Muireall Prase
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Muireall Prase
@muireall.space
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https://twitter.com/MuireallPrase, https://muireall.space/
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Muireall Prase @muireall.space · Aug 30
I tried writing one of these a few years ago, for a ~2012 version of myself that just woke up from a coma and still thinks he does something valuable for civil discourse by giving bad ideas a fair hearing—even if that's valuable, he's lying about doing it. muireall.space/acx/
muireall.space
This sounds like a joke, but it's literally the argument. Here's Scott Alexander, who would like you to believe Lynn's numbers have been confirmed by a preprint that averages them with data on learning outcomes and finds the result correlates similarly with measures of national development.
Yeah, many people tried to gotcha me with claims that Lynn did this or that or the other thing wrong. Lynn tries to defend his methodology here, but I think (and tried to argue in the post) that at this point, that debate is of historical interest only - there’s too much confirmation now. One commenter brings up World Bank Harmonized Learning Outcomes as an example. Another points me to this preprint, which tries to update Lynn’s numbers using all modern standardized testing data and correlations with social development index and GDP. They find mostly similar numbers to Lynn: Malawi goes from 60 → 66, and new last place goes to Sao Tome & Principe at 62. This is by people affiliated with Lynn and scientific racism, and you can choose not to trust their judgment either, but I think at least the SDI correlations are an extremely simple regression that it would be hard to fake.
November 29, 2025 at 11:45 PM
Reposted by Muireall Prase
juliaserano.bsky.social
...and now they are calling the NYC mayor race for this guy! www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEvV...
Until It's Done: Sylvia Rivera
YouTube video by Zohran Mamdani for NYC
www.youtube.com
November 5, 2025 at 2:27 AM
Reposted by Muireall Prase
segyges.bsky.social
it was this. just the close read of the scott alexander emails that we were basically doing in threads here, preserved for posterity and/or easy sharing. www.tumblr.com/segyges/7934...
September 1, 2025 at 6:17 AM
muireall.space
I tried writing one of these a few years ago, for a ~2012 version of myself that just woke up from a coma and still thinks he does something valuable for civil discourse by giving bad ideas a fair hearing—even if that's valuable, he's lying about doing it. muireall.space/acx/
August 30, 2025 at 8:58 PM
muireall.space
Maybe wishful thinking, but this seems like bad news for OpenAI et al. This lag was one of my top indicators to watch for uncertain or hard-to-capture returns on investment in training frontier models. You’d have to believe there’s eventually a runaway advantage in those 6 months.
epochai.bsky.social Epoch AI @epochai.bsky.social · Aug 22
What's the best model you can run on a single consumer GPU?

We've updated last week's Data Insight with 3 additional benchmarks to judge capabilities.

The result? Across all four benchmarks, small open models lag frontier performance by less than a year. 🧵
x.com/EpochAIRese...
August 23, 2025 at 3:10 PM
muireall.space
So what’s great about writing? It is more durable than the spoken word, of course. But just as importantly, writing allows us to take a step back from language, survey it, fine-tune it, and construct complex structures where one text argues with two others, each of which footnotes fifty others. It would be hard to imagine science without the ability writing provides to survey language from above and use it as building material. Generative AI represents a second step change in our ability to map and edit culture. Now we can manipulate, not only specific texts and images, but the dispositions, tropes, genres, habits of thought, and patterns of interaction that create them. I don’t think we’ve fully grasped yet what this could mean.
July 6, 2025 at 2:27 PM
muireall.space
Good post by @titotal.bsky.social. I’ve come to expect these forecasts to be overdetermined by a few key assumptions that are only obscured by quantitative models and parameter playgrounds, but AI 2027 seems not to even motivate those assumptions well.
titotal.substack.com/p/a-deep-cri...
