Drafts
Having publicly accessible drafts on writing I am working on is helpful because from publishing effect.
Idea that stayed with me: It’s valuable to make decisions because it moves your life from hallucinations towards being more real. Consider not deciding on something for a long time. Say you really would want to do A or do B but cannot do both. You then suspend the decision for a long time. Both options sounds sort of fantastic and it’s hard to resign from one. Deciding moves you from living in a hallucination where you feel like you can have both, collapses thje world into one path, but the path is not in your head but in reality. It seems to me it’s a more wholesome life. With every decision, one step by step lowers amount of fantasies, distortions, hallucinations and moves it towards being more real.
Micro review: Friendly Ambitious Nerd
Just finished reading Friendly Ambitious Nerd by 
@March 18, 2024
I'm not sure if this is phrased better, or if I've just been exposed to the idea I've been pondering for a while, but when I read this, yeah, it's clear that's how addiction works:
„I’d like to think really long and hard about how popular gaming is with young boys all over the world, and how quick mainstream society has been to dismiss that as frivolous-at-best and soul-destroying at worst. I won’t pretend that it can’t be bad, I’ve personally seen friends go deep into the abyss of gaming-induced hell. But if you ask me, it’s never really the games themselves that are the root of the problem. The deeper issue is almost always that the person had a gaping hole in their lives that gaming filled. That’s an important difference. I think many addictions are like this. (Consider the rat park experiments, where rats in healthy social environments were found to consume less morphine than rats in isolated cages.)” via Are you having fun, son by
@March 14, 2024
Others not looking, a prayer
I want the ideas from Get Over Yourself by Bryan Caplan to keep repeating in my head to calibrate my hunter-gatherer-mammalian-reptilian brain. So I remixed it in a form of a prayer.
@February 1, 2024 – @March 13, 2024
Still focusing on “I don’t know why but I feel this is the way it is”
@March 13, 2024
Remember books? Where authors stretched ideas into 200-800 pages just because humanity got used that medium?
@March 13, 2024
From now I aim to include write more personal stuff here. Like I am here, thinking about this things, and processing this thing.
@March 13, 2024
– from my forecasts, it's not supposed to be like this – but it is
@February 26, 2024
I was thinking if it would be possible to create a software tool that analyzes longer texts, focusing on phrases that signal certainty (like “may,” “perhaps,” “possibly,” “highly certain,” etc.). This tool would measure how certainty is spread out across pro and counter statements, then plot these statements on a 0-100% certainty spectrum. This could help us spot thinking patterns that don't cover the entire spectrum. It might also reveal people who are excessively overconfident about their own statements and excessively underconfident about opposing ones.
@February 25, 2024
Whoever answers the question like "Is X overrated or underrated?" without specifying for whom has some extended work to do in the realm of epistemology.
@February 23, 2024
Writing is largely about developing a library of words that are better at describing things.
@December 14, 2023
Today after IFS I made an image about my quarrying part
@December 14, 2023
The problem with the word bias is that it suggests that the by default one is correct and some forces are pulling them away from truth. This is why some people think: Oh yeah I know about some cognitive biases. But few people think: I am biased.
Being incorrect, distorted, false is the default. We are swimming in the sea of noise, distortions, complexity and one with effort can decipher some signal. One with effort can get closer to being correct.
Considering changing the name Cognitive biases to Cognitive distortions.
@December 7, 2023
Paweł
Thanks for this beautiful name. "Paweł" is the Polish equivalent of the English name "Paul." The name has biblical origins, derived from the Latin "Paulus," which means "small" or "humble.”
@November 28, 2023
Docile culture and hallucinations on the influence
I am reading Witold Gombrowicz Diaries for like forth time and wondering what is my version of maturity as described in this fragment.
