From 2ebb6489786df4b7c3b0c703eb5c4657be2a0b31 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: "Zack M. Davis" Date: Tue, 4 Aug 2026 10:08:41 -0700 Subject: [PATCH] check in --- .gitignore | 1 + ...ar-preliminary-injunction-motion-hearing.md | 5 +++-- ...isleading-people-should-be-embarrassing.md} | 2 +- ...a-piper-on-when-conversation-is-possible.md | 18 ++++++++++++++++++ ...on.md => repentance-is-not-compensation.md} | 2 +- content/drafts/so-you-dont-trust-me.md | 17 +++++++++-------- 6 files changed, 33 insertions(+), 12 deletions(-) rename content/drafts/{accidentally_misleading_people_should_be_embarrassing.md => accidentally-misleading-people-should-be-embarrassing.md} (97%) create mode 100644 content/drafts/contra-piper-on-when-conversation-is-possible.md rename content/drafts/{repentance_vs_compensation.md => repentance-is-not-compensation.md} (99%) diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore index 733cbdb..72fb980 100644 --- a/.gitignore +++ b/.gitignore @@ -1,3 +1,4 @@ +.claude/ .venv/ output/ __pycache__/ diff --git a/content/2026/dispatch-from-anthropic-v-department-of-war-preliminary-injunction-motion-hearing.md b/content/2026/dispatch-from-anthropic-v-department-of-war-preliminary-injunction-motion-hearing.md index a87bdf3..ecbc1e8 100644 --- a/content/2026/dispatch-from-anthropic-v-department-of-war-preliminary-injunction-motion-hearing.md +++ b/content/2026/dispatch-from-anthropic-v-department-of-war-preliminary-injunction-motion-hearing.md @@ -2,8 +2,9 @@ Title: Dispatch from Anthropic v. Department of War Preliminary Injunction Motio Date: 2026-03-25 19:54 Status: published Category: social science +Tags: court reporting -Dateline SAN FRANCISCO, Ca., 24 March 2026— A hearing was held on a motion for a preliminary injunction in the case of _Anthropic PBC v. U.S. Department of War et al._ in Courtroom 12 on the 19th floor of the Phillip Burton Federal Building, the Hon. Judge Rita F. Lin presiding. About 35 spectators in the gallery (journalists and other members of the public, including the present writer) looked on as Michael Mongan of WilmerHale (lead counsel for the plaintiff) and Deputy Assistant Attorney General Eric Hamilton (lead counsel for the defendant) argued before the judge. (The defendant also had another lawyer at their counsel table on the left, and the plaintiff had six more at theirs on the right, but none of those people said anything.) +Dateline SAN FRANCISCO, 24 March 2026— A hearing was held on a motion for a preliminary injunction in the case of _Anthropic PBC v. U.S. Department of War et al._ in Courtroom 12 on the 19th floor of the Phillip Burton Federal Building, the Hon. Judge Rita F. Lin presiding. About 35 spectators in the gallery (journalists and other members of the public, including the present writer) looked on as Michael Mongan of WilmerHale (lead counsel for the plaintiff) and Deputy Assistant Attorney General Eric Hamilton (lead counsel for the defendant) argued before the judge. (The defendant also had another lawyer at their counsel table on the left, and the plaintiff had six more at theirs on the right, but none of those people said anything.) For some dumb reason, recording court proceedings is banned and the official transcript won't be available online for three months, so I'm relying on my handwritten live notes to tell you what happened. I'd say that any errors are my responsibility, but actually, it's kind of the government's fault for not letting me just take a recording. @@ -13,7 +14,7 @@ Judge Lin began by describing her understanding of the case. Everyone agrees tha The previous day, Judge Lin had [assigned homework questions](https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.465515/gov.uscourts.cand.465515.118.0_2.pdf) for the lawyers to answer during the hearing, which she proceeded to read. -The first question concerned [Secretary Hegseth's 27 February Tweet](https://x.com/secwar/status/2027507717469049070?s=46) declaring that "Effective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic", and that "This decision is final." Judge Lin asked the defendant's counsel if they agreed that Secretary Hegseth lacked the authority to issue such a broad directive. +The first question concerned [Secretary Hegseth's 27 February Tweet](https://x.com/secwar/status/2027507717469049070) declaring that "Effective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic", and that "This decision is final." Judge Lin asked the defendant's counsel if they agreed that Secretary Hegseth lacked the authority to issue such a broad directive. Hamilton replied that the language needed to be read in the context of the previous sentence, that the Secretary was "directing the Department of War to designate Anthropic a Supply-Chain Risk". A social media post announcing the process of making the supply chain risk designation was not itself legally binding, and that's how the post was understood by the Department. diff --git a/content/drafts/accidentally_misleading_people_should_be_embarrassing.md b/content/drafts/accidentally-misleading-people-should-be-embarrassing.md similarity index 97% rename from content/drafts/accidentally_misleading_people_should_be_embarrassing.md rename to content/drafts/accidentally-misleading-people-should-be-embarrassing.md index d971488..9a3142e 100644 --- a/content/drafts/accidentally_misleading_people_should_be_embarrassing.md +++ b/content/drafts/accidentally-misleading-people-should-be-embarrassing.md @@ -28,7 +28,7 @@ In light of that statement, I thought the paraphrase in the article was misleadi [When I complained about this to the journalist](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/P8GuwYdy6foSzyZog/conversations-with-cade-metz-on-the-rationalists#24_June_2025), he