A deep critique of AI 2027’s bad timeline models
Disclaimers:
titotal.substack.com
June 20, 2025 at 1:09 AM
muireall.space
On what to do about “the most intractable factor militating against socially responsible science and engineering: namely, the enormous value placed on (certain kinds of) technical merit, and the disregard for those deemed not to have (those kinds of) merit.” (Mody, The Squares)
In other words, we have to see “good” science and engineering as relatable to some kind of shared good, rather than evaluating what counts as good in solely technical terms. much that is “good” that cannot be measured by technical standards: meaning, solidarity, opportunity, material advancement, spiritual enlightenment, mystery, fascination, and so on. Science and engineering necessarily draw on the society of which they are part and parcel for the valorization of these more-than-technical goods that are generated out of technical activity. First part of Richard Lyman quote: If we are in difficulties partly because our functions are many, and our focus can therefore never be single, it will do us no good to try to return to some simpler day. . . . Instead we ought to glory in the fact that some people are learning to appreciate Keats in one part of the campus, while others are solving problems of linear programming in another. Glory in it, and make a towering virtue of necessity by exposing the one group to the other, and each to a thousand further groups, at every available opportunity. Second part of Lyman quote: If we are in difficulties partly because our functions are many, and our focus can therefore never be single, it will do us no good to try to return to some simpler day. . . . Instead we ought to glory in the fact that some people are learning to appreciate Keats in one part of the campus, while others are solving problems of linear programming in another. Glory in it, and make a towering virtue of necessity by exposing the one group to the other, and each to a thousand further groups, at every available opportunity.
March 27, 2025 at 6:55 AM
muireall.space
I've been banging my "you can't trust Scott Alexander" drum for years, but he still manages to surprise me archive.ph/BJ6bd
archive.ph
January 15, 2025 at 7:28 PM
muireall.space
In May 2023, I wrote that I expected an open-source model competitive with GPT-4 by the end of 2024. Unfortunately, I wasn't more specific about "open-source", but in the context of the essay I was thinking of open weights. Seems generally agreed that Llama got there, at least?
Screenshot from an appendix containing predictions related to the essay mentioned in the post: While I forecast as a hobby, I’m generally disinclined to give probabilities when no decision hinges on them. In this case, because the essay body attempts to avoid weighing evidence while suggesting places to look for ev‐ idence, it seems important to provide some context on my own views for the sake of transparency. 1. In 10 years, I judge that the weight of evidence is against similarity to Scenario 1: 50% 2. In 10 years, I judge that the weight of evidence is against similarity to Scenario 2: 5% 3. An open‐source model competitive with GPT‐4 is available by the end of 2024: 60%
December 15, 2024 at 10:28 PM
muireall.space
This by Tom Davidson on centralization of AI projects is more skeptical about "race dynamics" than I usually see, which is nice, although I still think everything considered here is basically dominated by monopoly dynamics. www.lesswrong.com/posts/wBTNkf...
Should there be just one western AGI project? — LessWrong
Tom Davidson did the original thinking; Rose Hadshar helped with later thinking, structure and writing. …
www.lesswrong.com
December 12, 2024 at 2:35 AM
muireall.space
I have lower expectations for technological capability this century, but even setting that aside this is very good.
