This is true of approximately every worthwhile conference and convention. In my entire life I've been to exactly one conference where the scheduled programming provided more than 10% of the event's value.

This is good advice, and is not specific to AI safety or "short timelines". In every field I've ever been part of, the people who show up and start doing the stuff that they see needs doing end up accomplishing more than the people who think in terms of filling open positions and sending applications.

If someone is hiring for the work you want to do, or is offering a fellowship that seems like it'll help you get where you want to go, then by all means apply. But the difference in mindset between people who see that stuff as the default, vs those who see it as instrumental towards their own plans, is very big.

Ridiculous. I have handed out cookies to strangers on the street. I have eaten cupcakes given to me by random strangers on the street. People had a good time. If there are neurotic people who feel anxious taking food from strangers then they can just walk on by. You can just do things.

If I were a moderator, I would have banned Jesus Christ Himself if He required me to spend one hundred hours moderating His posts on multiple occasions. Given your description here I am surprised you did not do this a long time ago. I admire your restraint, if not necessarily your wisdom.

Neat, I'll try it out. $14 is a small price to pay for a shot at a minor ergonomic upgrade.

Publishing anything is a ton of work. People don't do a ton of work unless they have a strong reason, and usually not even then.

I have lots of ideas for essays and blog posts, often on subjects where I've done dozens or hundreds of hours of research and have lots of thoughts. I'll end up actually writing about 1/3 of these, because it takes a lot of time and energy. And this is for random substack essays. I don't have to worry about hostile lawyers, or alienating potential employees, or a horde of Twitter engagement farmers trying to take my words out of context.

I have no specific knowledge, but I imagine this is probably a big part of it.

A good summary, but it's worth noting that while the death penalty for failing to fight was on the books, Byng's execution was the only time it was ever actually carried out. It's a bit similar to how the US military legally has the authority to execute deserters, but in the past century has only ever exercised this once out of tens of thousand of sentences (Eddie Slovak during WWII).

From reading the autobiography of Lord Cochrane, an insanely aggressive and insanely successful captain during the Napoleonic Wars, my impression is that the Royal Navy was very concerned with the allocation of credit, glory, and prestige, as well as money prizes. He describes a system where officers are writing to the Admiralty headquarters to describe the meritorious or shameful actions of their peers and subordinates after every major action, and sometimes convoked courts martial to resolve disputes, as in the case of Lord Cochrane's rival Lord Gambier. Lord Cochrane also argues that the prize system is critical to maintaining the Royal Navy's morale and effectiveness.

Overtly, OP is trying to shun Cremieux for failing to meet an assumed-widely-agreed "standard of care and compassion". This is obviously based on OP's belief that Cremieux's conduct is unacceptably outside the Overton window, even if they used the word "standard" instead of the word "Overton window". The only point of deploying phrases like "Hoo boy" and "do better" is to appeal to a social consensus. OP isn't being sneaky here or anything, you're just misinterpreting their dialect.

Selection bias isn't the whole story. The median paper in almost every field is notably worse than it was in, say, 1985. Academia is less selective than it used to be—in the U.S., there are more PhDs per capita, and the average IQ/test scores/whatever metric has dropped for every level of educational attainment.

Grab a journal that's been around for a long time, read a few old papers and a few new papers at random, and you'll notice the difference.

OKcupid is certainly a better product for hundreds of thousands, or possibly millions, of unusually literate people, including ~all potential developers and most people in their social circles. It's not a small niche.