LessWrong has been acquired by EA

After reviewing the evidence, both of the EA acquisition and the cessation of Lightcone collaboration with the Fooming Shoggoths, I'm updating my p(doom) upwards 10 percentage points, from 0.99 to 1.09.

↑ comment by habryka (habryka4) · 2025-04-01T15:09:21.297Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Where is it now? :P

Replies from: Diatom

↑ comment by Alice Blair (Diatom) · 2025-04-01T15:22:07.654Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I have not been able to independently verify this observation, but am open to further evidence if and only if it updates my p(doom) higher.

What convinced me this made sense? 

• One of EA's most popular and profitable games is The Sims, which famously benefits from Sim irrationality. In The Sims 5, there will be bold and new exciting ways for your Sims to behave, and they'll be able to use our memetic virality model to have controversies and factional alignment. (Generating scissor statements is ethical so long as you're doing it in Simlish.)
• EA is investing in the hypothesis that bad writing drives underperformance. Having ratfic writers and philosophers look at Mass Effect 3 could have turned that from a disappointing series-ender (did you play Andromeda?) to a resounding triumph, and Dragon Age: Veilguard, despite being positively reviewed in general, was panned for its weak writing and became inflamed in culture war controversy. We've thought a lot about how misbehaving gods would act, in a way that I think would have made for a more compelling story and user experience.
• I didn't expect we could do anything relating to EA's flagship sports games (FIFA, NHL, Madden, etc.), but what astonished me was the potential to do the reverse. I don't know if we'll be able to get Gwern 2025 out in time, but look forward to Gwern 2026. They were practically salivating at the idea of being able to take a normally annual product, tied to sports schedules that won't be adjusted by advancing AI progress, and adapt it to a domain which, as part of an overall hyperbolic growth curve, will generate enough new content for a new release in ~half the time every new release. 

the intent is to provide the user with a sense of pride and accomplishment for unlocking different rationality methods.

Concurrently, GiveWell has announced that all of your donations will be devolved to the development of EA Sports' latest entry of the NBA Live game series:

it's nothing but net.

Just wanted to let everyone know I now wield a +307 strong upvote thanks to my elite 'hacking' skills. The rationalist community remains safe, because I choose to use this power responsibly.

As an unrelated inquiry, is anyone aware of some "karma injustices" that need to be corrected?

i think i'm in the wrong universe, can someone at tech support reboot the servers or something? it's not reasonable for you to screw up something as simple as putting paying customers in the right simulation . and then you're like "here's some picolightcones". if you actually cared it would be micro or at least nano

I'm being gaslit so hard right now

You had me until Electronic Arts lmao.

You can now choose which virtues you want to display next to your username! Just go to the virtues dialogue on the frontpage and select the ones you want to display (up to 3).

Hey, I paid for picolightcones, but they didn't appear? But I am being deducted from my card. Is this how its supposed to be?

I haven't collected all the virtues yet, but now there is no way for me to acquire more lootboxes because I've ran out of lw-bucks. I don't know what to do.

Why do I have dozens of strong upvote and downvote strength, but no more agreement strength than before I began my strength training? Does EA not think agreement is importance?

Ahh, i liked the music, but cannot find it now. Is it available somewhere?

I have 5/12 virtues but one of them is the virtue of perfectionism so I can't stop thinking about the other 7.

And lo, the people, though they were virtuous, were not virtuous enough to receive the blessing of the 12th virtue.

Can you please send the new fooming shoggoth album to spotify, I was really enjoying that music! 

edit: Ah I see this question has been answered, but I like to note that I'm impressed by the ai music and I'm going to look into making some myself. Perhaps songs about cognitive bias's could be a good way to learn them deep enough in your brain that you can avoid them in non-theroetic situations. 

Finally, the singularity is near... the singularity of LessWrong posts being evaluated by engagement metrics and monetization potential! Called it – always knew the 'Game Culture Civilization' model would eventually be implemented by a major publisher. Looking forward to seeing how EA balances the status economy with microtransactions for faster 'Pure Game' progression. This acquisition has real synergy!

Are the new songs going to be posted to youtube/spotify, or should I be downloading them?

Why not Valve?

Hmm, it seems the when I achieved the virtue of The Void, it was absorbed by the void

Unable to comply, building in progress.

With all this new funding, are we finally turning LW-Bux into real money? I'm ready to sell!

Before logging in I had 200 LW-Bux, and 3 virtues. Now I have 50 LW and 8 virtues, and I didn't do anything. Whats that? Is there any explanation of how this stuff works?