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I love this quick takes thing:
- Low-key a better version of twitter
- I can blurb because I don't have the attention span to form thoughts long enough for a post
- Maybe one day I will collect enough thoughts here to get a LLM to slop out a post
I figured out how to not forget my keys when going out by sticking a bright post-it to the door that says "keys?"
All it took was realising that I am not infact "built different" and forget my keys all the time. This week was high-stakes because flatmate is out, and wouldn't be able to bail me out of being stuck outside.
Whether this sticks (ha!) or I start to ignore the post-it remains to be seen.
I would be interested, in a week or two, for your assessment of why it did or didn't work. Projecting from myself, I would not expect to notice the post-it pretty much at all, ever, but this might work for mysterious second-order reasons anyway.
I've figured out a way to stop myself from doomscrolling - every time I see a YouTube short, I do 10 pushups.
I started by mapping this in my brain by opening a short, and immediately doing 10 pushups. And I seem to have not watched a single short in the last week.
I did have to stop mid-poop and do 10 pushups at one point though, because I opened the shorts and realised this after scrolling through half a dozen of them.
1I think it's completely fine to sound crazy when talking about a thing you believe in - if talking about AI risk in a way that's candid makes you sound crazy, go for it.
- If you're correct, you get points from whoever heard you make the crazy prediction. They are then more likely to listen to more crazy predictions/solutions.
- If you're wrong, this is good feedback from reality. This is a good opportunity to correct yourself!
Either way, you should either believe in what you say, or say what you believe in.
I mean sure unless say the fate of the world depended on people understanding this particular topic...
Please don't sound crazy when you talk about AGI risk. People aren't totally rational, so they associate the two concepts and assume that AGI risk is something crazy people believe.
I think this general belief among rationalists is really hurting the public debate. Tell the truth, but please try to do it in a way that doesn't sound crazy.
I'm also unsure what happens when a group of people does this strategy, I'd like to hear more about this dynamic
I mean saying that I don't find https://ai-2027.com/ unreasonable can sound crazy, but I think I should say this regardless.
But I framed the thing the way I did to also get feedback, so feedback is good!
I think it depends a lot on how you say it. Saying AGI might be out of our control in 2.5 years wouldn't sound crazy to most folks if you spoke mildly and made clear that you're not saying it's likely.
But also: why would you mention that if you're talking to someone who hasn't thought about AI dangers much at all? If you jump in with claims that sound extreme to them rather than more modest ones like "AI could be dangerous once if it becomes smarter and more agentic than us", it's likely to not even produce much of an actual exchange of ideas.
Communicating across different worldviews is tricky when you're not dealing with rationalists who practice and value those types of exchanges. Sounding crazy is shockingly easy, and it's not really accomplishing anything. Conservatives sound crazy to liberals and vice-versa, and people typically stop listening as soon as they think "this person sounds crazy". So the wider gap is even harder to bridge.
We should distinguish between essential craziness (for example, atheism will sound crazy to religious people no matter how well you put it) and accidental craziness (such as displaying signs of emotional imbalance, and generally being incapable to act like a civilized being).
The essential craziness may be inevitable, though you should choose your battles (focus on one crazy belief, don't make your case more hopeless by stating all of them at the same time), and avoid throwing pearls to the swine (don't explain your beliefs to people who want to attack you regardless of the quality of what you say). The accidental craziness should be minimized.
Train yourself to notice that you're doomscrolling on YouTube shorts, and this is bad, and even if you think you are seeing some (news/science/something you find interesting), it is all just slop that you'll forget in two days. Tops.