"The Argentine elite resembled docile and diligent youth whose ambition was to learn from the elders as soon as possible. Ah, not to be youth! Ah, to have mature literature! Ah, to match France and England! Ah, to grow up, to grow up quickly! … Hence the meekness of Argentine art, its correctness, its good student demeanor, its composure, were for me a testament to impotence in the face of one's own fate. I would prefer a creative gaffe, a mistake, even carelessness, but filled with energy, drunk with the poetry that the country breathed, which they passed by with their noses buried in books. I often tried to tell this or that Argentine, the same thing I, by the way, often told Poles: – Stop writing poems, paintings, talking about surrealism for a moment, consider first whether you are not bored by it, check if all this is so important to you, think whether you won't be more authentic, free, and creative by disregarding the gods you pray to. Interrupt this for a moment to reflect on your place in the world and culture and on the choice of your means and purpose.”
What is my force that makes me work diligently, “with a good student demeanor”? Who are my cultural gods that I aspire to and can sacrifice for them to do a work that is lifeless.
I sometimes find myself working on this wiki diligently, “with a good student demeanor”. Sometimes reading feels to me like carrying bricks. I sometimes push myself to write when I am tired. This feels like a lie. Creating should be as “natural” as apple tree bearing an apple. What is this moment when I see it in a context of higher importance. Having little space for “gaffe, a mistake, even carelessness”; disregarding that my influence will eminently be temporary and local, that life's work is like painting pictures on the water”. Who are my cultural gods that I aspire to and can sacrifice so that the act of working on it is sometimes with little energy and lifeless. I don’t think my gods are that different than the imagine praise for Argentinians, accepting look from the top of the culture. Writing things like this helps as a reminder and hellp to defuse it.
@November 8, 2023
Liv Boerree on game theory of old-school, hustler-type poker players
Back then, no one understood game theory, no one understood the mechanics of how the game worked. And the best players in the world were typically older, kind of hustler types who would spend decades in casinos seeing a gamut of human behavior and developing really strong intuitions. Often they would make this really strange plays that would turn out to be correct and they would not even able to explain to you why they did it. It was purely an automatic, unconscious, intuitive process going on. But then online poker and data analytics software appeared. Now all of a sudden we had data that poker pros could look at and use to analyze where they were going wrong, where there were leaks in their game. The game basically went through a scientific revolution away from this pure of just feeling, having a vibe of someone. In reality you cannot be a top professional these days without having that mathematical foundation. If you are someone who are playing game theory optimal style, even though is nome ways is it’s kind of robotic, you just can’t beat it by pure intuition alone. –linkLiv Boeree
@November 8, 2023
Excerpt from reading: Book Review: Legal Systems Very Different From Ours`
* The Gypsies and Amish will ostracize members who defy the court – but since everyone lives in fear of ostracization, in real life they’ll just pay the fine or make their public confession or whatever. * The English will hang criminals at the drop of a hat – but since the threat of hanging incentivizes them to bribe prosecutors, in reality few people will need to be hanged. The * Icelandic courts could declare offenders outlaws who can be killed without repercussion – but the threat encourages Icelanders to pay the wergeld, and nobody has to get outlawed. * The Somalis are ready to have murderous family feuds – but the possibility of such a feud keeps people willing to go to arbitration. * Even our own legal system works like this. The police can physically drag you to jail, kicking and screaming. But more likely you’re going to plea bargain, or agree to community service, or at least be cooperative and polite while the police take you away. Plea bargains – which are easier for prosecutors, easier for defendants, and easier for taxpayers – seem like a good example of cultural evolution in action; once someone thought them up, there was no way they weren’t going to take over everything despite their very serious costs.
@November 6, 2023
My fav architecture to see
I highly recommend visiting Le Corbusier’s Unite d’Habitation in Marseille, France. It’s one of my favorite buildings. It’s a site that includes colorful internal streets, shops, double-height living rooms, and a striking concrete roof garden with kids playground, a theater stage, and a swimming pool.
Other modern and brutalist buildings I loved. (I believe that photographs seldom do justice to architecture. Instead of Google searching, save them on Google Map for an in-person visit)
- Convent La Tourette by Le Corbusier in Lyon, France (tour)
- CopenHill by BIG in Copenhagen, Denmark (go skiing in winter)
- The Barbican Centre in London, UK (go to exhibit/theater)
- Casa de Musica by OMA in Porto, Portugal (go to a concert or take the tour)
- Arcosanti by Paolo Soleri, 1h North of Phoenix, AZ (stay there, details on their site)
- Lobe Block, Berlin, Germany (go for a yoga or get food at the the canteen)
- Casa Gillardi by Louis Barragan, Mexico City (tour)
via comment on
@November 4, 2023
Things that make me think to just write and publish a lot more.
