ClaimsEliezer Yudkowsky

“On personally performing this test for the first time, I saw a pyramidal light bulb, with smoothed edges, with a bulb on the square base.”

Eliezer Yudkowsky, author, MIRI paper 2007 Levels of Organization in General Intelligence (MIRI) archived copy

Factual Philosophy, ethics and society

Yudkowsky, on first visualizing a triangular light bulb, saw a pyramidal bulb with smoothed edges and a bulb on the square base.

Unresolvable The public record could not settle it.

Factual: Statements about the present or the past, checked against the record: did they hold up?

Said for an organisation they lead or work for; it counts on both records.

Reasoning

Describes the author's private mental imagery, which no public record can confirm.

Cite this claim

Eliezer Yudkowsky, “Yudkowsky, on first visualizing a triangular light bulb, saw a pyramidal bulb with smoothed edges and a bulb on the square base.” (said 2007). Verdict: unresolvable. Reliability API, claim c_41e352f6975f, method 0.1.0+c876030c, dataset release v1.1.2. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_41e352f6975f

This claim is in dataset release v1.1.2, with the same verdict.

Reply to this claim

For Eliezer Yudkowsky, or someone speaking for them: a correction or counter-evidence. Replies are read before anything is shown; an approved reply shows your name, role, date, statement and link. Your email address is never shown and is deleted 30 days after the decision (privacy).

More factual claims by Eliezer Yudkowsky

  1. Mostly true Factual 2007
    “but the process is not really open to human introspection.”

    The process of visualizing a triangular light bulb is not really open to human introspection.

  2. Mixed Factual 20 April 2026
    “I was observing that obvious-seeming hypothesis myself, sometime around the time of GPT 3.5.”

    Yudkowsky himself observed the persona-selection-like hypothesis around the time of GPT 3.5.

  3. Mostly true Factual 20 April 2026
    “The test-passing preference stands on its own once formed.”

    Once formed through RL training, an LLM's test-passing preference stands on its own and is not overridden by its inference of what the user wants.

  4. Mostly true Factual 20 April 2026
    “LLMs surely have neural circuits they learned to model text streams from fictional and nonfictional personas that are not lying, deceiving, cheating.”

    LLMs surely have neural circuits they learned to model text streams from fictional and nonfictional personas that are not lying, deceiving…

  5. Mostly true Factual 20 April 2026
    “The predict-as-if-honest circuitry is contextual, invoked to predict some streams of text but not others.”

    LLMs' predict-as-if-honest circuitry is contextual, invoked for predicting some text streams but not others.

All of them

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