didn't seem embarrassed. "I had to boil down what she said to plain English," he said. I said that it hadn't worked. He said it did. He recounted that the source had objected when he said his coverage would represent both views of the public figure. When I continued to insist that it seemed like a bad paraphrase when compared to what the source had told me later, he said, "Is that necessarily what she said to me?" -And in absolute fairness, maybe it wasn't, _necessarily_. I of course was not present for the conversation between the journalist and the source; I don't have the recording, if there was one. Even if the source can be assumed to be an authority about what she _meant_ to say, I cannot with absolute certainty rule out the scenario where the "somehow prove statistically which side was right" line was a reasonable paraphrase of the words she had literally said at the time and that her reconstruction three years later of what she remembered saying was unintentionally injecting more nuance after the fact. The source hadn't objected during the fact check call. If the journalist had reasonably paraphrased the words that were said to him at the time, then he was innocent in his soul. Even if his readers walked away with a distorted impression of what the source believed, the miscommunication wasn't his fault. +And in absolute fairness, maybe it wasn't, _necessarily_. I of course was not present for the conversation between the journalist and the source; I don't have the recording, if there was one. Even if the source can be assumed to be an authority about what she _meant_ to say, I cannot with absolute certainty rule out the scenario where the "somehow prove statistically which side was right" line was a reasonable paraphrase of the words she had literally said at the time and that her reconstruction three years later of what she remembered saying was unintentionally injecting more nuance after the fact. The source hadn't objected during the fact check call. If the journalist had reasonably paraphrased the words that were said to him at the time, then he was innocent in his soul. Even if his readers walked away with a distorted impression of what the source privately believed (but did not manage to successfully communicate in the interview), the miscommunication wasn't his fault. I still think this episode _looks bad for him_ and that he should have been _embarrassed_, because there should have been generalizable policy changes that could have prevented this class of error—perhaps, thinking more carefully about whether a paraphrase that makes a subject look unreasonable is truly a fair paraphrase before going to print with it. Potential sources deciding whether they should talk to the journalist are mostly worried about the risk that their views will end up being miscommunicated, not whose fault a miscommunication would be if it happened. Unlucky accidents do not impinge upon the innocence of one's soul under the moral law, but the moral law is unmercifully permissive about everyone else's right to _avoid unlucky people_. diff --git a/content/drafts/contra-piper-on-when-conversation-is-possible.md b/content/drafts/contra-piper-on-when-conversation-is-possible.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..09cda7f --- /dev/null +++ b/content/drafts/contra-piper-on-when-conversation-is-possible.md @@ -0,0 +1,18 @@ +Title: Contra Piper on When Conversation Is Possible +Date: 2027-01-01 +Status: draft +Category: philosophy + +[Kelsey Piper replies to Richard Ngo on Twitter](https://x.com/KelseyTuoc/status/2071375416812867820): + +> since you have adopted the frame that liberals are self-deceived (and therefore not trustworthy about our beliefs) and you should make up beliefs you think we have, you have become markedly less likely to say things about politics that seem interesting or thought-provoking. +> +> I think the move of declaring someone else so deceived that their own understanding of their beliefs and motives should be rejected inherently makes conversation with them nearly impossible. +> +> now, maybe you didn't value your ability to communicate with liberals, and don't see this as a loss, or see it as more than offset by whatever you gain from this frame! but from my perspective, it's a really serious loss. + +I categorically reject the idea declaring someone else so deceived that their own understanding of their beliefs and motives should be rejected inherently makes conversation with them nearly impossible. + +It certainly doesn't make conversation with _me_ impossible. When someone tells me that my understanding of my beliefs and motives should be rejected, I don't take my ball and go home in a huff, muttering that they've made further conversation nearly impossible. + + diff --git a/content/drafts/repentance_vs_compensation.md b/content/drafts/repentance-is-not-compensation.md similarity index 99% rename from content/drafts/repentance_vs_compensation.md rename to content/drafts/repentance-is-not-compensation.md index 6b0cdba..61ec172 100644 --- a/content/drafts/repentance_vs_compensation.md +++ b/content/drafts/repentance-is-not-compensation.md @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@ -Title: Repentance vs. Compensation +Title: Repentance Is Not Compensation Date: 2027-01-01 Status: draft Category: philosophy diff --git a/content/drafts/so-you-dont-trust-me.md b/content/drafts/so-you-dont-trust-me.md index a6ae021..9992b23 100644 --- a/content/drafts/so-you-dont-trust-me.md +++ b/content/drafts/so-you-dont-trust-me.md @@ -12,13 +12,13 @@ The logic here might be worth explaining in case it's not obvious. One might obj The problem is that in order to be trusted, it's not