Before: I was a recovering conspiracy theorist. I’d figured out on my own that my beliefs should be able to predict the future, and started insisting they do. I wrote down things I expected to happen by a certain time in a giant list, and went back to record the outcome. I wanted to be a video game developer, but didn’t know how to start.
A 13 year old boy sits on a swingset in his backyard, listening to Owl City[0] and Lemon Demon[1] as frosty dew melts off green grass in the morning sun. He’s daydreaming about the end of the world and his impending death. There is no god and nobody is coming to save him.
After: The oldest copy of Harry Potter and The Methods Of Rationality I can find on my computer is dated January 1st of 2011 at 4:13AM. Now in 2019 I have read many books about phreakers, hackers, makers, computer wizards, rationalists, stats nerds, and the subjects that interest them. My enthusiastic anarchism has given way to a grim realpolitik that still values freedom but understands there are no easy solutions and everything runs on incentives. I call myself an extropian because ‘singularitan’ sounds too awkward.
A young man is washing the main board of an original Xbox with vinegar. His work bench has an overhead light, it’s the brightest thing in the room and everything else looks dim by comparison. The intent of the Xbox was that its data be confined to its aging hardware. He remembers taking Adderall that day, he has perfect focus as he washes away the corrosion left behind by the clock capacitor. During this task he reflects on the decay inherent in all things. The data in his brain is also confined to its aging hardware, and as it ages it corrodes. In his reflections he is no different from this Xbox, peering into his magnifying glass at an eroded trace on the board he sees the infinite void ahead of him. He imagines himself to be washing the body of an embryonic god.
Skills
Before: I was probably most skilled at playing Halo, and only so good at that. I found the idea of writing a 2-3 page essay an imposition. It was around this time that I first installed Linux, I could not program.
After: I am now probably most skilled at writing, but only so good at that. ;)
I can write a 12 page lab report in a weekend. I’m skilled enough at programming to write a compiler.
Career & Lifestyle
Career is just starting, though I did make a point of trying to do Real Things during school. Lifestyle is more or less unchanged, a lot of time spent indoors on nerdy things.
Between
Oops and Duh
The curse of dimensionality makes it easy to get confused about peoples relative ability to each other. It is however a map/territory error to believe that your confusion means there is no sense in which some people are massively more competent than others. Duh.
People are only a little altruistic, and only value ‘purity’ in products a little for its own sake. Distributed systems will generally lose to centralized systems which are more convenient, because they more or less compete on the same metrics. If you want people to use them then, you need to work a lot harder. Oops.
The reason why you got diagnosed with ADD as a kid isn’t because it was a fad, it’s because you had every symptom including the emotional regulation issues[2] which are part of the disorder but not in the DSM. Incidentally, you have to fight so hard to do schoolwork because you have untreated ADD. Oops.
Instead of trying to write your own programs while you learn to program, you’d be better off trying to clone other programs that already exist. This frees you from having to do any of the design while you struggle with programming, gives you an objective measure of progress, ensures you are capable of doing useful work, and has other benefits as well. I wasted lots of time by not knowing this. Duh.
Habits
Probably the biggest habit I broke was playing video games. I rarely play video games these days, and go out of my way to avoid television and fiction stories as well. Life is too short to waste it on transient hallucinations, the real world is much more interesting.
I think the biggest habit I started was talking to people, a lot. With the Internet and smart phones you can basically always be in a conversation if you want to. I started making a point of always talking to people about my ideas, getting feedback, practicing persuasion, etc.
Experiences
I spent 7 of the last 10 years in school, and I hate school. Realistically then if I’m being honest with myself, this was not a fun decade for me. I probably had more bad experiences than good, but the good experiences were good enough to balance it out.
Maybe I’ll come back to this section later and edit in more, maybe I won’t. :)
Worth Noting
I’m overall satisfied with this decade. I could have done more if I was playing perfectly, but I feel pretty good about where I am right now.
My past self should really get their ADD treated before they spend 4 years of high school struggling against it. He should also stop focusing so much on program ‘correctness’ or whatever that he’s not even qualified to understand, and just focus on replicating the computer programs he interacts with. It’s okay to use a web framework. The reason they’re not intellectually satisfied with the web is that all the knowledge they want is on Google Scholar and buried in academic PDF’s and print books. I think my past self would probably be pretty skeptical of a lot of this, and then figure out it’s true as they’re not making progress fast enough.
I’ll probably remember the 2010′s for: Anonymous, Wikileaks, Machine Learning, frivolous smartphone driven social media apps, memes, the Lain-ification of the Internet with the alt-right & Trump (etc), economic anxiety and rent seeking, the death of journalism.
[0]: This Is The Future by Owl City
[1]: Sundial by Lemon Demon
[2]: I grew up and no longer have emotional regulation issues.
I’ve already given this an upvote, but I’m also leaving a comment because I think LessWrong has a shortage of this kind of content. I think broad personal overviews are particularly important because a lot of useful information you can get from “comparing notes” is hard to turn into standalone essays.
Before and After
At the start of the decade I was 13, I’m now 23.
