I think from the outside view, people will adapt much easier than they expect. For the longest time, people were not only fine with a God being able but not choosing to solve all their problems (until they died of course, in which case all their problems would be solved), but derived literally all the meaning of their life out of that God existing and having a plan for them personally. So much so that many, even now, are scared to acknowledge that God's non-existence out of fear of losing that meaning.

From this perspective, in what sense is an AI god different from... you know... the actual god people theorized to exist? For one, the AI god will likely be a lot nicer (if all goes to plan)!

I guess my point is that the fact the 2022 version sucks is predicted on my model from the fact that we just don't use too much complicated etiquette anymore. The fact the sentences are hollow is a fact more about the subject being written, not the skill of the author.

Concretely, using the Wikipedia page for modern handshaking in the US I think gives better prose than the modern 2022 version of the etiquette guide

The handshake is commonly done upon meeting, greeting, parting, offering congratulations, expressing gratitude, or as a public sign of completing a business or diplomatic agreement. In sports, it is also done as a sign of good sportsmanship. Its purpose is to convey trust, respect, balance, and equality.[10] If it is done to form an agreement, the agreement is not official until the hands are parted.

[...]

In the United States, United Kingdom and Canada, a traditional handshake is firm, executed with the right hand, with good posture and eye contact. A handshake where both parties are standing up is deemed as good etiquette.

Yeah, I agree that the modern version of Ettiquite is worse, but that's just because we don't have very complicated ettiquite! They need to waste space here, because everyone already knows what a handshake is, and you need at most a one-sentence description. If you didn't turn every sentence into a paragraph the book would quickly turn into a blog post.

The solution is not in fact to add more flowery prose or complicated sentences, its to write about something else.

I also don't know whether those reading in 1922 would say the same thing. We read the 1922 version and think "Oh wow! So informative!", but perhaps the girls forced to read the book at a 1922 finishing school were thinking the same thing, or maybe ettiquite in 1922 was just a lot more complicated than it is today (it is).

Perhaps, similarly to the hypothetical bored girl in finishing school, in 100 years the future will look at the modern version and think "So informative!".

The more recent versions here just seem like better writing to me honestly. Short simple sentences which communicate a single idea are good.

If that makes them easy to read for the less literate, so much the better; they're even easier to read for the more literate, no?

I don't think I understand the constraints here, taking the anger case as a concrete example. My initial thought is to 1) talk openly about the anger which is different from actually releasing the anger, then 2) find a safe way to release that anger which hopefully doesn't harm the partner, generic examples would be a rage room, taking a defense class, hunting, maybe voice acting(?), or directing the anger toward productive ends, eg using it to be more assertive or motivated (eg by spite).

But these all seem like things you would've thought of, so what am I missing? Is the constraint that the temper must be expressed toward those the person cares about?

I mean it really just sounds like you have ADHD is what I mean.

But what's the reason to be productive beyond my natural abilities?

You are complaining about not being productive enough, presumably you care about productivity, why care also about whether its "natural". If you think you have depression instead of ADHD, then the reason is so that you feel better! If Nature decided to make you miserable or distractable, then imo Nature had it coming.

I fear I would just use it all to make even more money, which doesn't matter to my wellbeing at all.

You can always stop (modulo slowly decreasing your dosage so as not to trigger withdrawal if necessary)? For depression, clearly if you treat that with medication, your wellbeing will just definitely go up, regardless of whether you use your extra motivation to make more money.

The admiration of others? That would be cheating.

Plenty of people take drugs to treat mental illness, that is not "cheating" any more than antibiotics, surgery, or any of the other modern miracles we're able to use to better the human condition.

Self actualization? I don't think depression will go away by just doing more stuff, the problem isn't not doing enough, it's not enjoying the results

Then try an anti-depressant. Note also that this is an incorrect theory of depression, depression does indeed get better by doing stuff, and it is a common bias that depressed people have to believe nothing they do will work. If you think you have depression rather than ADHD, then take some antidepressant or something, or actually try to treat what you think you have.

I suggest you stop trying to come up with silly excuses not to fix your problems. That is not to say that there aren't better options than medication, but each of your excuses here either reveal an ignorance about what treatments of mental illnesses actually do, or boil down to "but here's a big brain reason why if it worked that'd actually be bad, therefore I will continue to wallow in misery for my whole life".

Obvious suggestion which I will say anyway: Have you tried adderall?

Looks like Leading the Future is not as skilled as Fairshake was, so I am not so concerned anymore.

Why would he say this? What does he have to gain by emphasizing something so far away from reality? Wouldn't he be found out by something so blatant? How could this be a reasonable thing to say? Is there a perspective from which he is being transparent?

I really was trying to make sense of what perspective would produce these words, but eventually it struck me: he's saying it because it would be good for him if you believed it, and he thinks he can get away with saying it without you catching him out.

I agree with Christian that there's more going on here, but I interpreted Evrart as counter-signaling mean-ness. By mentioning literally how open and on-the-same-team he and the company are, he is communicating that no, they are very much not on the same team, and enemies, and you really really don't want to go sharing damaging information with them.

That is, the absurdity of his performative niceness is meant to try to communicate that he is very much not going to be nice on this issue. As an example, he says

“I’m just a nice guy, Harry. I wouldn’t be where I am now if I wasn’t nice." He slams his fist into his hand. “Politics is all about emotions, and I want you to have positive emotions when you think of me.”

Well, obviously he didn't get where he is now by being nice, he got there by being mean. While he is literally telling you he's nice, what he means is he will fuck you up if you try to fuck him up here, as emphasized by his fist slamming into his hand.

As christian mentioned, he is threatening also to embarrass you by revealing you lost your gun too. But presumably you've also done other shady stuff for this guy. You're meant to think, "wait, if all of this isn't secret, what about all the shady stuff I did for him?". Then you implicitly have a choice about which narrative you can live in. You can live in the world where all of that is in fact secret, where you "cooperate" with the guy by not revealing his secrets, or you can live in the world where nothing is secret, you "defect" with the guy, and both of you are harmed in the process.

In general most work and innovation[3] in machine learning these days (and in many domains of AI safety[4]) is not based in formal mathematical theory, it's based on empiricism, fussing with lots of GPUs, and stacking small optimizations. As such, being good at math doesn't seem that useful for doing most ML research.

I think I somewhat disagree here, I think that often even good empirics-focused researchers have background informal and not-so-respectable models informed by mathematical intuition. Source is probably some Dwarkesh Patel interview, but I’m not sure which.