There are a plethora of questionable stains

This is just not Yudkowsky's writing style.

An interesting combination of developments:

https://glowfic.com/posts/8210

https://x.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1771201953466343534

Having read "games of no chance", I'm pretty confident that it's either Eliezer or someone who is trying quite hard to sound like Eliezer. Reasoning as follows, contains mild spoilers for "Games of no Chance" and also most fiction that Eliezer is known to have written:

1. The MC is dropped from a context where they know lots of math and game theory into a world that doesn't have those concepts.
2. The MC immediately starts talking about how they will use their superior math knowledge to take over the world, even before they have fully oriented to the situation (and, indeed, before they have any in-world reason to know that the lack of math is a feature of the world as a whole rather than the corner of it they were dropped into).
3. The MC treats their math knowledge as a sacred secret when teaching other characters. The other characters go along with it, and immediately recognize how valuable this sacred math is. To demonstrate that the other character understands the importance of math, they even ignore a deadly insult from the MC (that is, something somewhat rude the MC said, but was called out by the author as actually being a deadly insult in that character's culture).

HPMoR, Planecrash, and The Hero With a Thousand Chances all share this same pattern. I am not aware of any other author that tends to write this particular pattern, and particularly not with the same emphasis on decision theory adjacent stuff.

In particular, I'm looking at this exchange: https://www.glowfic.com/posts/7264?page=22

Sora: One of the 'mixed strategies' somewhere between 0% folding and 100% folding is a「Nash equilibrium」that leaves me indifferent to—"

Stephanie: "A 'Nash equilibrium'," Stephanie repeats slowly, sounding out the words. The phrase "næʃ ekwɪˈlɪbriəm" has failed to translate. It involves math, somehow.

Sora: "… okay! On the off chance that we've just struck paydirt I need you to lose a game of Rock Paper Scissors. You're wagering away your right to share this knowledge with anyone until I say otherwise."

Stephanie: Stephanie's indignance at this treatment is vastly outweighed by her curiosity about the forbidden gambling knowledge. She plays scissors to Sora's rock, wagering her silence on the matter, and commits to paying attention to what he has to say.

Incidentally I'm also pretty sure this is not written by only Yudkowsky.

How does one distinguish this from a fic that's merely strongly inspired by Yudkowsky? You would expect some of those.

@jacksonpolack stylometry I guess? Feels like cheating to use that though.

@jacksonpolack Okay, point in favor of "inspired by Yudkowsky":

> Sora doesn't disagree. He'd figured his first Isekai Protagonist Invention would either be the wet sulfuric acid process or the movable type printing press, depending on Elkia's current branch of the tech tree, but it might end up being a less caustic recipe for soap. His skin isn't happy with the results either.

This seems a little bit too on-the-nose to be Eliezer. Wouldn't be the first time he'd left such an obvious callout to one of his previous works, but.

@FaulSname Funnily enough, this is part of why I think it isn't him, just someone trying to write in the same genre of rationalist-isekai-protagonist.

@Lorxus (which I really really hope becomes a real-er genre. I like the genre.)

@FaulSname Actually, those are the two inventions provided by his dath ilani in previous threads. Keltham mourned he couldn't just invent the printing press.

I am personally quite confident that Syzygy is Eliezer plus a coauthor who plays serious poker.

Anyone want to share what prompted the creation of this market? I'm curious what caused this particular hypothesis to gain traction over say the many other accounts that could be accused of being EY in disguise.

@BenjaminCosman https://www.glowfic.com/posts/7264, although there's been another thread since.

games of no chance · Sandboxes

it couldn't have happened to two nicer people (Syzygy – page 1 of 35)

Syzygy tried to upload an SVG icon for a quadricolor flag: check the mime-type of https://d1anwqy6ci9o1i.cloudfront.net/users%2F884%2Ficons%2Fvsd39uuvk1b8q154x5uog6_elkia.png. Syzygy has also used fancy CSS for the tables of rock-paper-scissors outcomes. I think this is strong evidence against Syzygy being Eliezer.

That is a good point, but not, fortunately for you if you are correct, good enough to stop me from continuing to bet YES.

@ilzolende It isn't that fancy of CSS, I got decently similar results out of ChatGPT.

If Syzygy is an account used by Eliezer and another author cowriting the thread disguised as a single author, which way does this thread resolve?

@Aevylmar Er, this question, sorry for the misstatement.

@Aevylmar I would resolve it YES if Eliezer is cowriting even if he's not writing the whole thing, NO if it's entirely written by another author who is asking him a large number of questions behind the scene.

@Arete Thanks!

for those who want to bet on the other possible answer, https://manifold.markets/JiSK/is-syzygy-on-the-glowfic-constellat-4280bdaa1413

Is Syzygy on the Glowfic constellation an alternate account of Eliezer Yudkowsky, writing alone?

10% chance. https://manifold.markets/Arete/is-syzygy-on-the-glowfic-constellat is a market on the same proposition, but resolves YES if it is a collaboration under a shared pseudonym. Aevylmar If Syzygy is an account used by Eliezer and another author cowriting the thread disguised as a single author, which way does this thread resolve? Arete @Aevylmar I would resolve it YES if Eliezer is cowriting even if he's not writing the whole thing, NO if it's entirely written by another author who is asking him a large number of questions behind the scene. This market will resolve YES only if Syzygy is Eliezer writing without (human) assistance under a different pseudonym from his primary account. If the other market resolves NO, this will also resolve NO. https://glowfic.com/users/884 [link preview]

@Arete this clarification should go into the question description IMO

@Arete Have you considered resolving to x% if x% of the tags are written by him?

Given it's been ruled one way so far, changing it now after bets based on the existing standard seems like it'd be less than ideal. Also, it's unclear if we'll find out what percentage of tags are written by who.