Zvi Mowshowitz portrait on Magic The Gathering hall of fame.
When he finally retired from playing Zvi was in the Top 20 in both lifetime money winnings and Pro Points. Despite his amazing career as a player, Zvi is perhaps better known as a deck designer and Magic columnist. He is easily the most prolific writer in the history of the game and has written for a variety of Magic sites starting with the Magic Dojo and continuing on through Magicthegathering.com. – magic.gg Related:andCreate easilyPublish easily
@October 10, 2023
Notes on reading: Decision making and decentralisation in EA by William MacAskill
I liked the following
- communist dictatorships (e.g. North Korea)
- the US army
- most companies (e.g. Apple)
- highly centralised religious groups (e.g. Mormonism)
- franchises (e.g. McDonald’s)
- the Scouts
- mixed economies (the US, UK)
- registered clubs and sports groups (e.g. The United States Golf Association; USA Basketball)
- intergovernmental decision-making
- fairly decentralised religious groups (e.g. Protestantism, Buddhism)
- most social movements (e.g. British Abolitionism, the American Civil Rights Movement)
- the scientific community
- most intellectual movements (e.g. behaviourism)
- the US startup scene
- “Formal responsibility: You’re formally responsible for X if you’ve signed up to X.
- Interaction responsibility: You’re interaction-responsible for X if you’ve interacted with X in some way.
- Negative responsibility: You’re negatively responsible for X if you could alter X with your actions.
To illustrate: You’re formally responsible for saving a child drowning in a shallow pond if you’re a lifeguard at the pond, or if you’ve waded in and said “I’ve got it covered”. You’re interaction-responsible for the child if you waded in and tried to start helping the child. You’re negatively responsible for the child simply if you could help the child in some way — for example, if you could wade in and make things better — even if a lifeguard is looking on, and even if others have already waded in and tried to help.
(There are other generators of responsibility, too. There’s what we could call moral responsibility, for example if you deliberately pushed the child into the pond. Or causal responsibility, for example if you accidentally knocked the child into the pond. These are important, but not as relevant for the main issue I’m identifying.) …
[blocking responsibility] if you wade in and help the child, but in doing so prevent other people from helping the child, and other people would help the child if you didn’t, that generates something much more like formal responsibility than interaction-responsibility.
[Problem] On either of the last two hypotheses, we end up with a dynamic where:
1. Person Y helps with X, does an ok job.
2. Onlooker is critical and annoyed, like "Why aren't you doing X better in such-and-such a way?"
3. Person Y is like, "Man, I'm just trying to do my best here; you're giving me responsibilities that I never signed up for. The alternative is that to one does anything on X, and these criticisms are making that alternative more likely.
Onlooker feels either like they are trying to help, or that they are simply holding accountable people who’ve adopted positions of power. Person Y feels like not only have they taken on a cost in trying to help with X, but now they’re getting criticised for it, too! …
The article I linked to on do-ocracy has some nice examples of this dynamic, suggesting that this is a widespread phenomenon.”
- Decision-making power: To what extent is what the group as a whole does determined by a small group of decision-makers?
- Are these decision-making structures formal or informal?
- Do these decision-makers have control over resources, including financial resources?
- Who is accountable for success or failure? Are these accountability mechanisms formal or informal?
- Ownership: Is there legal ownership of constitutive aspects of the group (e.g. intellectual property, branding)?
- Group membership: How strong is the ability to determine membership in the group: How hard is it for someone in the group to leave? How hard is it for someone outside of the group to enter? And how tightly-defined is group membership?
- Are there formal mechanisms for doing this, or merely informal?
- Information flow: To what extent does information flow merely from decision-makers down to other group members, and to what extent does it flow back up to decision-makers, or horizontally from one non-decision-maker to another?
- Culture: Do people within the group feel empowered to think and act autonomously, or do they feel they ought to defer to the views of high-status individuals within the group, or to the majority view within the group?
