In this post (the first post of skyspace4!) I reflect on at least 3 topics: (1) There are 3 types of shame: shame that causes you to take actions better aligned with your goals, shame that is maladaptive embarrassment of doing something right, and shame that causes you to pull away from others. (2) What fun pursuits do I value the most? (3) Is it actually good to try to achieve your goals?
Something that I feel pretty strongly about is that technology currently does a lot of harm.
Often -- especially when I'm contemplating doing unfamiliar or "uncomfortable" things with regards to mitigating xrisk from AI -- I'll have thoughts basically of the following form: "I shouldn't be doing this --- I'm the **wrong person** to be doing this."
**Claim**: I should seek to fill my life with more quality-adjusted-seconds-spent-socializing.
> Exposing your brain to lots of stimuli can wreck your ability to concentrate and stuff.
> If you feel that you are doing something misaligned with your values, consider telling an accountability partner about it about committing to change right now.
> Strive not to find a convincing explanation. Strive instead to have true beliefs. It's much better to be confused and *know* that you're confused than believe an incorrect thing.
Sometimes I believe different things than other people that I respect. This is pretty concerning because [[wrong exists]], and I don't want to be wrong, so conditional on me being wrong I'd like to know that I am.
**Conjecture**: I can hack myself to feel excited about doing lots of things.
How would you like to die? Well, really [[Will humans beat death in the next 30 years?|I'd rather not]]. Okay, so it's a sore subject. Maybe instead let me ask, **how would you like to live**? This seems like a better question for several reasons. For instance, it seems more actionable. If I am to die, I don't think assigning lots of extra weight to that moment is good. If anything that moment should have the least weight, because I'll never remember it.
**Claim**: Suppose you actually want something to happen. Then you should either do that thing right now, or put it on your calendar.
tl;dr: when having a disagreement involving a complex concept X, consider saying what you actually mean by X, or both parties might just be talking past each other!
tl;dr: it's generally best to communicate clearly and truthfully.
tl;dr: Some ppl want things to go well for you --- taking advantage of cooperation is great!
Effective altruism, rationality, trans-humanism, utilitarianism, etc empirically seem to have a fairly bad reputation among the wider population. If you mention this in a conversation ppl will instantly be like "oh so you should rob a bank, or be SBF", or talk about how cold calculation gets the wrong answers to moral questions. I was previously pretty confused about this, because most of these ideas seem like common-sense to me.
Often, I'll send person X a message like "hey do you want to do activity Y?". You can imagine situations where you'd like to only give this bid to person X if their answer is yes. In cryptography this is called "ZK-dating" (ok actually I just made this name up).
> What, if anything/anyone, do you feel a responsibility to? How does it manifest in you emotionally and behaviorally?
I don't have any great answers. Would love to hear your thoughts! Here's mine.
I recently watched the movie "Don't look up". The movie has a couple main messages, all of which are great (although also some boring parts which I recommend 4x speeding). Max Tegmark has a nice Times article about why this movie is similar to the AI situation. I'll say some different stuff here though.
Sometimes I have different expectations for myself vs for other ppl. I'm sure this goes both ways, but I mostly notice myself holding Alek to a higher standard than other people. There is an idiom in Chinese "严以律己宽以待人" -- it means that it's good to hold yourself to a high standard while being forgiving towards others.
A lot of people have asked me lately "what cool stuff have you been learning in your deep learning class"? I haven't had a very good answer. In this post I plan to discuss some stuff that we've talked about and highlight some things that I have found cool.
