Ben Pace

Lighthaven Se­quences Read­ing Group #29 (Tues­day 04/​08)

• Ben PaceApr 1, 2025, 2:24 PM

  14 points

  0

  in reply to: williawa’s comment on: LessWrong has been ac­quired by EA

  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).

• Ben PaceApr 1, 2025, 1:32 PM

  25 points

  9

  in reply to: williawa’s comment on: LessWrong has been ac­quired by EA

  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.

• Ben PaceApr 1, 2025, 1:28 PM

  5 points

  0

  in reply to: williawa’s comment on: willi­awa’s Shortform

  [Comment moved here for visibility by the community.]

• Ben PaceMar 27, 2025, 2:25 AM

  12 points

  0

  on: Ben Pace’s Short­form Feed

  An idea I’ve been thinking about for LessOnline this year, is a blogging awards ceremony. The idea being that there’s a voting procedure on the blogposts of the year, in a bunch of different categories, a shortlist is made and winners are awarded a prize.

  I like opportunities for celebrating things in the online, written, truth-seeking ecosystem. I’m interested in reacts on whether people would be pro something like this happening, and comments on suggestions for how to do it well. (Epistemic status: tentatively excited about this idea.)

  Here’s my first idea for what the categories would be this year.

  1. Blog of the year

  2. Best original contribution (e.g. novel discovery, did some science, etc)

  3. Best explanation of a complex idea

  4. Biggest mistake admitted (H/​T @ymekshout for suggesting this one)

  5. Best fiction

  6. Best counter-argument

  7. Best prediction

  8. Most productive dialogue

  9. Most beautiful non-fiction

  10. Best new blog

  As for structure, I’m not really sure. Here’s my first idea.

  • How to nominate? Anyone can nominate a blogpost for $10. Anyone with a LessOnline ticket gets a free nomination. Anything published in 2024 is eligible.

  • How is it judged? For the first year I’d probably keep it small and simple, perhaps hand-selected ~10 judges and pay them a little to each read 5 nominations in 4 different categories and vote on those.

  I’ve also not got a name in mind yet. It’s not a generic “Blogging Awards”, tons of blogposts would not naturally be included (e.g. food blogs, fashion blogs, travel blogs, etc). I think “Blogging-With-High-Epistemic-Aspirations Awards” is too long. “Rationalist Blogging Awards” is a reasonably narrow pointer but I don’t want to risk intertwining too much with a narrow social group’s identity when there’s probably a good alternative name that also points toward the substance.

  Suggestions and feedback appreciated!

Lighthaven Se­quences Read­ing Group #28 (Tues­day 04/​01)

• Ben PaceMar 26, 2025, 12:09 AM

  2 points

  0

  in reply to: aphyer’s comment on: On (Not) Feel­ing the AGI

  Thanks!

  Zvi’s post is imported, so it’s stored a little differently than normal posts. Here’s two copies I made stored differently (1, 2), I’d appreciate you letting me know if either of these look correct on mobile.

  (Currently it looks fine on my iPhone, are you on an Android?)

• Ben PaceMar 25, 2025, 11:58 PM

  2 points

  0

  in reply to: Zvi’s comment on: On (Not) Feel­ing the AGI

  Same, here’s a screenshot. Perhaps Molony is using a third-party web viewer?

  

• Ben PaceMar 25, 2025, 7:30 PM

  2 points

  −5

  on: Will Je­sus Christ re­turn in an elec­tion year?

  Seeing this, I update toward a heuristic of “all polymarket variation within 4 percentage points are noise”.

• Ben PaceMar 23, 2025, 7:31 PM

  12 points

  1

  in reply to: Elizabeth’s comment on: Eliz­a­beth’s Shortform

  I tried to invite Iceman to LessOnline, but I suspect he no longer checks the old email associated with that account. If anyone knows up to date contact info, I’d appreciate you intro-ing us or just letting him know we’d love to have him join.

• Ben PaceMar 21, 2025, 1:12 AM

  LW: 5 AF: 4

  1

  AF

  in reply to: habryka’s comment on: METR: Mea­sur­ing AI Abil­ity to Com­plete Long Tasks

  I think my front-end productivity might be up 3x? A shoggoth helped me building a stripe shop and do a ton of UI design that I would’ve been hesitant to take on myself (without hiring someone else to work with), as well as quality increase in speed of churning through front-end designs.

  (This is going from “wouldn’t take on the project due to low skill” to “can take it on and deliver it in a reasonable amount of time”, which is different from “takes top programmer and speeds them up 3x”.)

Lighthaven Se­quences Read­ing Group #27 (Tues­day 03/​25)

• Ben PaceMar 18, 2025, 1:16 AM

  4 points

  0

  in reply to: lsusr’s comment on: LessOn­line 2025: Early Bird Tick­ets On Sale

  I have a bit of work to do on the scheduling app before sending it around to everyone this year, not certain when I will get to that, my guess is in like 4 weeks from now.

  Relatedly: we have finished renovating the final building on our campus, so there will be more rooms for sessions this year than last year.

LessOn­line 2025: Early Bird Tick­ets On Sale

Lighthaven Se­quences Read­ing Group #26 (Tues­day 03/​18)

• Ben Pace 17 Mar 2025 4:45 UTC

  2 points

  0

  in reply to: habryka’s comment on: Eliz­a­beth’s Shortform

  Am I being an idiot or does technically 99%< work? Like, it implied that 99% is less than it, in a mirror to how <1% means 1% is greater than it.

• Ben Pace 17 Mar 2025 4:42 UTC

  4 points

  0

  in reply to: Raemon’s comment on: Eliz­a­beth’s Shortform

  I personally have it as a to-do to just build polls.

  (React if you want to express that you would likely use this.)

Lighthaven Se­quences Read­ing Group #25 (Tues­day 03/​11)

• Ben Pace 9 Mar 2025 17:20 UTC

  2 points

  0

  in reply to: Guive’s comment on: Ben Pace’s Short­form Feed

  Edited, should be working fine now, thx!

• Ben Pace 9 Mar 2025 8:16 UTC

  LW: 4 AF: 3

  0

  AF

  on: Ben Pace’s Short­form Feed

  Something a little different: Today I turn 28. If you might be open to do something nice for me for my birthday, I would like to request the gift of data. I have made a 2-4 min anonymous survey about me as a person, and if you have a distinct sense of me as a person (even just from reading my LW posts/​comments) I would greatly appreciate you filling it out and letting me know how you see me!

  Here’s the survey.

  It’s an anonymous survey where you rate me on lots of attributes like “anxious”, “honorable”, “wise” and more. All multiple-choice. Two years ago I also shared a birthday survey amongst people who know me and ~70 people filled it out, and I learned a lot from it. I am very excited to see how the perception of me amongst the people I know has *changed*, and also to find out how people on LessWrong see me, so the core of this survey is ~20 of the same attributes.

  In return for your kind gift, if you complete it, you get to see the aggregate ratings of me from last time!

  This survey helps me understand how people see me, and recognize my blindspots, and I’m very grateful to anyone who takes a few mins to complete it. Two people completed it already and it took them 2 mins and 4 mins to complete it. (There are many further optional questions but it says clearly when the main bit is complete.)

  I of course intend to publish the (aggregate) data in a LW post and talk about what I’ve learned from it :-)