This quote on how conformity can arise in a culture that is too scrupulous:
It’s centralised insofar as people are often highly scrupulous, and can feel like they’re being a “bad EA” in some way if they aren’t acting in line with the wider group, and will be negatively judged. I think the highly critical culture, especially online, contributes to pressures towards conformity as a side-effect; people worry that if they say or do something different, they’ll get attacked. Personally, at least, I think that this latter aspect is one of the threads within EA culture I’d most like to see change.Related:
Coordination
@October 11, 2023
In a magic laptop I would write
What is it? If you write a press release on the “Magic Laptop,” it becomes real. You just specify who agrees to do what (org A agrees to take action B). via
My answer? Vitalik Buterin, Holden Karnofsky, Nick Bostrom, Paul Graham, Philip Tetlock, Scott Alexander, and Julia Galef have launched an accelerator to pioneer innovative societal coordination mechanisms for more resilient, interconnected, and thriving future.
@October 10, 2023
Local differences are exaggerated and take-off speeds
Listening to Paul Christiano and putting more weights on take-off speeds may be quicker than they seem to him (even though he beliefs on quick take-off speeds, but not as quick as
@October 5, 2023
Self-wiki as the best spaced repetition software
Finding a more effective way to memorize information can be challenging, and while tools like ANKi cards have their merits, they might not be the optimal solution for everyone. I believe there's a method that's not only more efficient but also more enjoyable and less draining on one's willpower.
What I advocate for, and personally use, is creating a self-wiki. Essentially, it's a public knowledge base of information you think is worthwhile and worth remembering.
The approach is simple: Write it down in your own words. Don't just copy and paste; you need to be the author of the content.
So, why does this method work? The social aspect of our brain gets activated when we know others can see and potentially benefit from our notes. This encourages us to regularly revisit and refine our definitions.
Why might this be superior? Spaced repetition, at its core, requires us to review and repeat information regularly. But in trying to nail the "perfect" review intervals, you might be missing the point. The biggest drawback of tools like ANKi is that they can make learning feel like a chore. It's probably not a good idea to reduce something as rewarding as learning to a tedious task. Pushing oneself continuously can be counterproductive. See more on this perspective here:
Another downside? The card decks you curate in typical spaced repetition software might not stand the test of time. In contrast, a self-wiki, being a dynamic platform, can continually evolve and be built upon.
See my wiki and make me horrified something is off.
@September 29, 2023
Why alternate explanations are so hard?
– Why is it so-hard to read and consider alternate explanations? – Why is it so-hellish-hard to read and consider alternate explanations when the source is someone I respect? – Why is it so-hellish-hellish-hard to read and consider alternate explanations when the source is someone I respect and is respected by people I respect?
@May 3, 2023
Bet: David Sinclair is gonna receive a Nobel price someday Probably no (~20%)
Imagine a possibility of an alien creature with no scope-neglect. We are living in the world where we comprehend things through singular entities. One is understood – but comparing, relating, imagining two things is harder, three even harder, five difficult, ten very very difficult. Difference between things like 1k, 10k, 100k are almost impossible for us to grasp.
What’s
What if there is a possibility of a different mind? A mind with a radically different interface of the reality. Imagine an alien who understand a difference between 1,000,000 people suffering and 1,000,003 people suffering as well as we understand a difference between nobody suffering and three people suffering. Imagine this alien looking at two trees, one with 1,000,002 leaves and another with 1,000,086 leaves – and seeing as sharp of a difference as our ability to sense a couple of orders of magnitude difference between 2 and 86.
The Use of Knowledge in Society (via Una)
I made Una GPT to simplify Hayek's "The Use of Knowledge in Society."
@January 25, 2024
Literally almost all things you do, no matter if of poor quality, ok quality, great quality, whether super modern or outdated, whether non-conformist or pretentious—no matter what is your output—it will be received in a smooth gradient of ways: pretentious, brilliant, boring, warm, cute, repulsive, attractive, meh.
