Welcome
Writing about whatever currently interests me.
Pro: family, personal freedom, humans, progress, beauty, rationality/“decoupling”, arguing
Anti: bad smells, crime, envy (==“egalitarianism”), cope
Non-exhaustive list of interests:
AI safety, interpretability, and development (see also: my more formal research)
Cooking and baking (and baked goods more generally)
Software development and UI design
Graphic design
Soviet film (particularly comedies)
Short stories (I really like this one by Arjun)
Economic progress, libertarianism
(Very) non-exhaustive list of hot takes:
(Not representative of this blog’s content distribution)
London is the best city in the world (I particularly love North London, where I grew up)
Intent alignment should be prioritized over value alignment when it comes to AI safety; instruction-following is underrated as a guiding paradigm
Falling fertility rates are a genuine problem, though I have no idea what the solution is
Related: There is nothing wrong (and a lot right) with having kids very young, all stigma against young (including teenage) pregnancy should be discouraged, schools should promote having kids as a rewarding and valuable lifestyle choice instead of portraying it as a negative side-effect to be avoided
AI progress does not reduce the value of being knowledgable, well-educated, and intelligent (see also this post about AI and childhood education)
Striving, attachment, passion, pride, ego, ambition, desire, etc. make for a good life. These don’t exist without disappointment, suffering, sadness, and loss. Do you want to be an insect on heroin?
Egalitarianism is just a form of envy and the impulse towards equality (of outcomes) gets in the way of progress and the improvement of the world for most (including future) people
Alcohol and psychoactive drugs are generally bad (though should not be banned)
It’s good to criticize, be brutally honest, disagree, and argue with the people you care about
Bad smells are a huge negative externality and this is underrated
From my tweet
