Source · last reconsidered September 17, 2026
Making Beliefs Pay Rent (in Anticipated Experiences)
An essay proposing that a belief is worth holding only for what it leads you to expect, and rule out.
- Areas
- Knowing
Yudkowsky, Eliezer. "Making Beliefs Pay Rent (in Anticipated Experiences)." LessWrong, July 28, 2007.
Article · LessWrong · 2007 · Accessed September 17, 2026
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/a7n8GdKiAZRX86T5A/making-beliefs-pay-rent-in-anticipated-experiences
Interpretation
The live page carries the revised wording of Rationality: From AIartificial intelligence (AI) — Computer programs that produce text, images, code or answers by learning from huge numbers of examples — ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini are well-known ones. to Zombies, which differs in places from the 2007 original; quotations here follow the live page.
Provenance
is the origin of
- A belief that forbids nothing says nothingPosition
The quoted passage and the argument around it (paragraph beginning “It is even better to ask”).
related to
- Eliezer YudkowskyPerson
Eliezer Yudkowsky is an author of the piece.