What I'm doing with this post and why I've been told that it's a major problem (this post, point 4), of alignment students just accepting the frames they're given without question. The usual advice (the intro of this) is to first do a bunch of background research and thinking on...
Introduction Here's how I got here: a YouTuber I watch talked about 80,000 hours, so I started looking into it. I came to the conclusion that alignment work was both important in a global sense and a good fit for me personally, so I started working through their recommended readings....
I've been told that it's a major problem (this post, point 4), of alignment students just accepting the frames they're given without question. The usual advice (the intro of this) is to first do a bunch of background research and thinking on your own, to come up with your own frames if at all possible. BUT: I REALLY want to learn about existing alignment frames, it's Fucking Goddamn Interesting.
<sidenote>At the last possible minute while editing this post, I've had the realization that "the usual advice" I somehow acquired might not actually be "usual" at all. In fact, upon actually rereading the study guide, it looks... (read 1685 more words →)
Ah, speaking at a convention or a similar environment seems like a good idea, I have opportunities like that I can immediately think of.
Can you elaborate on the usefulness of public speaking, though? You mentioned gaining status, and I could see that as somewhat useful for making myself more well-known -> gaining connections -> being offered better opportunities, but there's probably uses for it or consequences of it that I haven't thought of.
oh - and regarding this:
I think the musical skills are probably not worth it, unless it is something you really want to do.
Upon reading this, I had an instinctive negative reaction to you saying that they weren't worth it. So I suspect it is something I really want to do, or at least that something involved in giving up on it goes against my internal values.
I think you're right about social skills like public speaking or communication generally being important, those sorts of things are definitely scary to me but they'd definitely make me more effective at whatever I end up pursuing.
I'll probably be practicing those communication skills here, first - I hope to write a lot more posts in the future, since exploring my ideas in written form in various notebooks has already been a habit of mine for a while. "Learn how to network" is also on my todo list, and friendmaking as well. My whole social toolkit generally needs some work.
You recommend that I try to make more money - once again, this is... (read more)
Here's how I got here: a YouTuber I watch talked about 80,000 hours, so I started looking into it. I came to the conclusion that alignment work was both important in a global sense and a good fit for me personally, so I started working through their recommended readings.
While making progress through their alignment course, I noticed that a lot of the articles seemed to be coming from a weird website called "Less Wrong dot com." I vaguely remembered previously encountering it as a strange place, full of scary Atheists. However, my curiosity got the better of me. I followed some links and went down some rabbit trails, and before I knew... (read 795 more words →)
I had a similar experience, for sure. See the post immediately above yours, when sorted by "newest." Do you want to share your story here?
This wasn't precisely the reason I got here, but I think the biggest reason that I was open to the idea of rationality when I finally stumbled upon LessWrong and the whole Effective Altruism idea was my experience of becoming gay, after diverging from my christian upbringing.
During my time going to bible school (yes, I was in that deep), there was a lot of theology where I was confused and felt like I didn't understand why something was true, but just accepted that "I'm sure some high-level theologian out there has a reasonable answer for this, I just don't know it." However, once I began living on my own, naturally drifted away... (read more)
I ended up going in a completely different direction with this: I intend to test my OWN rationality, and I figure that if rationality is about WINNING, about being EFFECTIVE, then I ought to find direct measures of the things I want, and test myself in 6 months or so (timeframe dependent on the toughness/length of the task). This will, in other words, be a test of my ability to understand the territory insofar as that understanding makes me more effective at a given task.
The things in particular, a few subgoals of my personal life-optimization:
- artistic endeavors and life enjoyment: engaging in things like art or gamedev or other mediums while aiming for
... (read more)