December 1, 2024 at 4:44 PM
muireall.space
Photo of a Marvin Bell poem from The Book of the Dead Man (#3) 1. About the Beginnings of the Dead Man When the dead man throws up, he thinks he sees his inner life. Seeing his vomit, he thinks he sees his inner life. Now he can pick himself apart, weigh the ingredients, research his makeup. He wants to study things outside himself if he can find them. Moving, the dead man makes the sound of bone on bone. He bends a knee that doesn’t wish to bend, he raises an arm that argues with a shoulder, he turns his head by throwing it wildly to the side. He envies the lobster the protective sleeves of its limbs. He believes the jellyfish has it easy, floating, letting everything pass through it. He would like to be a starfish, admired for its shape long after. Everything the dead man said, he now takes back. Not as a lively young man demonstrates sincerity or regret. A young dead man and an old dead man are two different things. A young dead man is oil, an old dead man is water. A young dead man is bread and butter, an old dead man is bread and water—it’s a difference in construction, also architecture. The dead man was there in the beginning: to the dead man, the sky is a crucible. In the dead man’s lifetime, the planet has changed from lava to ash to cement. But the dead man flops his feathers, he brings his wings up over his head and has them touch, he bends over with his beak to the floor, he folds and unfolds at the line where his armor creases. The dead man is open to change and has deep pockets. The dead man is the only one who will live forever. Second part of the poem from the previous image. 2. More About the Beginnings of the Dead Man One day the dead man looked up into the crucible and saw the sun. The dead man in those days held the sky like a small globe, like a patchwork ball, like an ultramarine bowl. The dead man softened it, kneaded it, turned it and gave it volume. He thrust a hand deep into it and shaped it from the inside out. He blew into it and pulled it and stretched it until it became full- sized, a work of art created by a dead man. The excellence of it, the quality, its character, its fundamental nature, its raison d‘être, its “it” were all indebted to the dead man. The dead man is the flywheel of the spinning planet. The dead man thinks he can keep things the same by not moving. By not moving, the dead man maintains the status quo at the center of change. The dead man, by not moving, is an explorer: he follows his nose. When it’s not personal, not profound, he can make a new world anytime. The dead man is the future, was always the future, can never be the past. Like God, the dead man existed before the beginning, a time marked by galactic static. Now nothing remains of the first static that isn’t music, fashioned into melody by the accidents of interval. Now nothing more remains of silence that isn’t sound. The dead man has both feet in the past and his head in the clouds.
November 30, 2024 at 4:40 PM
muireall.space
Interesting perspective on interdisciplinarity, from The Squares by Cyrus Mody: “the conditions for that [neoliberal] kind of university were created in the turmoil of the long 1970s, even though virtually no one said that that was the kind of university they wanted.”
We can see here how reforms championed by the New Left were also taken up by their establishment foes as a way of preserving institutions—and how those same reforms paved the way for a neoliberal university that neither the SDS nor establishment figures like Bill Rambo had had in mind. Over the long run, though, interdisciplinary and individual degrees weakened disciplinary departments. The emphasis on extrinsic, societal relevance devalued the intrinsic worth of departments’ disciplinary knowledge. Without that intrinsic worth, departments had to offer students other inducements to major in their degree programs; the most durable of those inducements has been the supposed market value of their degrees. Similarly, interdisciplinary funding instruments encouraged faculty members to present themselves as individual experts in specific topics, rather than as members of disciplines with a collective expertise. Finally, administrators who worried that their universities might fall apart cultivated faculty members and students who were loyal to the institution as a whole and discouraged loyalty to departments or extrainstitutional disciplinary communities. The end result was a university made up of atomized individuals, each pursuing a research portfolio or pedagogical trajectory tailored to their personal preferences, rather than pursuing a path that would integrate the individual into a collective body of expertise. The end result was a university made up of atomized individuals, each pursuing a research portfolio or pedagogical trajectory tailored to their personal preferences, rather than pursuing a path that would integrate the individual into a collective body of expertise.
November 19, 2024 at 8:00 PM
muireall.space
On nanotechnology’s Feynman heritage (Chris Toumey, "Apostolic Succession"): calteches.library.caltech.edu/4129/1/Succe...
Quoted text screenshot, ending with: First, we have an altered sequence of influence. The theory of apostolic succession posited that first there was “Plenty of Room”; then there was much interest in it; and finally that caused the birth of nanotechnology. My analysis suggests something different: first there was “Plenty of Room”; then there was very little interest in it; meanwhile, there was the birth of nanotechnology, independent of it; and finally there was a retroactive interest in it. I believe we can credit much of the rediscov- ery to Drexler, who has passionately championed Feynman’s paper.
November 16, 2024 at 3:21 PM
muireall.space
If, decades after Smalley, it will take further decades of coordinated, focused work to even potentially yield results, I don't think a taboo or sociological trap adds much to an explanation of why positional chemistry stalled.
