Men Have, Women Are

Note 1: I'm by default reluctant to write anything explicitly related to gender issues, because our society has a very special way of being stupid about that, and it doesn't feel like adding my voice to the mess would really be, you know, adding anything. I think in this case an exception is justified, because I might genuinely have things to say here which are so controversial that they probably haven't been said before.

Note 2: Yes, I know, it's very easy to nitpick about the title. There's always some clever trick that can turn phrases like "be beautiful" into "have a beautiful body", and "have respect" into "be a respected person". Regardless, I think there's a natural way to cognitively relate "feeling-of-being" to certain aspects of human existence, and "feeling-of-possession" to others. Thank you for understanding.

Shell, Shield, Staff

第一

There is a certain high-level pattern of progress seen in almost every human activity, which I like to call “growth triplets”. A growth triplet follows an archetypal sequence of three stages: naive, clever, and wise, with the exact meanings of these terms varying depending on the situation. The defining feature of the pattern is that the third stage has some unexpected similarities to the first one. Because of this, most people have to actually go through the second stage before they can appreciate the third.

You can find several examples in this Scott Alexander post, and recently I hinted at many others:

life/performance/improv

thesis/antithesis/synthesis

tribalism/rationality/post-rationality

brains/computers/neural nets

intuitive-cooperate/defect/TDT-cooperate

Actionable Eisenhower

Note: This is a small peek into the kind of background model-building that goes into Be Well Tuned. I don't currently have resources to invest into writing, so the description is pretty bare-bones. On the positive side, I have changed the blog theme to black text on light background - I hope that makes it more readable.

The Eisenhower matrix is a (somewhat) useful high-level framing of a certain aspect of productivity, based on classifying tasks/activities into four types. It's casual application was entertainingly explored in this Wait But Why post. I'll minimally quote just the matrix itself:

Superhuman Meta Process

This is a more-or-less complete blueprint of the process I'm currently using to run my life on the meta level. It is organized around four major principles, each of which represents a non-trivial design decision. This means that you could negate each of them, and get something arguably sensible. The minor points serve to explain further, and to map out some consequences of taking the major principles seriously. For me, they are also cached thoughts that help me make decisions.

Many of the minor points, fully expanded, would be enough material for a separate blog post. However expanding them to that level would be quite pointless. If you cannot extrapolate them on your own, you probably shouldn't implement them anyway. In that case, you can probably think of some other set of principles that would be a better fit for you. One of the main messages I'd like to communicate here is that designing your meta process is worth the effort.

Notes on Mental Security

Note: these are some rough, preliminary notes on mental security, defined as the art and discipline of keeping one's mental software free from hostile external influence. Or in other words, having a mind able to achieve its own goals, rather than goals of, say, Moloch or other people which happened to be around. This is supposed to serve as a reference point for discussion and further thought. It's definitely not an explanation or a tutorial.

• Why?

  • this is dangerous business, and not one that human minds are designed for
  • however, necessary to do anything which is far outside of the Overton window of agency
    • if you are doing such a thing, you might just as well ignore the risk, because if you fail at security your cause is doomed anyway

Happiness Is a Chore

I've literally run out of cynicism.

Not so long ago, one of my long-term strategic projects felt especially close to my heart. The project could be summarized as something like "give happiness to people who already have rationality as a prerequisite".

In my rampaging naivety, I had thought the hard part was to figure out happiness. What was I thinking? To find out, follow this short imaginary conversation with my old self.

Spontaneous Trumpeting

There are some things which after a period of contemplation acquire a definite "I want to trumpet this from the rooftops" quality, and which I end up not saying because the world doesn't seem to be listening anyway. I also don't have enough clarity and/or writing skill to force the world to listen.

The Little Dragon is Dead

第一

This is a story of my 2-year-long struggle with an unwanted habit of cracking my neck, which had gotten out of hand around 2013-2015. If it seems to you like it's not a serious problem, consider:

• it's a serious health hazard (it seems that repeated strain of the neck area can eventually cause e.g. a stroke),

• it made me look socially awkward, bordering on retarded at the peak of intensity,

• there are powerful subconscious mechanisms that regulate muscle tension and produce the impulse to stretch, and denying them results in ever growing pressure that eventually breaks your will, or if it doesn't it happens at the slightest lapse in attention,

Time to Exit the Sandbox

第一

This will be short and to the point.

Sometimes when you are learning something, you reach a point when you are constrained by raw power. Think physics and particle accelerators.

You compensate by being better at interpreting subtle evidence. Even with low power, you can learn most of anything if you have good models, and do the hard work of extracting a weak signal from noise.

However if you find yourself in this situation, increasing power should be your first priority. If you hit the power jackpot, you'll experience some very rapid progress, because your sophistication is way ahead of your previous level of power. You are ready to wield more of it.

