Duncan A Sabien

May 26, 2024 | lesswrong.com | Duncan A Sabien

Author's note: in honor of the upcoming LessOnline event, I'm sharing this one here on LessWrong rather than solely on my substack.  If you like it, you should subscribe to my substack, which you can do for free (paid subscribers see stuff a week early). I welcome discussion down below but am not currently committing to participating myself. Dang it, I knew I should have gone with my first instinct, and photocopied the whole book first.

Jan 19, 2024 | medium.com | Duncan A Sabien

Sam Harris has a lovely little essay titled The Fireplace Delusion, in which he fairly compellingly lays out an argument that approximately everyone is wrong about something, knowing in advance that approximately everyone will flinch or squirm or lash out in various predictable ways as they encounter the argument. I, too, hold a position that approximately everyone disagrees with.

Nov 16, 2023 | lesswrong.com | Duncan A Sabien |Jay Olson |Ben Pace |Alvin Ånestrand

You know it must be out there, but you mostly never see it. Author's Note 1: In something like 75% of possible futures, this will be the last essay that I publish on LessWrong.  Future content will be available on my substack, where I'm hoping people will be willing to chip in a little commensurate with the value of the writing, and (after a delay) on my personal site (not yet live).

Nov 16, 2023 | homosabiens.substack.com | Duncan A Sabien

Author’s Note: This essay is not intended to be revelatory. Instead, it’s attempting to get the consequences of a few very obvious things lodged into your brain, such that they actually occur to you from time to time as opposed to occurring to you approximately never. Most people could tell you that 17 + 26 = 43 after a few seconds of thought or figuring, and it would be silly to write an essay about 17 + 26 equaling 43 and pretend that it was somehow groundbreaking or non-obvious.

Apr 11, 2023 | lesswrong.com | Duncan A Sabien

At best, it’s offering the other person a modicum of encouragement, and giving them a smidge of a reason to focus their attention here rather than in any of the other places they might have been considering putting extra words—promoting a particular opportunity to attention. That’s not valueless, but it’s small. You undervalue this greatly, I think. Attention is perhaps the greatest commodity, and correctly identifying where to focus efforts is of tremendous value.