the stakes and the world and the stars Head of Video for 80,000 Hours - send me content ideas! Opinions are my own, though.
Berkeley, CA
- Tweets 26,262
- Following 1,964
- Followers 5,790
- Likes 216,223
I want to hear stories of how weightlifting caused you to be able to do new things (based on strength, not looks or mental health) e.g. "stronger legs meant that fun impromptu acrobatics in the park were easier" or "bicep curls made it easier to lift my kids"
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Iff = "if and only if"
Whenn = "when and only when"
Truthth = "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth"
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Wow the AI space is truly in large part a list of people who don't trust Sam Altman
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I'm hosting a High Agency conference and inviting no one. If you can get invited or get yourself there, you belong.
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Things you can say to people in ten seconds that sometimes produce insanely outsized effects:
1. Yeah, someone *should* do that. Why not you?
2. Is there something you could do about that problem in the next five minutes?
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I think it is fair for the right to point out that their grief and sorrow has resulted in significantly less public disruption than summer 2020 did.
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Fun facts for your next Every Bay Area Party conversation
- 9 of 11 of OpenAI’s cofounders have left
- > 50% of OpenAI’s safety staff have left
- All 3 companies that Altman has led have tried to force him out for misbehavior
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Sorry but this is just an insane tweet if you imagine reading it from the perspective of 2019
Our recent paper found Claude sometimes "fakes alignment"—pretending to comply with training while secretly maintaining its preferences. Could we detect this by offering Claude something (e.g. real money) if it reveals its true preferences? Here's what we found 🧵
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I hate hate hate the way that we've just abandoned the idea that alarms are for reacting to. There are weekly fire alarm tests at my school, monthly fire drills at my last, and zero reaction to an alarm that just went off in an airport.
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How does anyone find Friends the least bit watchable? Every scene makes me stare in disbelief that it got made, let alone popular.
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HOW CAN NEWS ARTICLES REPORT ON STUDIES AND NOT LINK TO THE ACTUAL STUDY I AM GOING INSANE
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Oh man, @uncatherio's Date Me website is so excellent. I love this genre of thing: people putting themselves out there, saying clearly and publicly that they want a partner, and knowing who they are and what they're looking for.
paper.dropbox.com/doc/cather…
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I'm consistently confused at why aesthetically attractive things vary so much from what would be functional like *why* does this look so good when you would not be able to reach the books, there's no end table to put any drinks on, it's harder to stretch out, etc
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The power of actually thinking about something for five minutes with a timer is totally insane
I've been answering questions of the form
"If I was working on extremely important cause X, what would I be doing"
and have come up with things I have never thought of before.
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I am here from teacher world to remind you that ~everyone learns about median and mode in school and a changed curriculum will not save our souls if there is not salience of the relevant information and a desire to figure out what's true.
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It somehow never occurred to me that RCTs could *share control groups*. Obvious in retrospect.
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Ten!! out of twelve!! UK water companies use water dowsing!! with the little rods!! the magic rods!! to find water!!
How!! What!!
sallylepage.medium.com/in-20…
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The AI 2027 scenario is terrifying and important. More people should be thinking about how radical change might come over the next few years, how likely it is, and how a sane world would be reacting to it.
We want to bring you into the story, and the conversation. Video here:
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Just pulled a full Douglas Adams biscuit on this train by giving disapproving eyes to the woman across from me playing something on her phone on a train for 10 minutes...it was my phone.
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Little known fact! The same paper that gave us the famed "36 Questions To Fall In Love With Anyone" also has 36 control tasks ie "Small Talk Prompts to Avoid Ever Becoming Close With Anyone" but tbh I like some of them better.
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At the end of a response to "write the first four paragraphs of the declaration of Independence in the style of a less wrong blog post", chat ends with this beauty
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In Jewish tradition, you should carry two pieces of paper, one in each pocket. One should say "For my sake was the world created" and the other should say "I am only dust and ashes". Take out as needed.
A thread to follow of thesis and antithesis.
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Sometimes you know there's a joke but it's not quite fully formed.
You know, a pun in the oven.
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*Both* of my parents are now learning about ancient Rome for fun instead of going to couples therapy.
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I have a new job! I have stopped teaching and joined the community health team at the Centre for Effective Altruism.
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If everyone around you believes something and every time you ask for examples you get the same 1-3, this is a Bad Sign
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A friend's gender is ~‘whatever it takes to make this conversation about gender end faster' and I respect that deeply
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Underdiscussed harm of grade inflation is that assessments become asymmetrically something that can crush you rather than help you, making each of them more painful and stressful.
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My most used (and yes, these are unbelievably basic! And yet!):
What actual claims are being made?
What does that belief predict?
Words point out clusters
Tradeoffs exist
It's probably a spectrum and not a binary
Generating more explanations
Generating counterarguments
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I am continuously struck at the amount it improves a conversation to employ one of a pretty meager handful of "rationality techniques". The low-hanging fruit is so low!
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My experience in EA runs counter to many narratives I see, so I want to express it here. My experience might be unusual, or not (I suspect not), and there are many reasons it might be as good as it is, which I am happy to speculate on somewhere else, but it exists.
Thread:
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Personal news: I am moving to London this summer! 🇬🇧Excited to meet new people, rely on employment for my immigration status and tweet at slightly different hours of the day.
Londoners/UKers/Euros: DM or say hi below if we should hang out.
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Names that various eminent scientists have called metascientists:
"data police"
"Research parasite"
"Methodological terrorist"
"Accuracy fetishist"
"Journal ghoul"
No clearer sign of being very, very punk rock
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"Please, sir, my civilization is terminal"
The Galactic Make-a-Wish Foundation: Very well, you may bring back the mammoths. But just once.
