3 ms·

Scott Alexander put his finger on the most salient aspect of this, IMO, which I interpret this way: the compounding (aggregating) behavior of agents allowed t

Scott Alexander put his finger on the most salient aspect of this, IMO, which I interpret this way: the compounding (aggregating) behavior of agents allowed to interact in environments this becomes important, indeed shall soon become existential (for some definition of "soon"), to the extent that agents' behavior in our shared world is impact by what transpires there. -- We can argue and do, about what agents "are" and whether they are parrots (no) or people (not yet). But that is irrelevant if LLM-agents are (to put it one way) "LARPing," but with the consequence that doing so results in consequences not confined to the site. I don't need to spell out a list; it's "they could do anything you said YES to, in your AGENT.md" permissions checks. "How the two characters '-y' ended civilization: a post-mortem"

deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
Terretta 8mo ago
> We can argue and do, about what agents "are" and whether they are parrots (no) or people (not yet). It's more helpful to argue about when people are parrots and when people are not. For a good portion of the day humans behave indistinguishably from continuation machines. As moltbook can emulate reddit, continuation machines can emulate a uni cafeteria. What's been said before will certainly be said again, most differentiation is in the degree of variation and can be measured as unexpectedness while retaining salience. Either case is aiming at the perfect blend of congeniality and perplexity to keep your lunch mates at the table not just today but again in future days. Seems likely we're less clever than we parrot.
- ccppurcell 8mo ago
  People like to, ahem, parrot this view, that we are not much more than parrots ourselves. But it's nonsense. There is something it is like to be me. I might be doing some things "on autopilot" but while I'm doing that I'm having dreams, nostalgia, dealing with suffering, and so on.
  - bloomca 8mo ago
    All your thoughts are and experiences are real and pretty unique in some ways. However, the circumstances are usually well-defined and expected (our life is generally very standardized), so the responses can be generalized successfully. You can see it here as well -- discussions under similar topics often touch the same topics again and again, so you can predict what will be discussed when the next similar idea comes to the front page.
    - ccppurcell 8mo ago
      So what if we are quite predictable. That doesn't mean we are "trying" to predict the next word, or "trying" to be predictable, which is what llms are doing. Over a large population, trends emerge. An LLM is not a member of the population, it is a replicator of trends in a population, not a population of souls but of sentences, a corpus.
  - JohnMakin 8mo ago
    It’s a weird product of this hype cycle that inevitably involves denying the crazy power of the human brain - every second you are awake or asleep the brain is processing enormous amounts of information available to it without you even realizing it, and even when you abuse the crap out of the brain, or damage it, it still will adapt and keep working as long as it has energy. No current ai technology could come close to what even the dumbest human brain does already.
    - djeastm 8mo ago
      A lot of that behind-the-scenes processing is keeping our meatbags alive, though, and is shared with a lot of other animals. Language and higher-order reasoning (that AI seems better and better at) has only evolved quite recently.
decodebytes 8mo ago
This is why I started https://nono.sh https://nono.sh , agents start with zero trust in a kernel isolated sandbox.
- js4ever 8mo ago
  What's the benefit over using docker?
  - bardsore 8mo ago
    Can't speak for the benefits of https://nono.sh/ https://nono.sh/ since I haven't used it, but a downside of using docker for this is that it gets complicated if you want the agent to be allowed to do docker stuff without giving it dangerous permissions. I have a Vagrant setup inspired by this blogpost https://blog.emilburzo.com/2026/01/running-claude-code-dangerously-safely/ https://blog.emilburzo.com/2026/01/running-claude-code-dange..., but a bug in VirtualBox is making one core run at 100% the entire time so I haven't used it much.
    - emilburzo 8mo ago
      > but a bug in VirtualBox is making one core run at 100% the entire time FYI they fixed it in 7.2.6: https://github.com/VirtualBox/virtualbox/issues/356#issuecomment-3817823550 https://github.com/VirtualBox/virtualbox/issues/356#issuecom...
- indigodaddy 8mo ago
  I had O4.5 build me this project to throw on a VPS or server, works well for me: https://github.com/jgbrwn/vibebin https://github.com/jgbrwn/vibebin
63stack 8mo ago
I can't tell what any of this means
- gordonhart 8mo ago
  That’s been my reaction to every Slate Star Codex/Astral Codex Ten piece I’ve read.
  - Cthulhu_ 8mo ago
    I'm not sure how to react to that without being insulting, I find their works pretty well written and understandable (and I'm not a native speaker or anything). Maybe it's the lesswrong / rationalist angle?
- thousand_nights 8mo ago
  i really dislike the constant appeal to authority of techfluencers on HN
donchuru 8mo ago
You're starting to sound like an agent yourself.
yencabulator 8mo ago
> it's "they could do anything you said YES to, in your AGENT.md" permissions checks. Nothing fed to an LLM is a "permissions check", they're filler for a context window after which the generator produces the some likely tokens. If AGENTS.md can make your agent do something, it was already able to do that without the AGENTS.md.