Screenshot of text with "However, they created a taboo against working on positional chemistry or funding it" highlighted: To preview where we’ll go in a bit more detail, by the end of this essay we’ll have concluded the following: ● There is a strong theoretical case for at least some forms of positional chemistry being possible ○ Actually in two different initial categories ■ Vacuum mechanosynthesis ● This is being tried secretively in Canada by enthusiasts ■ Ribosome-like molecular additive manufacturing ● This is not being seriously tried yet by any well-supported research program ○ With decades of focused, coordinated work informed by systems goals, either of these could potentially lead to forms of positional chemistry ○ It is not yet clear exactly how general-purpose these could be ● Early attempted refutations (Smalley debate) raised straw man objections; they don’t rule out either path ● However, they created a taboo against working on positional chemistry or funding it Screenshot of text continuing from previous, with "This then might, or might not, lead to big real world applications, many decades down the line" highlighted. Because positional chemistry is also a very hard systems problem, beyond the reach of any one scientist or lab, individual courageous researchers can’t escape this sociological trap by quietly showing a demo ● This means that you don’t see many people even submitting grant proposals or theoretical papers on positional chemistry, let alone making major experimental progress on it ● In such a situation, one needs a DARPA-like coordinated series of programs to unlock progress ● Progress on a “ribosome-like” mode of positional chemistry (“molecular 3D printing”) is enabled by recent advances like DNA origami, and more modular forms of protein engineering ● The field needs more crystalline goals and subgoals, but early developments are likely NOT good as commercial ventures To be clear, I’m not saying positional chemistry is necessarily a “be all and end all” technology. I’m just asking if we can pinpoint why it may have become stalled as a research field, and what it might take to jump start it as a research field. This then might, or might not, lead to big real world applications, many decades down the line. It’s research!
November 15, 2024 at 12:27 AM
muireall.space
This is a nice overview of a "physics perspective" on emergence from Ross H McKenzie—"There is more to emergence than novel properties".
Part 1: condensedconcepts.blogspot.com/2024/09/the-...
Part 2: condensedconcepts.blogspot.com/2024/09/the-...
Screenshot of text: The first five characteristics discussed below might be classified as objective (i.e., observable properties of the system) and the second five as subjective (i.e., associated with how an investigator thinks about the system). In different words, the first five are mostly concerned with ontology (what is real) and the second five with epistemology (what we know). The first five characteristics concern discontinuities, universality, diversity, mesoscales, and modification of parts. The second five concern self-organisation, unpredictability, irreducibility, downward causation, and closure.
October 23, 2024 at 1:40 PM
muireall.space
G C Waldrep Apocatastasis For the instruments are by their rhymes, as Kit Smart wrote. Walking out yesterday the bud's promise seemed a crystalline hallucination, spring's early flowing stone, the maimed sycamores climbing in geometry grey as steel, as smoke, as the sky that hangs low as stiff washing from the lines. Pity small life, the stem that pushes up from this hard surface, the insensate bravery. If we anthropomorphize the world, the night reduces to our capacity for hope and all tender fallacies. Thus purity. Thus metaphor's gift, the ice that spools and circles at skin's surface. My love, there is no winter but the winter of the heart. Perhaps this cold will pass. Perhaps that bridge was not a harp at all.
October 22, 2024 at 11:40 PM
muireall.space
From Walter G. Vincenti, "What Engineers Know and How They Know It":

CAC "chose for its B-24 bomber a somewhat mysterious [airfoil] section devised by a lone inventor named David R. Davis... The B-24 went on to become the most numerous and one of the most successful bombers of World War II."
Chapter 2: Design and The Growth of Knowledge: The Davis Wing and the Problem of Airfoil Design, 1908–1945. Excerpt from page: In 1938, however, one major company... chose for its B-24 bomber a somewhat mysterious section devised by a lone inventor named David R. Davis. The choice depended on some unusual test results, unexplained at the time, from the wind tunnel at the California Institute of Technology. The B-24 went on to become the most numerous and one of the most successful bombers of World War II. The Davis section, after its moment in the sun, disappeared quietly and with little effect on the evolution of wing design.
February 3, 2024 at 7:23 PM