Maybe I’ve been misusing it or seeing it misused, but I thought it meant something more like “called a thing ahead of time” or “made a good prediction” and therefore treated as more credible in the future?

Presumably you'd still feel productivity effects from not having a monitor, having worse ergonomics, etc?

I was surprised to see you say above that you'd anticipate flying way more often! Are there times you've wanted to fly recently but held off because you couldn't spare the lost hours of flying? (I would have expected the bigger barrier to be the loss of productive hours from, say, being out-of-the-office in the destination itself)

I've been wondering about this in terms of my own writing, whether I should be working on multiple pieces at once to a greater degree than I am. Thinking aloud a bit:

I guess part of the question is, what are the efficiency effects of batch-processing, vs the more diluted feedback signal from multiple 'coming off the production line' at once? Though in my case, I'd probably still stagger the publication, and so maybe that's less of a concern (though there may still be some dilution from having shallower focus on each piece-in-process).

Thanks for sharing this - jfyi I interpretted the title differently than I think you meant it? More like you were saying "You should do multiple of a thing at once, but not too many."

Whereas I now think you mean something more like "It's best if you can do one of a thing at a time," which doesn't code to me as a small batch (because one-at-a-time seems non-batchy). With constraints, of course, that sometimes a pure one-at-a-time isn't doable.

FWIW I’m pretty doubtful of this point about it being weird / or even anyone noticing or caring?

Like, for someone not going into politics, what’s the world in which their $3500 donations to a few AI safety-centric candidates ends up causing fallout? It seems pretty unlikely to me, but maybe I’ve misunderstood the concern

FWIW I’d probably be down to talk with Boaz about it, if I still worked at OpenAI and were hesitant about signing.

I doubt Boaz would be able to provide assurances against facing retaliation from others though, which is probably the crux for signing.

(To be fair, that is a quite high bar.)

Ah dang, yeah I haven’t gotten there yet, will keep an ear out

That’s a bummer. I’ve only listened partway but was actually impressed so far with how Eliezer presented things, and felt like whatever media prep has been done has been quite helpful

Thanks for writing this up! I really liked this related podcast episode with Patrick McKenzie: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1QqFw5hlHKRrjRUTVLfKRV?si=ptVmFvXQRKaPwRNTg1Ollg

I think the biggest update for me was how the rewards programs are inseparable in some sense from the airlines. I think your language too of ordinary flight being a loss leader helps to describe it as well; the airlines couldn’t just have the valuable rewards program, because having the underlying less-profitable flights that make it possible!

Weight can be such an extreme determinative factor in combat sports that an untrained 250-pound couch potato could walk into any boxing gym and absolutely demolish a 100-pound opponent with decades of training.

I think this is kind of beside the point, but is this really true?

I buy that it conceptually could be the case for some small number of people, but I would have expected most 100-pound opponents with decades of training to beat untrained 250-lb couch potatoes (all it seems to take is one or two good punches against someone who doesn't know how to defend themself). Maybe I'm mistaken?

(PS - I laughed at the "Classic ostrich-and-egg problem" line!)