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> The OpenAI Files is the most comprehensive collection to date of documented concerns with governance practices, leadership integrity, and organizational culture at OpenAI. // The OpenAI Files openaifiles.org/
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Story time: A student mentioned Nick Bostrom in calculus class. I asked how he knew him, and he said that a friend of his uses "Nick Bostrom" as his username in a game they play, and that he had looked him up and a quora answer said he was the smartest person in the world. 1/
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Have you tried using AI? Use Jubjub. It's literally the best except for Huffbuff 8.4. Unless you have Sphinx pro. Literally just Flingflang-mini-low-high. Dude you can just speak to Goob and then put the transcription through X Æ A-12. Just make a profile on CuteBot.
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Potential for full alphabet is there
ATF: Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms
BTF:
CTF:
DTF: iykyk
ETF: Exchange Traded Fund
FTF:
GTF: Glorious Transhumanist Future
HTF:
ITF:
JTF:
KTF:
LTF:
MTF: iykyk
NTF:
OTF:
PTF:
QTF:
RTF: file format
STF:
TTF:
UTF:
VTF:
WTF: a classic
XTF:
ZTF:
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Wow my dad just said, "Is Open Phil another name for polyamory" and honestly he has no right
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If you're under 27 or just barely 27, mark your 10,000th day on your calendar!
If under or part way through 31, do the same for 1 billion seconds!
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This kind of smart, walkable, mixed use urbanism is illegal to build in many American cities
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So many creative dating strategies out there!
"Dating apps were going nowhere interesting - so I tried something new. Waving hand
Worked surprisingly well! Got 3 dates, 2 numbers, and 1 party invitation. 10/10 would recommend"
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Personal announcement! Watch the video to learn why I'm making you watch a video to find out what it is!
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True health comes from understanding your cicadian rhythm, which is why I only wake up every 13 years
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I think I understand why people don't get that infinitesimals are the big thing in calculus
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I'm pretty terrified of talking about my relationship here because if it ends old tweets will make me sad but on the other hand when Nick Bostrom has a new paper on utility monsters I get a message asking if I want to read it together, and it's the fucking *dream*
💕💗💓
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This might be an unpopular approach, but when my students turn in work late I give them a tardigrade.
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You must pick one and use only that version of the thing from now until forever. Which is it?
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An incredible piece that it's worth reposting from time to time to catch all of today's lucky 10,000 who haven't seen it yet. I recommend giving it a try even if it doesn't seem like it'll be for you.
sbnation.com/a/17776-footbal…
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So what's the poly consensus or thoughtful synthesis on "love and freedom, but indeed if you're in a high commitment relationship and create surface area for falling in love with other people, in expectation you are taking on a bunch of risk of damaging your current commitment"
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I've rarely been bothered by the use of "he" as the generic pronoun so I wouldn't have predicted the genuine warmth and excitement I feel when "she" is used that way.
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Chat GPT's *amazing* malaphors:
- Don't count your chickens before they hatch a plan
- That's the way the cookie meets its maker
- You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink the Kool-Aid.
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The unbelievable negging power of the elderly woman in the elevator who called my aquamarine ponytail "brave"
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Don't know if I'm even disagreeing with anyone, but I think it's a normal and healthy part of an intellectual journey to sound like you're just parroting what you've read recently.
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My current favorite super-sophisticated trick: when you encounter any number, anywhere: "Is that a lot?"
From @HowieLempel
I am continuously struck at the amount it improves a conversation to employ one of a pretty meager handful of "rationality techniques". The low-hanging fruit is so low!
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Really confused why "write a Google doc and post it somewhere" is being pigeon-holed as "super rationalist, optimizey, hardcore" - churning through tinder, making spreadsheets, sure, but this just seems a pretty low hanging fruit natural thing to do if you want a partner?
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I think it's ok to use leverage to change the terms of a contract - like if I think my friend's a jerk I think it's fine to just stop being friends but also ok to have a bunch of people have an intervention.
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Group Therapy is a 60s board game that challenges you to open up to your friends. It's basically impossible to get, so I've grabbed every question I could get my hands on, then generated new ones (including with GPT-3). This is the set I've come up with:
docs.google.com/document/d/1…
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I may have just gotten radicalized from hearing a woman on this train tell her son that she was going to tell the policeman coming up the train that he was being naughty if he didn't act better. He looked really scared, and also, unbeknownst to him, there was no policeman.
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Will you guys promise me that if I ask myself some seriously basic questions about my life and come up with different answers than I used to and/or try some new things that maybe I should have tried before that you won't think it's embarrassing that it's happening in my late 20s?
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Are there any actually good legible reasons to not curse in front of kids or not have teachers curse or not have songs with cursing in them played in schools?
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Right?? It's called Group Therapy and annoyingly seems almost impossible to buy, but a few of the cards are mentioned in this article and around Twitter. I've collected them in a Google doc, been brainstorming more w friends and getting GPT-3 to generate.
nytimes.com/2020/06/11/style…
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There's a 1960s Group Therapy board game that contains the card: "You have been accused of over-intellectualizing your hang-ups. Respond — without falling victim to that criticism.”
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Not your weights, not your waifu is unironically a good and self protecting meme
Not least of which is that becoming emotionally attached to something that is owned by a corporation is a great way to make yourself vulnerable to exploitation by that corporation, since they control the model and can wear it like a skin suit to manipulate you.
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The I'm moving --> which books should I give away --> which books will I actually read --> how many books will I never read in my whole life --> contemplate mortality pipeline comes at you real fast
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Never talk to smart people willing to ask basic questions, it's the most destabilizing shit in the world.
Step 1: handwave in the normal sophisticated way
Step 2: they keep looking at you waiting for an actual explanation
Step 3: Panic
Writing is humbling because you realize that you don’t understand things you thought you were an expert on
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