Top all-time · #3372
Luke Muehlhauser
Personal blog · lukemuehlhauser.comphilosophyhistoryai
Luke Muehlhauser's personal blog at lukemuehlhauser.com covers philosophy, history and ai. Since 2014, 23 different Hacker News readers have linked it 56 times, most often “How big a deal was the Industrial Revolution? (2017)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-02, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (9) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog for posts on AI risk and superintelligence, including replies to the Musk and Gates Mars-overpopulation analogy and to Wait But Why, plus a guide to modern classical music.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 9 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- /musk-and-gates-on-superintelligence-and-fast-takeoff/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-12-12
- /a-reply-to-wait-but-why-on-machine-superintelligence/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-12-12
- How big a deal was the Industrial Revolution? (2017)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-05-22
- A beginner’s guide to modern classical music2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-12-22
- Three wild speculations from amateur quantitative macrohistory2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-09-17
What Hacker News says?
That's provably false when you get to the bottom of what makes proprietary software trustworthy: it has to be verified by qualified people who you trust after being designed and built with enough rigor to not have accidental flaws. That's regardless of whether it's proprietary or FLOSS. I went into detail here: https://pastebin.com/EZQWbwCB In fact, the first systems that resisted strong pentesting by NSA were propr…
Comment linking /wp-content/uploads/Karger-et-al-A-retrospective-on-the-VAX-VMM-security-kernel.pdf
on “Alternatives to Google Products”Submitted How big a deal was the Industrial Revolution? (2017) as a story · 93 points
HN discussionWhat I've heard is that MIRI has an explicit philosophy of concentrating on the more abstract & theoretical aspects of AI safety. The idea being that if AI safety is something that you can just tack on to a working design at the end, they don't have a comparative advantage there: it's difficult to predict which design will win and the design's implementor is best positioned to tack on the safety bit themselves. >...…
Comment linking /a-reply-to-wait-but-why-on-machine-superintelligence/
on “Introducing OpenAI”Submitted Pre-Socratics: A Painless Introduction as a story · 83 points
HN discussion"two OpenBMCs aren't purely IBM, and that's more than one example apart from RISC-V possibilities. BMC is particularly important, because remote access is critical for large-scale management, typically implemented with a lot of problems, and often exposed highly insecurely. " Very, well said. I've definitely thought about this. I was just turning ideas around instead of digging super deep. Still, one problem I had w…
Comment linking /wp-content/uploads/Bell-Looking-Back-Addendum.pdf
on “Open source firmware is important for security”Submitted How German nuclear scientists reacted to the news of Hiroshima as a story · 37 points
HN discussion" then a full VM is your only guarantee" VM's on commercial and FOSS platforms have been unable to ensure security as far back as first pentest of VM/370. They were too complicated depending on a lot of privileged code. The founders of INFOSEC took aim at it with KVM/370 and VAX VMM Security Kernel. One example (see esp layering and assurance sections): http://lukemuehlhauser.com/wp-content/uploads/Karger-et-al-A...…
Comment linking /wp-content/uploads/Karger-et-al-A-retrospective-on-the-VAX-VMM-security-kernel.pdf
on “Open-sourcing gVisor, a sandboxed container runtime”Submitted Pre-Socratics: A Painless Introduction as a story · 19 points
HN discussionI think Billionaire alignment is a much larger problem than AI alignment. To use Bostrom's language, it's not full-on owl domestication, but sparrows with owl-like powers that we need to worry about. https://lukemuehlhauser.com/bostroms-unfinished-fable-of-the...
