Elizabeth

Karma: 22,468

Elizabeth 30 Mar 2026 15:04 UTC
5 points
0
in reply to: Nikola Jurkovic’s comment on: nikola’s Shortform
why? To inform themselves, or to boost the movie’s numbers?

Elizabeth 29 Mar 2026 18:37 UTC
4 points
0
in reply to: Zach Stein-Perlman’s comment on: Stop asking “how good is this” to decide between donation opportunities I recommend
I’m a small donor, so my experience with your cluster^[1] has been strictly about political candidates. Within that, someone in the cluster (not you or Eric) pushed me to push someone else to donate more at the the 11th hour on the first day of fundraising. At that point they already knew fundraising had been incredibly successful and the marginal value of a donation had decreased a lot, but didn’t tell me until after I’d pushed the other person. Credit to them for telling me at all, but I would have made different choices if I’d had all the information. Maybe it’s totally unfair to tar everyone in the apparent cluster based on this person’s actions, maybe if I knew the formal relationships and had more information about you and Eric I’d see them as a crazy rogue, but with the information I have I have to expect more of the same. Which doesn’t mean I’m not donating, but does really limit the amount I’ll defer.
1. ^
  I’m not sure what the formal relationships are

Elizabeth 28 Mar 2026 21:14 UTC
5 points
0
on: Stop asking “how good is this” to decide between donation opportunities I recommend
I can’t articulate exactly what it is, but this leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Maybe it’s that what you’re saying only holds if there are brakes on the system- points after which you stop advocating people give money- but my impression is that either this never happens, or things move too fast for it to have a chance to happen. Certainly the politicians aren’t saying “we have enough money, save it for the next guy”.

Elizabeth 24 Mar 2026 15:21 UTC
13 points
0
on: Is fever a symptom of glycine deficiency?
What effects did you have from what dose of glycine, and how quickly did they kick in?

Elizabeth 24 Mar 2026 1:00 UTC
2 points
2
in reply to: Myron Hedderson’s comment on: strawberry calm’s Shortform
I think for small donors, donating to the best unregistered charity is >>2x times the best registered charity, for the reasons OP outlines: registered charities are much better covered by large institutions, and lots of people are overanchored on registration so the unregistered are neglected by comparison.
The counterargument is that bednets/givedirectly are just pretty good and it’s unlikely any particular new thing beats them. Which is a fine approach, but not what we’re talking about here.

Elizabeth 22 Mar 2026 23:12 UTC
17 points
19
in reply to: Cleo Nardo’s comment on: strawberry calm’s Shortform
I would push back on DAFs- one of the value adds of nimble donors is donating to projects that don’t have formal status.

Elizabeth 13 Mar 2026 2:06 UTC
85 points
12
on: Elizabeth’s Shortform
Daniel Ellsberg on the corrosive effect of knowing secret information
First, [you feel] a great exhilaration, for getting all these amazing information that you didn’t know even existed. And the next phase is you’ll feel like a fool for not having known of any of this. But that won’t last long. Very soon, you’ll come to think that everyone else is foolish. What would this expert be telling me if he knew what I knew? So in the end, you stop listening too.
I’ve never had a security clearance. But I have had private or secret rationalist information, and it’s shocking how fast it corrupts my epistemics. Claiming to want comparative advantage I overweight the importance of the information. I flinch from imperiling my access to more secret information. Talking about a related area without divulging private information feels too hard so I don’t bother.
I can fight all these effects, but that’s a cost, and one I’ve learned to bill to the goal or person behind the secret information.

Elizabeth 28 Feb 2026 19:09 UTC
6 points
4
in reply to: pantalaimon’s comment on: How can rationalists perform exceptionally well?
Because other people don’t find the question as-asked valuable.
You might like Raemon’s Feedback-Loop First rationality.

Elizabeth 15 Feb 2026 19:13 UTC
38 points
5
on: Elizabeth’s Shortform
Angry ex-wives are the best IRS informants
1. Public criticism of people who aren’t already in the dog house is an act with concentrated costs and distributed benefits. Sometimes those costs are quite high.
2. As such, we should expect it to be underprovided.
3. Occasionally criticism will be provided by very prosocial people, or some other prosocial person will cover some of the costs.
4. But mostly you should expect public criticism to come from people who are being irrational. Maybe they’re generally fragile, or are angry about being dumped for their ex-husband’s secretary.
5. Therefore, you cannot dismiss criticisms because the person is fragile or has a grudge.
6. Under many circumstances- when the target is very well loved and the problem lies in a subtle pattern- the only criticism you should expect will come from people who seem kind of crazy or out to get the target.
7. This is hard to navigate, because those same irrationalities will drive people to make false criticisms too.
8. But “they’re irrational/out to get them” is a bad reason to dismiss criticism, because public criticism is an irrational act.

