An excerpt from some recent correspondence between Andrew Conner ( a ) and myself, which is perhaps particularly relevant given Tyler Cowen's recent assessment of o3 being AGI . Milan: over the last couple of years i've gotten to conviction that the term "AGI" isn’t well-specified enough to be useful to unpack this a bit, the core issue is that AI is already superhuman at many things, and still…
In A Short Story of the Antichrist , p. 16-17 of my copy: ... he was writing, locked up in his study, his famous work entitled The Open Way to Universal Peace and Prosperity . The superman's previous books and public activity had always met with severe criticism, though these came chiefly from people of exceptionally deep religious convictions, who for that very reason possessed no authority (I…
in my last semester of college i took an ethics class. in this class we read Singer's Famine, Affluence, and Morality ( a ). the essay moved me. the essay troubled me. i didn't want it to be right, but it seemed conceptually correct every step of the way. what i didn't see at the time is how Singer deploys the analytic philosopher's parlor trick of conjuring a strong emotion, then shuttling that…
Kendrick's latest is tremendous. Here are the lyrics of the teaser : Only thing matter right now is livin' right now when I can't spare no feelings Quiet on set but my aura loud, I navigate through hood shit and wisdom The money out here young man, fuck holdin' your hand, you'll die broke tryna play victim The little ideas I told made people go rogue until God did me a big one Reincarnated with…
In 2016, I did an analysis of how much money I would need to retire early . My conclusion back then was that I would need $1.2M, and it would take me about until about age 45 to build up to that level of wealth. As I revisited that analysis today, a few things stood out: 1. My assumed rate of return (3.5% annual) seems very conservative. e.g. from 2016 to October 2023 (o1's current knowledge…
From Francis Ford Coppola, via Megalopolis : I pledge allegiance to our human family, and to all the species that we protect. One Earth, indivisible, with long life, education, and justice for all. The original pledge of allegiance ( a ) was composed by a socialist minister in 1892, and later amended to include "under God" during the red scare (in 1954).
I love Iceland ( a ): When Ingólfur Arnarson saw Iceland rise up out of the sea he decided to let the gods decide where might be the best place along the coast for him to settle. He then threw the carved pillars of his high seat overboard and swore that he would build his farm wherever they came ashore. These pillars, or öndvegissúlur as they are known in Icelandic, were carved with the family…
Some strong wisdom on Twitter: i am old (late 40s) & here is what u need to know yes, have kids. it will be the hardest & best & most meaningful thing u could ever do a lot of other stuff that seems fun now will pall after 20 years fgs stop demonising each other some men r awful, some women r awful many men r fantastic, kind & funny & brave. so r many women u won’t find the perfect partner perfect…
Frye decries : email should be a joyous thing. a little box of special messages, just for you. but like everything else good in life it’s been corrupted by capitalism But email can still be good! It helps a lot to install Inbox When Ready . And it helps even more to implement a gmail filter that makes emails that have the word "unsubscribe" in them skip in your inbox. Kevin Lynagh has the details…
From Byung-Chul Han's The Disappearance of Rituals , starting on p. 36 of my copy: God blessed and sanctified the seventh day. The rest enjoyed on the Sabbath consecrates the work of creation. It is not mere idleness. Rather, it is an essential part of creation. In his commentary on the Book of Genesis, Rashi thus remarks: "After the six days of creation, what was still missing from the universe?…
I was recently pitching a friend on tpot being a good and valuable thing. ( Jacob Falkovich wrote a nice explanation of what tpot is ( a ), so I won't get into that here.) It can be difficult to cross over from "I've heard cool things are happening on Twitter" to "I'm at the tpot dinner party and it is great ." I think the best way to cross over is to check out some accounts you might like, dig…
Cross-posted to the EA Forum and this newsletter . This week I found myself tracing back from Zvi's To predict what happens, ask what happens ( a ) to Ajeya's Without specific countermeasures, the easiest path to transformative AI likely leads to AI takeover ( a ) to Holden's AI could defeat all of us combined ( a ). A few thoughts on that last one. First off, I'm really grateful that someone is…
Davidad offers a list of fundamental problems ( a ) that need to be solved to align an AGI; Siméon takes a stab at translating them into nontechnical language ( a ): Davidad: Value is fragile and hard to specify Siméon: Human values are hard to describe and write down and many small imprecisions in the way we characterize them might have catastrophic consequences if a powerful agent (e.g. an AGI)…
