JohnGreer

No-Bullshit Optimization/Risk Reduction, Life Extension, EA, Rationality, Startups, Film, MMA. Larry David is my spirit animal.

Read my posts or connect with me: https://www.johncgreer.com/

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Answer by JohnGreer51
  1. Write more. Writing will help you formulate your thinking which helps in speaking. You'll also find yourself building your vocabulary.
  2. Go through an online public speaking course.
  3. Join a Toastmasters club.
  4. Make Youtube videos
  5. Watch podcast interviews. Pay attention to how the host asks questions. 

    Instead of saying "Please talk about X for the next 2 minutes so I can absorb your knowledge." try "What do you think are the most important concepts in your field? or "What do you think are the biggest misconceptions about your field?" etc.
  6. Take a step back and identify your terminal goals. 

    Are you trying to build more self-confidence? 

    Are you trying to get over social anxiety? There might be more efficient/upstream ways to solve this like experimenting with supplements, beta-blockers, phenibut, etc. 

    Are you trying to be more persuasive? Maybe persuasion through conversation isn't your comparative advantage and you should focus on something else?


     

Thanks for writing this out! 

I think most writing glosses over this point because it'd be hard to know exactly how it would kill us and doesn't matter, but it hurts the persuasiveness of discussion to not have more detailed and gamed out scenarios.

"We (Tamay Besiroglu and I) think this claim is strongly overstated, and disagree with the suggestion that “It's time for EA leadership to pull the short-timelines fire alarm.” This post received a fair amount of attention, and we are concerned about a view of the type expounded in the post causing EA leadership to try something hasty and ill-considered."


What harm do you think will come if this happens and what do you think should be done instead?

Nice to see other people interested in the topic! 

Robert McIntyre, the CEO of Nectome, the brain preservation startup, is probably the person who knows the most about this space.

For those interested, I did a writeup on a talk Robert gave that summarizes his thoughts and process here:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/N7j4xHkyjKbimmF6A/notes-on-robert-mcintyre-s-brain-preservation-talk-at-the-1

And I interviewed him here:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/s2N75ksqK3uxz9LLy/interview-with-nectome-ceo-robert-mcintyre-brain

Thanks for writing this up. I'd be interested in the more in-depth post.

Thanks for sharing this! It's inspiring to dig up old posts where people talk about their goals and to see how well it worked out.

Yes, I think Pigovian taxes are really interesting and useful. I suppose then I'm looking for examples of privately implemented Pigovian taxes that fixed a problem successfully.

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