Philosophy
Before: I was a recovering conspiracy theorist. I’d figured out on my own that my beliefs should be able to predict the future, and started insisting they do. I wrote down things I expected to happen by a certain time in a giant list, and went back to record the outcome. I wanted to be a video game developer, but didn’t know how to start.
A 13 year old boy sits on a swingset in his backyard, listening to Owl City[0] and Lemon Demon[1] as frosty dew melts off green grass in the morning sun. He’s daydreaming about the end of the world and his impending death. There is no god and nobody is coming to save him.
After: The oldest copy of Harry Potter and The Methods Of Rationality I can find on my computer is dated January 1st of 2011 at 4:13AM. Now in 2019 I have read many books about phreakers, hackers, makers, computer wizards, rationalists, stats nerds, and the subjects that interest them. My enthusiastic anarchism has given way to a grim realpolitik that still values freedom but understands there are no easy solutions and everything runs on incentives. I call myself an extropian because ‘singularitan’ sounds too awkward.
A young man is washing the main board of an original Xbox with vinegar. His work bench has an overhead light, it’s the brightest thing in the room and everything else looks dim by comparison. The intent of the Xbox was that its data be confined to its aging hardware. He remembers taking Adderall that day, he has perfect focus as he washes away the corrosion left behind by the clock capacitor. During this task he reflects on the decay inherent in all things. The data in his brain is also confined to its aging hardware, and as it ages it corrodes. In his reflections he is no different from this Xbox, peering into his magnifying glass at an eroded trace on the board he sees the infinite void ahead of him. He imagines himself to be washing the body of an embryonic god.
Skills
Before: I was probably most skilled at playing Halo, and only so good at that. I found the idea of writing a 2-3 page essay an imposition. It was around this time that I first installed Linux, I could not program.
After: I am now probably most skilled at writing, but only so good at that. ;) I can write a 12 page lab report in a weekend. I’m skilled enough at programming to write a compiler.
Career & Lifestyle
Career is just starting, though I did make a point of trying to do Real Things during school. Lifestyle is more or less unchanged, a lot of time spent indoors on nerdy things.
Between
Oops and Duh
The curse of dimensionality makes it easy to get confused about peoples relative ability to each other. It is however a map/territory error to believe that your confusion means there is no sense in which some people are massively more competent than others. Duh.
People are only a little altruistic, and only value ‘purity’ in products a little for its own sake. Distributed systems will generally lose to centralized systems which are more convenient, because they more or less compete on the same metrics. If you want people to use them then, you need to work a lot harder. Oops.
The reason why you got diagnosed with ADD as a kid isn’t because it was a fad, it’s because you had every symptom including the emotional regulation issues[2] which are part of the disorder but not in the DSM. Incidentally, you have to fight so hard to do schoolwork because you have untreated ADD. Oops.
Instead of trying to write your own programs while you learn to program, you’d be better off trying to clone other programs that already exist. This frees you from having to do any of the design while you struggle with programming, gives you an objective measure of progress, ensures you are capable of doing useful work, and has other benefits as well. I wasted lots of time by not knowing this. Duh.
Habits
Probably the biggest habit I broke was playing video games. I rarely play video games these days, and go out of my way to avoid television and fiction stories as well. Life is too short to waste it on transient hallucinations, the real world is much more interesting.
I think the biggest habit I started was talking to people, a lot. With the Internet and smart phones you can basically always be in a conversation if you want to. I started making a point of always talking to people about my ideas, getting feedback, practicing persuasion, etc.
Experiences
I spent 7 of the last 10 years in school, and I hate school. Realistically then if I’m being honest with myself, this was not a fun decade for me. I probably had more bad experiences than good, but the good experiences were good enough to balance it out.
Maybe I’ll come back to this section later and edit in more, maybe I won’t. :)
Worth Noting
I’m overall satisfied with this decade. I could have done more if I was playing perfectly, but I feel pretty good about where I am right now.
My past self should really get their ADD treated before they spend 4 years of high school struggling against it. He should also stop focusing so much on program ‘correctness’ or whatever that he’s not even qualified to understand, and just focus on replicating the computer programs he interacts with. It’s okay to use a web framework. The reason they’re not intellectually satisfied with the web is that all the knowledge they want is on Google Scholar and buried in academic PDF’s and print books. I think my past self would probably be pretty skeptical of a lot of this, and then figure out it’s true as they’re not making progress fast enough.
I’ll probably remember the 2010′s for: Anonymous, Wikileaks, Machine Learning, frivolous smartphone driven social media apps, memes, the Lain-ification of the Internet with the alt-right & Trump (etc), economic anxiety and rent seeking, the death of journalism.
[0]: This Is The Future by Owl City
[1]: Sundial by Lemon Demon
[2]: I grew up and no longer have emotional regulation issues.
I’ve already given this an upvote, but I’m also leaving a comment because I think LessWrong has a shortage of this kind of content. I think broad personal overviews are particularly important because a lot of useful information you can get from “comparing notes” is hard to turn into standalone essays.
Comment removed for posterity.