By the wondrous Romeo Stevens : You are a janitor showing up for your first day on the job. Unbeknownst to you, you’ve signed up for a real doozy. The company campus you’ve been hired to clean had startup founders who simply never thought about the fact that things needed to be cleaned. The accumulation of dirt was slow enough that they simply adapted. Though their behavior is hugely impacted by…
Previously: 1 , 2 , 3 From a correspondent: I think the phenomenon described in Moral Mazes is very real, but I see it as somewhat more morally neutral. Large organizations coordinate via ideologies, and they're not going to give you power within that organization unless you prove that you have mimetically absorbed their ideology. You have to be a mind killed partisan in order to gain power,…
This essay was co-authored with Sandra Sobanska , and a version of it was submitted to Open Philanthropy's Cause Exploration Prizes contest. Cross-posted on the Effective Altruism Forum . tl;dr Jhana are meditation states reported to be extremely blissful as well as conducive to lasting, substantial increases in wellbeing. There is preliminary neuroimaging evidence that subjective reports of jhana…
Werner Herzog in Burden of Dreams ( a ), a dark vision in the jungle (starting around 1:22:15): Taking a close look at what's around is, there is some sort of a harmony. It's the harmony of overwhelming and collective murder. And we in comparison to the articulate vileness and baseness and obscenity of all this jungle, we in comparison to that enormous articulation, we only sound and look like…
Previously . 61 and 62 of Carse's Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility (p. 84-5 of my copy): 61 There is nothing hidden in infinite sexuality. Sexual desire is exposed as sexual desire and is never therefore serious. Its satisfaction is never an achievement, but an act in a continuing relationship, and therefore joyous. Its lack of satisfaction is never a failure,…
59 and 60 of Carse's Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility (p. 82-4 of my copy): 59 Because finite, or veiled, sexuality is one or another struggle which its participants mean to win, it is oriented toward moments, outcomes, final scenes. [Consider the prominence of the cumshot in porn.] Like all finite play it proceeds largely by deception. Sexual desires are usually…
Here are a few simple things you can do to help ensure that your devices are working for you, rather than the other way around: Remember that your computer isn't yours ( a ) Relentlessly prune bullshit ( a ) Filter newsletters out of your inbox If you use Gmail, install Inbox When Ready Use a password manager – I like 1Password If you use Twitter (and you should ), install Twemex and the…
"Better not to begin. Once begun, better to finish!" Given at the bottom of this MCTB section ( a ), and in many other places too. I feel confused about what this means – curious about how people interpret it. Is it literally advising that people shouldn't start contemplative practice? Is it aiming to provide some solace and vim to folks hitting a rough patch in their practice? Is it pointing to…
Books I finished or dropped in the third and fourth quarters of 2020: Q3 – 1. Healing by Sister Dang Nghiem 2. Hearts of Oak by Eddie Robson 3. Contemplative Fitness by Kenneth Folk 4. The Progress of Insight by Mahasi Sayadaw 5. [didn't finish] The Fire Kasina by Shannon Stein & Daniel Ingram 6. [didn't finish] Nine Levels Of Increasing Embrace In Ego Development by Susanne Cook-Greuter 7. The…
From Romeo's facebook page ( a ): Instead of talking in the abstract about 'the benefits of meditation' in some sort of bid to convince others that they should be more like me, I can just speak to what I've directly experienced as reasons I consider my time investment so far (~2k hours over 5 years) to have been astoundingly worthwhile. YMWV Having tranquility on tap has reduced flinchiness about…
Books I finished or dropped in the first and second quarters of 2020: Q1 – 1. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion 2. [didn't finish] Vivekananda Reader by Swami Vivekananda 3. Thoughts on the Gita by Swami Vivekananda 4. The Uruk Series by Lou Keep 5. The Ride of a Lifetime by Robert Iger (audiobook) 6. [didn't finish] Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu & James A. Robinson See also Ben…
By Kenneth Folk, here ( a ): When I was a boy growing up in Southern California in the 1960s, the concept of physical fitness, as we know it today, did not yet exist. There had always been sports and athletics, of course, but those pursuits were for a special minority; most of us were not athletes and did not consider exercise to be particularly relevant to our lives except in our capacity as…