enough to be trustworthy; the other needs to _know_ that you're trustworthy. You could try telling them, "Hey, you can trust me," but that doesn't work if a dishonest person could just as easily say the same thing. -A solution, if there is one, has to take the form of [saying something that a dishonest person couldn't just as easily say](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ybG3WWLdxeTTL3Gpd/communication-requires-common-interests-or-differential). +A solution, if there is one, has to take the form of [saying something that a dishonest person couldn't just as easily say](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2021/Mar/communication-requires-common-interests-or-differential-signal-costs/). ---- -Economists call the kind of situation in which it's possible for one kind of agent to say something that a different kind couldn't just as easily say a _separating equilibrium_. To understand separating equilibria, imagine two types of owners of spherical cats on a frictionless plane shopping for cat insurance: those with healthy cats, and those with sick cats. Insurance companies on the frictionless plane can't tell the difference between healthy and sick cats, and therefore face an [adverse selection](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_selection) problem, where the very fact that someone is willing to buy insurance implies that they're less profitable to insure in expectation (because sick cats are in more need of cat insurance). +Economists call the kind of situation in which it's possible for one type of agent to say something that a different type couldn't just as easily say a _separating equilibrium_. To understand separating equilibria, imagine two types of owners of spherical cats on a frictionless plane shopping for cat insurance: those with healthy cats, and those with sick cats. Insurance companies on the frictionless plane can't tell the difference between healthy and sick cats, and therefore face an [adverse selection](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_selection) problem, where the very fact that someone is willing to buy insurance implies that they're less profitable to insure in expectation (because sick cats are in more need of cat insurance). -Depending on some math that we don't have time for, there can be situations in which the adverse selection problem is solved by the different types of cat owners having incentives to buy different policies. Sick cats face a greater fraction of possible worlds in which they file a claim than healthy cats, so making those worlds worse for the policyholder by decreasing the policy benefit payout, decreases the expected value of the policy more for sick cats than healthy cats. +Depending on some math that we don't have time for, there can be situations in which the adverse selection problem is solved by the different types of cat owners having incentives to buy different policies. Sick cats face a greater fraction of possible worlds in which they file a claim than healthy cats, so making those worlds worse for the policyholder by decreasing the policy benefit payout decreases the expected value of the policy more for sick cats than healthy cats. As a corollary, the owners of healthy cats are willing to accept a smaller discount on premium to take out a smaller-benefit policy rather than a larger-benefit one. We end up in a situation where the healthy-cat owners pay a lower premium for a lower-benefit policy and the sick-cat owners pay a higher premium for a higher-benefit policy. The choice of policy becomes a signal that distinguishes the cats; neither type has an incentive to send the signal of the other. That's our separating equilibrium. @@ -26,14 +26,18 @@ But depending on some more math that we don't have time for, there are other sit There is a crucial asymmetry. Owners of sick cats would prefer that the insurance company falsely believe that their cats are healthy, whereas owners of healthy cats want their cats to be seen as they are. Pooling equilibria generally benefit the former at the expense of the latter. The existence of sick cats makes healthy cats shoulder the burden of more risk: the healthy-cat owners would prefer to transfer more risk to the insurance company by buying a policy with higher benefits, but the insurance company can't sell it to them, because then the sick-cat owners would buy it, too. -(As it turns out, there are pooling equilibria that are better for the owners of healthy cats than some separating equilibria—but that's only because the cost they'd pay in reduced benefits-per-unit-premium to separate themselves from the owners of sick cats isn't worth it. They'd be even better off if cats never got sick.) +(As it turns out, there can be pooling equilibria that are better for the owners of healthy cats than some separating equilibria—but that's only because the cost they'd pay in reduced benefits-per-unit-premium to separate themselves from the owners of sick cats isn't worth it. They'd be even better off if cats never got sick.) ---- -Or imagine a woman and a man in a recently-formed romantic relationship. + +Imagine a woman and a man early in a romantic relationship. After a few dates, the initial chemistry is starting to wane. + [TODO: +https://claude.ai/chat/6be695f5-6ef9-4e95-93e4-66bdb204c6f6 + "I learned from a previous relationship not to teach people how to tell me things I want to hear." "I respect your security posture." @@ -45,6 +49,3 @@ Or imagine a woman and a man in a recently-formed romantic relationship. And that's why honest people are never touchy about the matter of being trusted. They know that they have to pay a price to distinguish themselves from dishonest people, - - - -- 2.53.0