While in high school: treat it like a day job. Work on your interests, and develop your skills.
Try to avoid video games. Avoid alcohol.
In college: Don’t focus on classes. Focus on people, and focus on ideas. Your goal in college should be to meet a few people cleverer than you are (settle for as clever if necessary). Introduce yourself to people, and don’t get locked into the group that forms in the first week. If you enjoy a professor’s class, go to their office hours and chat. Remember, understanding is not something you finish- it is the shore of an island. The more you know, the more you are immediately able to learn- and so if you’ve got what’s in the curriculum find one what’s on the edge of the curriculum.
It seems to me very likely that the best way to reduce x-risk is to work on other issues you’re better at and then donate the money you’re able to earn there. “If you want to create wealth (in the narrow technical sense of not starving) then you should be especially skeptical about any plan that centers on things you like doing. That is where your idea of what’s valuable is least likely to coincide with other people’s.”—Paul Graham
Math seems like a pretty foundational field for a lot of things. I recommend becoming a competent programmer in at least one language (preferably something like Ruby, but you can probably make more money freelancing with something like Perl).
Don’t be afraid to seize value. If there are classes you find interesting that you aren’t in, go to them. If there are professors you want to talk to about things, go to their office hours, or email them, even if you aren’t in their class or their department.
I avoided alcohol for the first 30 years of my life.
I now have about 7 beers (or equivalent) per week (never more than 3/day). There’s a temporary impairment for sure, and sleep suffers with several drinks just before, but I would definitely not recommend against moderate drinking.
I’m not opposed to drinking—I drank socially in college, and I knew many successful people who drank far more. What’s more dangerous is overwhelming peer pressure. I’ve known people who joined clubs where lots of drinking was all but mandatory, and their lives got a lot more chaotic than they wanted, very fast. Keep away from mandatory partying; discretionary partying, on your own schedule, with people who will respect your choices, is much better.
You’re right. I did get that kind of pressure at college parties. Really, people will be happy as long as you have one drink; the further teasing and egging on is just some stupid ritual program that doesn’t mean anything to them. It’s definitely weird to put yourself in a situation where people are gathered to drink+have fun, and not drink at all.
This thread is advice for people under ~22 and new to both adulthood and choosing friends rather than lucking into them. It seems that avoiding alcohol is a strongly positive idea in such a situation. (Especially if, like the OP, one is worried about x-risk.)
Afterwards, I trust them to make good decisions, and that can very well include alcohol (just like good decisions can very well include playing video games).
Clearly getting dangerously drunk or becoming an alcoholic are things which young people should avoid. As such caution against drinking is good advice for lots of young people. However, young Less Wrongers are more likely to be lonely, isolated and not having as much fun as they should. Going through college without drinking is likely to make dealing with these issues dramatically more difficult as so much socialization revolves around alcohol.
However, young Less Wrongers are more likely to be lonely, isolated and not having as much fun as they should. Going through college without drinking is likely to make dealing with these issues dramatically more difficult as so much socialization revolves around alcohol.
My suspicion is that drinking buddies are generally a net negative, as they may stop you from looking for other friends. My fallacious guess is most LWers are satisfied socially once they have a few friends they meet with regularly- and so if you find drinking buddies to tide you over until you find solid friends, you may find yourself looking for solid friends less and less.
I suspect that advice is better given as generally applicable, than as generally applicable but there are caveats. For one thing, policy debates should be two-sided, and for another people are simply bad at telling when the rules don’t apply. Anyone reading this is hopefully clever enough to take my injunction against alcohol and weigh it against the other information going into their decision; if they aren’t, I think it’s a good plan for them to avoid alcohol entirely. You are right that adding the motivation behind my injunction helps make it more potent, and possibly limits it in a good way.
[edit] One more thing- if you need alcohol to warm up and talk to people, what you really need is to get better at talking to people. That is a skill you can practice and depends on confidence you can develop.
I would only advise that a person choose rationally how much alcohol to consume (i.e. gain experience predicting the effects and aftermath of drinking, and make decisions about how much to drink before becoming inebriated). I don’t see any strong evidence that moderate and steady (as opposed to binge) drinking is helpful or harmful to health.
If someone wants to always optimize their rationality-in-the-moment and has no social or emotional needs, then I guess it’s safe to never get drunk. It certainly hasn’t helped me become smarter or more rational to do so. I just think it’s stupid from a hedonistic perspective to absolutely avoid it.
So for most people directly working on existential risk is inefficient. How can you tell if it would be efficient?
This question is the heart of why I suggest avoiding it, as a field. Feedback is golden. Imagine writing something where, as soon as you pressed a button, it would give you feedback on what you’ve written, compared to writing something where you had to print it out, mail it out, wait for a reply, and then get feedback. Even if the feedback is ten times better in the second case, the first one will encourage you to work much harder and faster.
So, when it comes to x-risk it seems the best plans are ones that increase feedback. If you want to improve our systems to guard against asteroids striking the Earth and catastrophic climate change, it seems like the best approach is to acquire millions of dollars and create a satellite network that generates better information about what Earth’s weather is like and tracks near-Earth asteroids. (And, the first approach in such a plan is to call up your Congressperson and a NASA head, trying to arrange a private grant, rather than doing this yourself with your engineering buddies. If you do decide it’s better to do it yourself, poach experienced people, don’t start with inexperienced ones.) Information is generally a net positive, while opinions are not nearly as valuable.
So, if your choice is “do I go into a value-generating field, or do I write papers about how scary asteroids are?” it seems to me the first is the better choice. If no one is approaching the issue you are interested in, then maybe you should devote yourself to it.
Read a bunch of Paul Graham.