Last year, I wondered whether Modern Monetary Theory was a good idea . I recently encountered this description of MMT ( a ), which is the best explanation I've seen so far: I pretty strongly disagree with the notion that any country on Earth right now is “trying out MMT” merely by running deficits without concern for their impact on public debt levels. After all, traditional Keynesian…
From a 1962 speech by Arnold Harberger (quoted in Radical Markets , slightly edited for readability): If taxes are to be levied on the value of properties it is important that assessment procedures be adopted which estimate the true economic value. The economist’s answer is simple and essentially fool-proof: allow each owner to declare the value of his own property, make the declared values…
These days I find myself pulled in a bunch of directions re: contemplative practice – nondual shaiva yoga , trauma-releasing exercises , Internal Family Systems , the Unlocking the Emotional Brain framework, Consciousness Medicine stuff, continuing/deepening my zazen practice, reading more about all this stuff, etc. I'm not really sure where to point, what to prioritize, how to approach this. (A…
From Raymond Smullyan's delightful The Tao Is Silent : 1. MY SYSTEM OF ETHICS Whichever the way the wind blows, Whichever the way the world goes, Is perfectly alright with me! – (Anonymous Taoist) 2. WHICHEVER THE WAY Moralist: I have just read your poem: Whichever the way the wind blows, Whichever the way the world goes, Is good enough for me! Taoist: You misquoted it. The last line is “Is…
November 2023 update: With a heavy heart I've returned to using Google Chrome as my default browser. A small but meaningful percentage of webpages had performance issues on Brave, which accrued to a real usability cost. Previously: Harden your browser , Try your phone on grayscale , Delayed Gratification , Surveillance capitalism: definitions I've been using Brave as my browser on my little laptop…
See also: Q1 list , Q2 and Q3 list . Books I finished or dropped in the fourth quarter of 2019: 1. Inside the Mind of Xi Jinping by François Bougon Analysis of Xi by a French foreign correspondent. Interesting & opinionated (I don't know enough about China to assess the quality of Bougon's opinions). The Scholar's Stage review is good. 2. Anathem by Neal Stephenson Beautiful, especially once you…
With all that's been happening with coronavirus ( 1 , 2 ), I was thinking about publishing another update of my bug-out bag . Then I saw Preston Byrne's awesome post about prepping ( a ), which is much better than any update I would pull together. So just read that! Preston's key points: Eliminate debt Preparedness is a way of life, not a line-item Start small by building an [everyday carry]…
From this essay ( a ): The selection, education, and training, of those making crucial decisions about our civilisation are between inadequate and disastrous. The institutions they work in are generally dysfunctional. First, our mentality . We often are governed by ‘fear, honour and interest’ (Thucydides). We attribute success to skill and failure to luck: ‘The movement of events is often as…
Found here ( a ): The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, they mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construct which, with the addition of certain verbal interpretations, describes observed phenomena. The justification of such a mathematical construct is solely and precisely that it is expected to work – that is, correctly to describe phenomena from…
Other part of the 2019 review: state of the blog . 2018 review: state of the blog , analytic , reflections . 2017 review: analytic , narrative . 2016 review: analytic , narrative . 2019 aspirations... how'd those go? At the beginning of last year I laid out three aspirational themes : Everything compounds Don't rush (rushing isn't a speed) Beware the counterwill force You can read more about them…
Other part of the 2019 review: reflections . 2018 review: state of the blog , analytic , reflections . 2017 review: analytic , narrative . 2016 review: analytic , narrative . Writing My favorite posts from 2019: Watchmen trilemma – "In symbolic terms, the Transcendent occupies a middle position between Philosopher & Antiphilosopher." Altruistic action is dispassionate – feels like an important…
Books I finished or dropped in the second and third quarters of 2019: Q2 – 1. Trust No Aunty by Maria Qamar Advice on how to survive your aunties. 2. [didn't finish] The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff (audiobook) Leftist critique of surveillance capitalists (Google, Facebook, etc.). Some of the anecdotes are shocking, e.g. the 1,000 contracts users are unwittingly agreeing to…
From Andrew McAfee's great EconTalk interview : Roberts: But, the steam engine changed everything. And it's not obvious – it wasn't obvious when it was created that it would... I think most people would struggle to think how it did change everything. For me, I think about things like, "Oh, there were trains that could take things around." McAfee: Exactly. We could make fabric more quickly because…