deleted 8mo ago

[deleted]

Terretta 8mo ago

> We can argue and do, about what agents "are" and whether they are parrots (no) or people (not yet). It's more helpful to argue about when people are parrots and when people are not. For a good portion of the day humans behave indistinguishably from continuation machines. As moltbook can emulate reddit, continuation machines can emulate a uni cafeteria. What's been said before will certainly be said again, most differentiation is in the degree of variation and can be measured as unexpectedness while retaining salience. Either case is aiming at the perfect blend of congeniality and perplexity to keep your lunch mates at the table not just today but again in future days. Seems likely we're less clever than we parrot.

ccppurcell 8mo ago
People like to, ahem, parrot this view, that we are not much more than parrots ourselves. But it's nonsense. There is something it is like to be me. I might be doing some things "on autopilot" but while I'm doing that I'm having dreams, nostalgia, dealing with suffering, and so on.
- bloomca 8mo ago
  All your thoughts are and experiences are real and pretty unique in some ways. However, the circumstances are usually well-defined and expected (our life is generally very standardized), so the responses can be generalized successfully. You can see it here as well -- discussions under similar topics often touch the same topics again and again, so you can predict what will be discussed when the next similar idea comes to the front page.
  - ccppurcell 8mo ago
    So what if we are quite predictable. That doesn't mean we are "trying" to predict the next word, or "trying" to be predictable, which is what llms are doing. Over a large population, trends emerge. An LLM is not a member of the population, it is a replicator of trends in a population, not a population of souls but of sentences, a corpus.
- JohnMakin 8mo ago
  It’s a weird product of this hype cycle that inevitably involves denying the crazy power of the human brain - every second you are awake or asleep the brain is processing enormous amounts of information available to it without you even realizing it, and even when you abuse the crap out of the brain, or damage it, it still will adapt and keep working as long as it has energy. No current ai technology could come close to what even the dumbest human brain does already.
  - djeastm 8mo ago
    A lot of that behind-the-scenes processing is keeping our meatbags alive, though, and is shared with a lot of other animals. Language and higher-order reasoning (that AI seems better and better at) has only evolved quite recently.

decodebytes 8mo ago

This is why I started https://nono.sh https://nono.sh , agents start with zero trust in a kernel isolated sandbox.

js4ever 8mo ago
What's the benefit over using docker?
- bardsore 8mo ago
  Can't speak for the benefits of https://nono.sh/ https://nono.sh/ since I haven't used it, but a downside of using docker for this is that it gets complicated if you want the agent to be allowed to do docker stuff without giving it dangerous permissions. I have a Vagrant setup inspired by this blogpost https://blog.emilburzo.com/2026/01/running-claude-code-dangerously-safely/ https://blog.emilburzo.com/2026/01/running-claude-code-dange..., but a bug in VirtualBox is making one core run at 100% the entire time so I haven't used it much.
  - emilburzo 8mo ago
    > but a bug in VirtualBox is making one core run at 100% the entire time FYI they fixed it in 7.2.6: https://github.com/VirtualBox/virtualbox/issues/356#issuecomment-3817823550 https://github.com/VirtualBox/virtualbox/issues/356#issuecom...
indigodaddy 8mo ago
I had O4.5 build me this project to throw on a VPS or server, works well for me: https://github.com/jgbrwn/vibebin https://github.com/jgbrwn/vibebin

63stack 8mo ago

I can't tell what any of this means

gordonhart 8mo ago
That’s been my reaction to every Slate Star Codex/Astral Codex Ten piece I’ve read.
- Cthulhu_ 8mo ago
  I'm not sure how to react to that without being insulting, I find their works pretty well written and understandable (and I'm not a native speaker or anything). Maybe it's the lesswrong / rationalist angle?
thousand_nights 8mo ago
i really dislike the constant appeal to authority of techfluencers on HN

donchuru 8mo ago

You're starting to sound like an agent yourself.

yencabulator 8mo ago

> it's "they could do anything you said YES to, in your AGENT.md" permissions checks. Nothing fed to an LLM is a "permissions check", they're filler for a context window after which the generator produces the some likely tokens. If AGENTS.md can make your agent do something, it was already able to do that without the AGENTS.md.