Comment linking /bostroms-unfinished-fable-of-the-sparrows/
on “Iceland declares ocean-current instability a national security risk”Submitted Why I Resigned From The Anthropic Board as a story · 13 points
HN discussionIt was already done by DOD under Walker's Computer Security Initiative. It succeeded with numerous, high-assurance products coming to market with way better security than their competitors. Here's the components it had: 1. A clear set of criteria for information security for the businesses to develop against with various sets of features and assurance activities representing various levels of security. 2. Private an…
Comment linking /wp-content/uploads/Karger-et-al-A-retrospective-on-the-VAX-VMM-security-kernel.pdf
on “Defending Against Hackers Took a Back Seat at Yahoo, Insiders Say”Submitted How big a deal was the Industrial Revolution? A human historical view as a story · 8 points
HN discussionMusk calls that a "radically inaccurate analogy": http://lukemuehlhauser.com/musk-and-gates-on-superintelligen... AI luminary Stuart Russell also takes on this analogy in this presentation: https://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~russell/talks/russell-ijcai15-f... >OK, let’s continue [the overpopulation on Mars] analogy: >Major governments and corporations are spending billions of dollars to move all of humanity to Mars [analo…
Comment linking /musk-and-gates-on-superintelligence-and-fast-takeoff/
on “How Elon Musk and Y Combinator Plan to Stop Computers from Taking Over”Submitted Three wild speculations from amateur quantitative macrohistory as a story · 8 points
HN discussionOr see TCSEC that was how the market produced the first, security-focused systems. They were only ones to pass pentesting at the time with designs and implementations still stronger than most software today. Although it had issues, its core lifecycle requirements mostly work and are still used for high-assurance security implementations. Alternatively, the DO-178B standard (now DO-178C) that got more vendors writing…
Comment linking /wp-content/uploads/Bell-Looking-Back-Addendum.pdf
on “Saas CTO Security Checklist”Submitted Musk and Gates on superintelligence and fast takeoff as a story · 4 points
HN discussionIt was done successfully before. Resulted in most secure products ever to exist. A few still use such methods with excellent results during pentests. Also preempted major vulnerabilities in popular stuff. Bell, of Bell-LaPadula security model, describes it here: http://lukemuehlhauser.com/wp-content/uploads/Bell-Looking-B...
Comment linking /wp-content/uploads/Bell-Looking-Back-Addendum.pdf
on “Bruce Schneier: 'The Internet Era of Fun and Games Is Over'”Submitted A beginner’s guide to modern classical music as a story · 3 points
HN discussion"The NSA uses Windows like everyone else." Bingo! Well, a mix of Windows, Linux (esp Red Hat), and Solaris (optionally with trusted extensions). All low-assurance operating systems with history of 0-days plus current ones for at least Windows and Linux. It's not like they didn't know it was coming. High-assurance field, including pioneers in INFOSEC, warned them over and over. http://lukemuehlhauser.com/wp-content/u…
Comment linking /wp-content/uploads/Bell-Looking-Back-Addendum.pdf
on “ShadowBrokers: The NSA Compromised the SWIFT Network”Submitted There was only one industrial revolution as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThank you! And, yes, security can help people when your job allows you to do that. I was talking about high-assurance security specifically. That's products built with techniques like B3/A1 or EAL6/EAL7 required. Examples: https://www.aesec.com/classic/DesigningTheGemsosSecurityKern... https://lukemuehlhauser.com/wp-content/uploads/Karger-et-al-... https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD1014758.pdf https://ghs.com/product…
Comment linking /wp-content/uploads/Karger-et-al-A-retrospective-on-the-VAX-VMM-security-kernel.pdf
on “The SeL4 Microkernel: An Introduction [pdf]”Submitted The Riddle of Being or Nothingness as a story · 3 points
HN discussion"but also faster, because the lack of accidents and assurance about other's likely actions on the road allow for mostly smooth operation." Yes, yes. It would seem so. There was a counter-point here that showed eliminating traffic controls reduced crashes and congrestion because people paid more attention. Was done in quite a few cities. I'd agree some standardization on behavior and design definitely improves things…
Comment linking /wp-content/uploads/Bell-Looking-Back-Addendum.pdf
on “OpenSSL Security Advisory”Submitted Pre-Socratics: A Painless Introduction as a story · 2 points
HN discussionMusk replied to Ng's comment: http://lukemuehlhauser.com/musk-and-gates-on-superintelligen... Or as someone else quipped, the moment a human steps foot on Mars, Mars has become overpopulated.
Comment linking /musk-and-gates-on-superintelligence-and-fast-takeoff/
on “Open Philanthropy Project awards a grant of $30M to OpenAI”Submitted Positional Externalities [pdf] as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThis reminds me a little of "Being or Nothingness" by Joe K (hehe) http://lukemuehlhauser.com/the-riddle-of-being-or-nothingnes...
Comment linking /the-riddle-of-being-or-nothingness
on “The anonymous Silicon Valley satire that has stumped tech world insiders”Submitted Pre-Socratics: A Painless Introduction as a story · 1 points
HN discussion"When it comes to securing ourselves, anything coming from the NSA should be treated as some form of disinformation." "The NSA betrayed its "information security" brief long ago and can never be trusted on that front again." Err, sort of. They were a valuable part of the field in the 80's and 90's, esp for evaluations. Their own stuff that's actually designed for security is done well and has some things to teach us…
Comment linking /wp-content/uploads/Bell-Looking-Back-Addendum.pdf
on “NSA Chief Hacker Explains How to Avoid NSA Spying”Submitted Pre-Socratics: A Painless Introduction as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