Learning reasoning through learning AI safety
I realized that learning about AI safety is actually fascinating. You end up learning about the nature of reasoning, agency and intelligence. And it served as if physicist were tasked to understand these things from the first principles. For example…
There is AI predictor (strategizing) that uses actuators (actions in the world) and there is AI reporter (verifying) to report the truth about what happened. Despite the AI reporters goal, it is more likely it will default to not truth. There is only one truth and multitudes of not truths. The correct statement is a lot harder to make and therefore it is a challenge to incentivize the reporter to construct it.
It reminds me of this idea.
It's a lot harder to create something constructive than destructive. First was dynamite then was a combustion engine. First was the atomic bomb, then was a nuclear electricity plant. In order to make something constructive one need to make it safe, control many moving parts, sync a variety of processes together
~
@July 19, 2022
Notes on supporting Happier Lives Institute
@October 6, 2022
Bike ride #2, food and energy
I am preparing for some intense cycling race. I almost didn’t bike for like half a year and never rode more than 65km before XD. On Sun I did a second ride that was 70km with 500m of climbing and a couple of interesting things popped up.
- I feel like I forgot a little how does deep hunger feel. Normally I just eat when I get a little hungry. When I spent a lot of energy on one go this hunger was intense and in a weird way it felt very good.
- At 80% of the ride, I doubted I could ride much longer. I stopped and ate large ice cream. I was surprised how much energy it was. It felt like I didn’t feel tired anymore. It felt like I could ride double the distance. When I came back home I had so much energy I couldn’t sleep.
- I don’t remember I felt the connection that food is energy so clearly before. There is something powerful in seeing / feeling this but it is also a little scary. 99% of my living time I live this unnatural sedentary lifestyle. The same energetic processes are happening in the background but I don’t even notice them. In the past the problem was "too little food". Now, in the “more developed” world, it is “how to avoid eating”. I think most of us, in an unnoticeable way, tend to either overeat or not spend enough energy to make deep hunger turn on.
@July 12, 2022
Surfing collision space
I am currently in Waialua, O’ahu, Hawaii. It’s a place that used to be all about sugar and now is all about surfing. I work remotely, write, and learn how to surf. The north shore of O’ahu feels like the surfing capital of the world. The stretch of beaches here is called seven miles miracle because the reef on the bottom of the ocean creates ideal surf conditions during winters of the northern hemisphere. It’s hard not to surf here because everything is about surfing. It’s interesting to experience the gravity of the scene. You go surfing to hang out with people. By sheer chance I happen have roommates who are or almost are pro surfers. If I go to a cafe there are surfing videos on the wall. At one party, I realized that people are from all over the world and almost everybody is a surfer. A person in the knows told me that during winter if you are an aspiring surfer you either are here or perhaps struggle financially. Out of a tight group of friends I know there is maybe one out of ten people who don’t surf. There are some people who came here not because of surfing. Most of them surf a couple of times a week now. It reminds me of how Marc Andressen talked about collision spaces and the power of inserting oneself into a scene. “If you are into film go to Los Angeles, if into code San Francisco, if into arts or finance New York City” and if into surfing go to O’ahu, North Shore. I think it’s so true. What’s interesting is that observing and experiencing this is such visceral evidence that we are just a socially motivated gravity-pulp. It is just so much easier to be supported, excited, and skilled in the things that also people around you are.
@April 9, 2022
Social media is a new way of social being in the world. Not posting is a little like getting a face by evolution and not talking
@January 4, 2022
They: we want to buy less things but better. Us: we want to buy one thing but best
@December 18, 2021
If the retina would stop updating information and hold on to one image a person would be blind. If one is unable to update their point of view based on new information a person is intellectually blind.
@September 9, 2021
Bet: In the future how healthy the food is will be a lot more based on the pairing and the sequence C28%. Mechanism of sorts: say strawberries with spinach will be considered more healthy than strawberries with lettuce.
@August 22, 2021
Quirky, fearful, darling self.
@July 19, 2021
Note to self: nurse choices I have no idea why but it feels like a better one
@July 15, 2021
The road to spiritual centeredness is through exercise
@May 13, 2021
I am X-risker. I believe that most likely civilizational progress leads to an extinction event. Unless (maybe) we really globally start to move our asses to figure out ways to prevent it
@May 11, 2021
The best sportsmen understand that their mind is gonna fuck with them. The real skill is to discern it, accept it, smile and dance with it.