While in high school: treat it like a day job. Work on your interests, and develop your skills.
Try to avoid video games. Avoid alcohol.
In college: Don’t focus on classes. Focus on people, and focus on ideas. Your goal in college should be to meet a few people cleverer than you are (settle for as clever if necessary). Introduce yourself to people, and don’t get locked into the group that forms in the first week. If you enjoy a professor’s class, go to their office hours and chat. Remember, understanding is not something you finish- it is the shore of an island. The more you know, the more you are immediately able to learn- and so if you’ve got what’s in the curriculum find one what’s on the edge of the curriculum.
It seems to me very likely that the best way to reduce x-risk is to work on other issues you’re better at and then donate the money you’re able to earn there. “If you want to create wealth (in the narrow technical sense of not starving) then you should be especially skeptical about any plan that centers on things you like doing. That is where your idea of what’s valuable is least likely to coincide with other people’s.”—Paul Graham
Math seems like a pretty foundational field for a lot of things. I recommend becoming a competent programmer in at least one language (preferably something like Ruby, but you can probably make more money freelancing with something like Perl).
Don’t be afraid to seize value. If there are classes you find interesting that you aren’t in, go to them. If there are professors you want to talk to about things, go to their office hours, or email them, even if you aren’t in their class or their department.
I avoided alcohol for the first 30 years of my life.
I now have about 7 beers (or equivalent) per week (never more than 3/day). There’s a temporary impairment for sure, and sleep suffers with several drinks just before, but I would definitely not recommend against moderate drinking.
I’m not opposed to drinking—I drank socially in college, and I knew many successful people who drank far more. What’s more dangerous is overwhelming peer pressure. I’ve known people who joined clubs where lots of drinking was all but mandatory, and their lives got a lot more chaotic than they wanted, very fast. Keep away from mandatory partying; discretionary partying, on your own schedule, with people who will respect your choices, is much better.
You’re right. I did get that kind of pressure at college parties. Really, people will be happy as long as you have one drink; the further teasing and egging on is just some stupid ritual program that doesn’t mean anything to them. It’s definitely weird to put yourself in a situation where people are gathered to drink+have fun, and not drink at all.
This thread is advice for people under ~22 and new to both adulthood and choosing friends rather than lucking into them. It seems that avoiding alcohol is a strongly positive idea in such a situation. (Especially if, like the OP, one is worried about x-risk.)
Afterwards, I trust them to make good decisions, and that can very well include alcohol (just like good decisions can very well include playing video games).
Clearly getting dangerously drunk or becoming an alcoholic are things which young people should avoid. As such caution against drinking is good advice for lots of young people. However, young Less Wrongers are more likely to be lonely, isolated and not having as much fun as they should. Going through college without drinking is likely to make dealing with these issues dramatically more difficult as so much socialization revolves around alcohol.
My suspicion is that drinking buddies are generally a net negative, as they may stop you from looking for other friends. My fallacious guess is most LWers are satisfied socially once they have a few friends they meet with regularly- and so if you find drinking buddies to tide you over until you find solid friends, you may find yourself looking for solid friends less and less.
I suspect that advice is better given as generally applicable, than as generally applicable but there are caveats. For one thing, policy debates should be two-sided, and for another people are simply bad at telling when the rules don’t apply. Anyone reading this is hopefully clever enough to take my injunction against alcohol and weigh it against the other information going into their decision; if they aren’t, I think it’s a good plan for them to avoid alcohol entirely. You are right that adding the motivation behind my injunction helps make it more potent, and possibly limits it in a good way.
[edit] One more thing- if you need alcohol to warm up and talk to people, what you really need is to get better at talking to people. That is a skill you can practice and depends on confidence you can develop.
I would only advise that a person choose rationally how much alcohol to consume (i.e. gain experience predicting the effects and aftermath of drinking, and make decisions about how much to drink before becoming inebriated). I don’t see any strong evidence that moderate and steady (as opposed to binge) drinking is helpful or harmful to health.
If someone wants to always optimize their rationality-in-the-moment and has no social or emotional needs, then I guess it’s safe to never get drunk. It certainly hasn’t helped me become smarter or more rational to do so. I just think it’s stupid from a hedonistic perspective to absolutely avoid it.
Thanks, I particularly found the whole “just go to classes you feel like” bit interesting. Slash looking forward to it.
So for most people directly working on existential risk is inefficient. How can you tell if it would be efficient?
This question is the heart of why I suggest avoiding it, as a field. Feedback is golden. Imagine writing something where, as soon as you pressed a button, it would give you feedback on what you’ve written, compared to writing something where you had to print it out, mail it out, wait for a reply, and then get feedback. Even if the feedback is ten times better in the second case, the first one will encourage you to work much harder and faster.
So, when it comes to x-risk it seems the best plans are ones that increase feedback. If you want to improve our systems to guard against asteroids striking the Earth and catastrophic climate change, it seems like the best approach is to acquire millions of dollars and create a satellite network that generates better information about what Earth’s weather is like and tracks near-Earth asteroids. (And, the first approach in such a plan is to call up your Congressperson and a NASA head, trying to arrange a private grant, rather than doing this yourself with your engineering buddies. If you do decide it’s better to do it yourself, poach experienced people, don’t start with inexperienced ones.) Information is generally a net positive, while opinions are not nearly as valuable.
So, if your choice is “do I go into a value-generating field, or do I write papers about how scary asteroids are?” it seems to me the first is the better choice. If no one is approaching the issue you are interested in, then maybe you should devote yourself to it.
Would an appropriate short version be “Doing stuff takes money and data, so you should be working towards one of those”?
I think that’s a good summary of half of it. The other half is opinions are high cost and low value for most applications.