My posts since the last digest

• Lift ‘n’ Peel — Musing on annoying tamper-proof seals and corporate enshittification. Including how products like Lift ‘n’ Peel seals give companies flexibility to focus more on quality or quantity, as the situation demands.
• The Liberty Tractor — A story about a medieval peasant farmer who buys a tractor long before tractors were actually invented. The tractor doesn’t live up to the hype. This story was downvoted on LessWrong. I can’t tell if it’s because the analogy to AI hype was too heavy-handed, or I’m just not that good of a story writer, but I’ve decided I like it in spite of the disapproval.
• If a Lioness Could Speak — A follow-up to Wittgenstein’s quote, “if a lion could speak, we could not understand him,” examining the ways a lion(ess) might actually speak that could reveal fundamental differences with how humans think about the world. Also downvoted a bit on LessWrong. I think the idea was interesting, but I admit the execution was a bit complex and tangled and not that compelling to read. This was also a writing exercise from the book Steering the Craft, I was supposed to write anything, but play with the rhythm and sound of the writing. I was happy with some of the sentences I came up with, even if the whole piece probably suffered.
• The Mom Test for AI Extinction Scenarios — Basically, when describing AI extinction risk, avoid saying things that sound exotic and sci-fi if they’re not necessary, as they’ll provoke unnecessary skepticism from normal, non-nerdy people (like my mom). I could have been more clear that I didn’t literally struggle to convince my mom of AI extinction risk and that the “mom test” thing was a rhetorical device, because people gave me a lot of general advice on how to convince people of things, like understanding their perspectives and not being pushy/persuasive. It was all well-written, insightful advice, but not really what I was looking for, and it’s my fault for not being clear.
• The Three Levels of Agency — This is a blog post in the style of those blog posts about high-agency thinking where people list things you can “just do”. I’m struggling now to find the specific ones I’ve read, but I’ve read a few and I like the genre. Agency requires imagination. You have to imagine how your life could be better, rather than how it is. Reading about how other people have changed their lives makes it easier to change your own. I also introduce “levels” of agency, because I’ve noticed some kinds of agency require more of a leap than others, and that the different tiers of agency have their own tradeoffs.

The last time I had a goal to be less wordy. I’m not sure if I’ve fully succeeded at that, but I think I’ve been improving.

Some highlights from other Halfhaven writers

• Lessons from the mountains (Philipreal) — A tale of a sort of near-death experience, even though the near-death experience is kind of just him getting very exhausted but probably not near death. The way it was written still captivated me and made me feel the shift in consciousness he had from his exhaustion.
• Patience and Willingness to Be Slow (Morpheus) — A personal journal about feeling pressure to go as fast as anyone else, but then realizing the world doesn’t care about how fast you go as much as that you’re going in the right direction, and that learning to be patient with yourself is a virtue.
• A series of short posts about daygame (niplav) — Discussing some of the practicalities of implementing pick-up-artist-style daygame. Chatting up women in public during the day, that is. I have no interest in picking up women (already found a good one) but I am interested in the mechanics of overcoming social anxiety, and it seems like these pick-up artist people have got that down to a science. I wonder if I could apply something like this to my own life. Though straight-up daygame would be too much for me to handle (not to mention cheating).
• SlutCon Vignettes: Day 1 (Ari Zerner) — Stories from SlutCon. Appeals to me for basically the same reasons as the niplav daygame posts. Also enjoyable to see someone trying shit out and having it succeed.
• The Rationalist PR Department (keltan) — Talking about how the rationalist community may be thrust into the public eye as a result of discussion about AI extinction risk, and fears that we will not handle this correctly. One of my own fears about this was discussed in my post The Mom Test for AI Extinction Scenarios, and this post raises more points like this. The rationalist community is a truth-seeking community. But raw truth is offputting. Politicians hide their flaws or they don’t get elected. How can the rationalist community be ambassadors of the AI extinction problem if we can so easily be called out for our weirdness and our badness? In the worst case, failure could end up looking something like the Fox News interview that single-handedly strangled the anti-work movement in its cradle.
• Hospitalization: A Review (Logan Riggs) — A scary but heartwarming story about an emergency stay in the hospital. With some hospital tips and tricks, and a little bit of dystopian “you have to be your own advocate or the medical system will kill you” sprinkled in for flavor.

It’s still technically not too late to join Halfhaven if you want to! Congrats to everyone who is keeping up and posting! It’s not easy, but it feels good to see what you can do.