Elizabeth 11 Feb 2026 18:29 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: AlphaAndOmega’s comment on: Elizabeth’s Shortform
Depends. Are you strictly following standard of care, or personalizing for yourself?

Elizabeth 10 Feb 2026 22:42 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Shankar Sivarajan’s comment on: Stone Age Billionaire Can’t Words Good
and the alternative minimum tax… and whatever the new thing is...

Elizabeth 10 Feb 2026 22:41 UTC
2 points
2
in reply to: cousin_it’s comment on: Stone Age Billionaire Can’t Words Good
without minding the effects on everyone else
seems like a job for Pigouvian taxes

Elizabeth 10 Feb 2026 22:27 UTC
11 points
3
in reply to: Thane Ruthenis’s comment on: Thane Ruthenis’s Shortform
datapoint: this was my exact argument for not learning to vibecode (after working as a programmer for 10 years and quitting 9 years ago). Last month was when (I noticed that) vibecoding (had) crossed the threshold where it quickly paid off the time I put into it, and that was with private tutoring from someone who’d been on the cutting edge for >1 a year.
I’m not sure if this supports your argument (because I do think any time I put into learning to vibecode before the recent transition would have been wasted) or counters (because this is the month things transitioned).

Elizabeth 10 Feb 2026 21:57 UTC
43 points
0
on: Elizabeth’s Shortform
I’m working on a piece for Asterisk magazine on how biohackers (broadly defined) think about risk. Are you interested in being interviewed? Do you know someone who is? I’m taking a very broad definition of biohacker (self-medicating to save money counts), but some people I’m especially interested in talking to are those who:
- biohack for its own sake- no one needs magnets in their fingernails, but you want them.
- receive treatment within the standard medical system, but playing an active role in personalizing it (e.g. trans people adjusting their HRT, diabetics figuring out their insulin dosing)
- strongly prefer herbal to allopathic medicine
- the aforementioned driven-to-self-medication by financial constraints
- people who chronic mystery illnesses
- Use peptides besides GLP-1s (love you guys but GLP-1 users were by far the easiest to find)
relevant past work of mine:
- Church Planting: When Venture Capital Finds Jesus
- Luck based medicine: my resentful story of becoming a medical miracle
pseudonymity is fine, happy to answer other questions. You can reach me by email at elizabeth@acesounderglass.com

Elizabeth 1 Feb 2026 20:18 UTC
12 points
2
in reply to: sprague’s comment on: Canada Lost Its Measles Elimination Status Because We Don’t Have Enough Nurses Who Speak Low German
Measles causes immune amnesia, which sets your immune system back 2-5 years. You’d need to follow people for years to know what the true cost was.

Elizabeth 30 Jan 2026 21:44 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: FL33TW00D’s comment on: Elizabeth’s Shortform
TBC I agree with you that becoming president was more complicated than win the dam, win the day. But that more complicated story is still much less complicated than I expected it to be.

Elizabeth 30 Jan 2026 19:02 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: FL33TW00D’s comment on: Elizabeth’s Shortform
I’m not sure if you’re disagreeing with my point (that Johnson’s rise had fewer moving parts than I expected) or just sharing an additional interesting fact.

Elizabeth 30 Jan 2026 1:56 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: FL33TW00D’s comment on: Elizabeth’s Shortform
what % of credit would you assign to Brown and Root, Sam Rayburn, and Richard Russell?

Elizabeth 29 Jan 2026 20:09 UTC
7 points
0
on: Elizabeth’s Shortform
After reading volume 1 of Robert Caro’s biography of Lyndon Johnson, I’m struck by how simple parts of (Caro’s description of) Johnson’s rise were.
Johnson got elected to the House and stayed there primarily because of one guy at one law firm which had the network to set state fundraising records, and did so for Johnson primarily because of a single gigantic favor he did for them^[1].
Johnson got a great deal of leverage over other Congressmen because he was the one to realize Texas oilmen would give prodigiously if only they knew how to buy the results they wanted, and he convinced them he was the only reliable source of advice on how to do so (which he could get away with partially because the man they truly trusted, Sam Rayburn, lent his credibility to Johnson instead of leveraging it himself).
If this story was a movie, or a book shorter than 3000 pages (and counting) I would be sure it had been simplified for run time. I’m not ruling that out. But other parts of the book are more complicated than this, so I have to consider that politics can be simpler than I thought.
1. ^
  I’m sure he did other favors for them and their clients over the years, but as presented the relationship was set when he rescued New Deal funding for a dam.

Elizabeth 27 Jan 2026 5:12 UTC
6 points
0
in reply to: Elizabeth’s comment on: What’s a good methodology for “is Trump unusual about executive overreach / institution erosion?”
I got a little ambitious and normed the data by value of dollar, relative to 2006Q1. 2025 looks even less exceptional than it did in nominal terms