@May 11, 2021
Longer focus
On the longer stretches, you are able to focus the more quality you can extract. Maybe it is like a processor rendering reality and the longer the text you are reading the potentially more RAM your processor operates with, and potentially higher resolution images it can render.
@March 22, 2021
On rereading
Forget the need of trying to find your max of 223 g of new knowledge per 1 minute. Let yourself reread bc the state you are after is your head being electricized. Then electric chain reactions the head will start: ideas will pop up, synthesis will form, clarity will emerge, decision will get simplified, values will bubble up. I probably already have enough material in me. Running after new material is worth less than it seems. Running after new material may be connected with
@March 19, 2021
People – plagued with bias, predictably overconfident, and dirty in groupthink
@February 3, 2021
Secret of getting ahead is getting started
@January 14, 2021
Bet: in the next decade health world will focus more on lymph notes and lymph fluids. We will be caring more about places where lymph nodes are located. We will be flushing w/ cold water, stretching, massaging them. This will be considered anti-inflammatory and anti-carcinogenic. CI58%
@January 14, 2021
Bet: Jadon Sancho will be next Messi
@January 7, 2021
The more expensive the better quality
@December 25, 2020
Spending money on redundantly expensive things is a form of depression. Many ppl lost connection to the fact that money is time. It often happens with 9 to 5 careers. It feels like it doesn't matter how much I spend because I will work till my retirement anyway.
@September 25, 2020
What should I be guided by when choosing what to read? Stuff that, I don't know why, but it feels like I want to repeat it. Maybe there is some important stuff that my intuition sense but don't fully grasp its impact.
@September 25, 2020
Church of radical unorthodoxy and explain me like I am five approach
@September 25, 2020
Internet products are like a perpetuum mobiles
It's like inventing a perpetual, self-happening loop – a mechanism that will run automatically with relatively little of creator's oversight. Google, Facebook, Twitter pay way less for a copy of their products than Coca-Cola, Malboro or Nike. That's one of main reasons why "software is eating the world" and by the end of the 2010s Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft – were, besides Saudi Aramco, the most valuable public companies globally. Inventing an Internet product is about finding an algorithm that people will find useful. Creators need to just press play. Algorithm then will multiply itself in millions and work while they sleep.
Let's take Google. The core of the Google's idea is counting links. It's a script that's goes to a website and finds all the links pointing to other websites. Then goes to these other websites and finds all other links. And when you Google something it will serve you a website that received the highest amount of links (given that links from big websites are counted more). This is the core of the Google's idea. There are on average 3.5 billion Google searches every day (2019). Google search is responsible for 71 % (2021) of Google's profits. Brin and Page invented this algorithm in 1998 and with relatively little oversight (relative to its influence) just keeps running loops in millions.
@September 25, 2020
Great art is artists stirring in cosmic awe, but 99% of the times artists are stirring in their ego.
@September 25, 2020
There are 7 billion people with vastly different explanations of the world. Vast majority strongly believe that their own peculiar version is correct and somehow escape the statistical probability that it might not be correct.
@August 19, 2020
Developing muscle to discern what we are told how it is from actually how it is.
@April 11, 2020
Follow order if you believe everything leads to one answer, accept chaos is if you believe there might be many answers
@February 24, 2020
Experimenting with companies’ legal format is the avant-garde of this civilization.
Apple just changed the map of Crimea to accommodate Russian needs. Incentives are everything. This is just a tiny example out of many. Incentives will, drop by drop, bend all the incorporated companies to follow the profit.
@January 28, 2020
An eternal question: why I should care to feel better? Every moment is instantly in the past and I don’t care If I experienced pain one year, one day or five sec ago. That’s why achieving wellbeing is a little like a fragile, esoteric, abstract form of art.
@January 28, 2020
Ancient brains in a high tech world
@January 2, 2020
Visible like counts are a form of oppression
@January 3, 2020
U don't follow somebody to read their content, you follow somebody to have them more often in ur life
@January 2, 2020