“Please Give Them a Chance: On China, Rationalism, and AI Safety” by gzjw

When I finished HPMOR, I immediately knew it was the best novel I had read in more than a decade. I only wished I had found it sooner.

When I started reading The Sequences, I discovered that the Chinese translation group had translated only the first volume. When I graduated from university, two years ago, AI translation had only just become good enough to convey the meaning of an article with reasonable accuracy. It was only about a year and a half ago that I truly found my way here and began engaging seriously with rationalism.

My score on the Chinese college entrance exam was only slightly above the cutoff for what was then called a first-tier university. At university, my grades were near the bottom of my year, and I almost failed to graduate. It is probably fair to say that the vast majority of graduates from first-tier Chinese universities are smarter and more capable than I am.

English has always been my worst subject. From childhood through school, I could barely pass it.

I have now been working for two and a half years and have saved about 15,000 [...]

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First published:
September 20th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/GoX3uYQ4QN5HKvL7u/please-give-them-a-chance-on-china-rationalism-and-ai-safety

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.