Thank you for this post, incredibly insightful, I consider it already canonical.
Especially useful is the pendulum model of traditionalism, the blue pill, and the red pill. I wonder if these cultural models are a reason for optimism or pessimism. Will society eventually settle on the healthy mean of truth?
I’m sorry this was your experience.
If you hate writing, that says more about your writing potential more than the current quality of your writing. Setting the feedback loop in motion matters more than where it starts from.
This might be a time to think about why you wanted to write in the first place. At Inkhaven, Daystar gave us a hierarchy of reasons why someone writes:
A—I want to write.
B—I want X to be written.
C—I want to be a writer.
D—I want others to see me as a writer.
Which one were/are you?
I too struggle to understand what, if any, technical progress was made on the alignment problem.
LW discourse on alignment reminds me of the Buddha master on the mountaintop describing God: “not this, not that, not that either, and certainly not that.” I saw many more posts about what the answer is not than what the answer is.
This has been proven to me on multiple occasions when I have done relatively “transgressive” things in public, things like jumping fences, and been surprised that no strangers noticed.
I find social invisibility one of the most deeply depressing aspects of modernity. It is a minor weight on my days.
“Personally I recommend making peace with it and finding a way to enjoy life anyway, but that’s harder for some people than others.”
I dislike the term “make peace with it.” You “make peace” with an opponent by no longer fighting them, but most people aren’t fighting social invisibility at all. Maybe if they did, say, by trying to become visibly famous or dressing in a strange way, they would be happier. I know multiple people who’ve successfully done this.
If you hate social invisibility, you can do something about it. I recommend moving to a community where you’re not invisible. Join a group house, make friends with your neighbors, or move to a small community where everyone knows each other.
You may want to consider the optics of telling people to focus on applying to things less, then at the end of the article saying “the the EA Hotel… happens to be an excellent place to apply to.”
Sure, the EA Hotel might be legitimately different from other organizations, but I have no reason to believe that.
I’m putting this on my office wall.
LessWrong needs more posts like this, posts where the goal is not necessarily to add new knowledge but to remind people of the knowledge we have. Agency is a rationalist tenet, and mantras keep us from forgetting it.
Thank you for just writing this!
This is exactly how my memory works as well.
This is the strongest argument for digital minimalism.
Interestingly, none of this seems India-specific.
Greek mythology also shows underdog preference. Sure, the heroes are demigods, but they’re battling against gods, monsters, and mighty forces of nature. The Greek heroes are strong but usually the forces they contend with are even stronger.
If you want to get better, what you need to do can be summed up in a single word: write.
Anything beyond that depends on exactly what type of writer you want to be, so I’d need to know more specifics. Reading very frequently helps too in my experience.
Thank you for posting this. I have also been suspicious of whether we should keep this cultural norm. Pretty much everybody underestimates the harm from alcohol.
The interesting thing is that we’re not the first people to question this. Throughout the entire western world, there was a movement in the early 20th century that saw alcohol clearly: the prohibition movement. It was a global movement, spanning not just the US but also in Canada and the Nordic countries. In the latter it was so successful that the Nordics retain strict controls on alcohol.
By many lights, prohibition was successful: alcohol consumption did decrease during the period (Alcohol and Temperance in Modern History: An International Encyclopedia [2 … - Jack S. Blocker—Google Books) and rates of liver cirrhosis, alcohol psychosis, and infant mortality declined (Did Prohibition Really Work? Alcohol Prohibition as a Public Health Innovation—PMC). But because the government was unable to control the crime syndicates that profited from selling illegal liquor, prohibition was retroactively deemed a failure. Now nobody is allowed to question the cultural norm of alcohol, because “we tried that already.”
Hey there, this is such a neat opportunity! Would you mind confirming that my application was sent? I didn’t get an email. Mine was the application that links to https://collisteru.net and was sent today.
Surely the author’s proposal would make things worse, since then you’d have to scan to the end of each number to realize that they’re 3-and-a-bit billion.
No matter how mediocre your year is or how much you are floundering, when you are 70, 80, 90 etc. years old, you will wish so badly you could be back in your situation today. I’m not saying your current situation is better than you think, but being older is probably much worse than you think, so cherish the lack of oldness now.
True and horrific. Everyone underestimates the badness of aging.
If you don’t feel like what you are doing now is already in some sense “great”, you likely will not be great. You’ve got to really believe and lean into what you are doing. Be more ambitious and daring in your work.
I sort of agree with this, but assuming it’s true, the following sentence seems like a non-sequitur. If the seeds of greatness aren’t already there, why would it help to “lean into” anything? Why would being more ambitious or daring help? Those help grow seeds, not create them.
I don’t care. I would expect an argument that goes “this post was made by AI, we don’t know exactly which points are AI-assisted and which aren’t, therefore we can ignore the content and demand the post unadulterated,” from another community, but not this one. Here we believe that argument screens off authority, so it shouldn’t matter whether an AI was involved in writing this piece or not, it shouldn’t even matter whether AI is making the arguments or the original author (although, unless you think OP is lying, we know the arguments come from OP).
It would be nice for LessWrong to be a welcoming place for non-native English speakers to voice their opinions, and this kind of hazing runs directly counter to that. If you don’t think the argument was written well, fine. Say that. Explain why. Help OP improve. Don’t demand that they write without an editor.