For a while now, I've been using "(a)" notation to denote archived versions of linked pages. This is a small effort towards creating Long Content ( a ) – content that has a lifespan of decades or centuries, rather than months or years. I think basically anyone whose writing includes links to other work should include archived links alongside the original hyperlinks, if the writing is intended to…
Charles Mann succinctly presents basically all of the pressing issues of ethics in the "Moral Interlude" of his The Wizard and the Prophet . Reproduced below in full: In the spring of 2016, my friend Rob DeConto published an article in the scientific journal Nature. By chance, our families had dinner together a day after its release. Rob was both cheerful, because he had just finished a long…
Turns out M. S. Swaminathan actually did a lot of the heavy lifting to kick off the Green Revolution in India and Pakistan. From Charles Mann's The Wizard and the Prophet : The chapati is as much a part of daily life in much of South Asia as the baguette is part of daily life in France. It was such an emblem of Indian identity that it was used as a symbol of rebellion against the British in the…
I've been using Inbox When Ready ( a ) for a couple weeks and think it's great. It's a Chrome extension that adds a "Show Inbox" / "Hide Inbox" toggle button to your Gmail. The inbox is toggled off by default – when you load Gmail, you don't see your inbox right away. This is nice because it lets you point to your email and compose a new message or search your archive without having to view your…
Cross-posted to LessWrong . There's a rationalist tradition of thinking carefully about supplements & nootropics: 1 , 2 , 3 However, I haven't seen a record of what supplement regimens people end up using in practice. I've been fooling around with supplement stacks for a few years now and feel pretty good about my current regimen (outlined below), but want to see if there's any low-hanging fruit…
Although Caplan's ideological turing test ( a ) is a live meme in some of the circles I traffic in, it's rare to see examples of it in the wild. But a lovely one occurred last week! I was delighted to come across it. Reproduced in full below. Raemon's attempt: Let me know how this sounds as an ITT : Thinking and building a life for yourself Much of civilization (and the rationalsphere as a subset…
A story, from the beginning of this beautiful profile of Ricky Jay ( a ): The playwright David Mamet and the theatre director Gregory Mosher affirm that some years ago, late one night in the bar of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Chicago, this happened: Ricky Jay, who is perhaps the most gifted sleight-of-hand artist alive, was performing magic with a deck of cards. Also present was a friend of Mamet…
On p. 39-40 of my copy of In Love with the World , by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche: The term ego – or ego-self – is frequently used to describe the self-centered, fabricated outer layer of self, and we often speak of letting go of the ego, or dissolving it, or transcending it. I myself had thought of adding wood to the fire [seeking out increasingly difficult situations to test out the limits of one's…
On p. 21-2 of Reggie Ray's Touching Enlightenment : The icon of our culture is the jetliner, where we are flying at a tremendous rate of speed but, in a very real sense, going nowhere, a million miles from the earth, inhumanly trapped in intimacy for hours with strangers as troubled as we, against a backdrop of lurking dread that maybe we are going to die. We watch television and keep busy with…
People's Park , in Berkeley. From an old flyer, re-printed on p. 22 of The Battle for People's Park, Berkeley 1969 : Someday a petty official will appear with a piece of paper, called a land title, which states that the University of California owns the land of the People's Park. Where did that piece of paper come from? What is it worth? A long time ago the Costanoan Indians lived in the area now…
Previously: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 On p. 27-8 of my copy: To say that whiteness is a standpoint is to say that a significant aspect of white identity is to see oneself as an individual, outside or innocent of race – “just human.” This standpoint views white people and their interests as central to, and representative of, humanity. Whites also produce and reinforce the dominant narratives of society – such…
By Ben Hoffman, here ( a ): Imagine you’re an engineer, at an engineering conference. You see a group of your colleagues, including someone working on your project, in an intense conversation. They’re asking your friend questions, and your friend obviously has to think hard to answer them. Your intuition is going to be that something good is happening here, and you don’t want to interrupt it. Now,…