You Too Can See Suffering

Content warning: the last part of this post is saying some things that might be uncomfortable to hear, in a sharp tone which you might not like.

第一

I'm spending this week living in Airbnb with my partner. The host, a young Chinese woman, has a dog. Mixed-breed. Maybe half a year old. Underfed. Lonely. Mostly left alone for the day. It's a young dog goddamit, it wants to play. Or rather it must play! Play is needed to develop social instincts. Otherwise, the dog will never learn how to find its place in the pack. It will never be happy.

Understanding Policy Gradients

第一

There are three stances one can take when dealing with a mathematical subject.

The first one is the engineering/practical/below math stance:

• what works, works
• mistakes can be avoided by doing empirical tests
• math is difficult and scary

A Fearsome Rationality Technique

"I'm not weird. I'm just optimized."

This is a rare chance to learn some little-known rationality lore. Proceed cautiously, according to the instructions below.

Before you start, please remember -- never question a technique until you have mastered it. Your weak, human mind is certain to raise objections as you make progress on this path -- but this weakness will be overcome with time. Eventually, the technique will become your second nature, and you will hardly even remember what your life was like before.

The Unyoga Manifesto

第一

Yoga, as commonly taught, in a multitude of versions descended from the Indian tradition, gets some crucial things right. At the same time, it gets some other things terribly wrong.

One obvious thing it gets wrong is attaching metaphysical or religious meaning to all the teachings. But annoying as it can be, I do not consider it a deal breaker for anyone who has half-decent epistemic habits. It is fairly trivial to filter out the wordy noise and benefit from generations upon generations of accumulated and slowly refined practical knowledge.

Philosophical Parenthood

Note: In this post, I lay out a strong philosophical argument for rational and intelligent people to have children. Even if you are not interested in the topic itself, you might find some of the (tentative) mental models presented here useful.

第一

Why would anyone ever use philosophical arguments to settle questions about parenthood? Well, to answer that, we'll need a good philosophical argument for acting on philosophical arguments.

Real Languages Are Second Order

Note: this is a carrier class conceptual identification. What I'll write might superficially sound like postmodernist blathering. I assure you it is not, though I realize that there is no way to tell the difference... unless you already understand what I'm trying to say in this post. There is nothing I can do but try to say it anyway.

A musician wants you to appreciate their melodies. But their real pride is the emotions they are putting into the music.

A designer of a bridge wants you to appreciate how pretty it is and how well it works. But their real pride is in the skill and sense of aesthetics that they poured into the project.

The AI Alignment Problem Has Already Been Solved(?) Once

Hat tip: Owen posted about trying to one-man the AI control problem in 1 hour. What the heck, why not? In the worst case, it's a good exercise. But I might actually have come across something useful.

第一

I will try to sell you on an idea that might prima facie appear to be quirky and maybe not that interesting. However, if you keep staring at it, you might find that it reaches into the structure of the world quite deeply. Then the idea will seem obvious, and gain potential to take your thoughts in new exciting directions.

Make Your Observations Pay Rent

第一

Elon Musk said during the panel at the Asilomar conference ("Beneficial AI 2017 Conference"):

[...] Everyone is already superhuman. And a cyborg. The limitation is one of bandwidth. We're bandwidth constrained, particularly on output. Our input is much better, but our output is extremely slow. If you want to be generous, you could say maybe it's a few hundred bits per second, or a kilobyte, something like that, output. The way we output is, we have our little meat-sticks, that we move very slowly and push buttons, or tap a little screen.

Effects of carbon dioxide on health and cognition

Summary

• Really high concentrations of CO₂ (30,000 - 40,000 ppm) produce obvious and terribly bad physiological effects.

• CO₂ levels even in poorly ventilated buildings rarely exceed 3,000 - 5,000 ppm.

• The evidence about those levels of CO₂ directly affecting cognition remains inconclusive.

• However, CO₂ levels are roughly indicative of overall air quality, which seems to affect both health and perceived comfort.

Prediction Calibration - Doing It Right

第一

To improve your skill at predicting the future, you work on two things - accuracy and calibration. There are well established and mathematically pretty ways to score accuracy. However, scoring calibration tends to be a mixture of eyeballing histograms and calculating fractions of failed predictions for arbitrary fixed ranges of confidence. This is not ideal.
First, let's talk about the current ("traditional") method, and what is wrong with it.

Applied Rationality Exercises

I was just about to run an introductory workshop around applied rationality, mindfulness, effective communication etc. in Warsaw, Poland when I got the flu, which forced me to stay in bed for a few days. A friend agreed to replace me at the event, and I wrote up the following notes for him.

The notes are not comprehensive, and do not include any background information or explanations. However, the availability of this kind of materials seems to be low, so there is a chance someone will at least take some inspiration from this.