million chance in New Mexico. (For reference, 131 million people voted in the election.)

  Is this basically correct?

  (I guess you also have to adjust for your confidence that you are voting for the better candidate. Maybe if you think you’re outside the top ~20% in “voting skill”—ability to pick the best candidate—you should abstain. See also.)

An­a­lyz­ing Deep­Mind’s Prob­a­bil­is­tic Meth­ods for Eval­u­at­ing Agent Capabilities