“If you’re thinking without writing, you only think you’re thinking.”—Leslie Lamport
Declan Molony
Karma: 948
Don’t look away
But more than just “what do I believe”, I think it’s of equal or greater importance what you pay attention to. A person can correctly believe that we face doom yet try to just not think about it. In effect, if you never think about doom, are you any better off than if you didn’t believe in it?
The movie Don’t Look Up did a good job of capturing the feeling of doom and how the global citizenry might react to a apocalyptic event. Many people in the movie chose to live in blissful ignorance.
I discovered LessWrong a year ago and never read the AI-related material. I had a feeling I wouldn’t like it so I avoided it. Now that I’m in the thick of it (as of a month ago), I’m reminded of this text my Christian friend sent me 5 years ago:
She was, of course, referring to religion, but it’s an excellent series of questions that can equally be applied to AGI-related doom.
Who can I talk to about my doom? I tried discussing the implications with two of my married friends yesterday: the husband was receptive to the topic, but the wife refused the engage in the discussion because it was too stressful.
I tried talking to my parents about it, but they’re older and don’t understand AI.
I thought about trying talk therapy for the first time, but if the therapist is uninformed about AGI, I don’t want to introduce them to new stress and existential angst.
OP may be interested in a framework I created that Evaluates the ROI of Information. In it, I write:
While stimulating myself with new information all day long (which I imagine many people do), it can be easy to fool myself into thinking that I’m making progress towards a goal.
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool. — Richard Feynman
By evaluating the return on investment (ROI) of different sources of information, I can focus on just consuming the information that helps me make forward progress in life.
So within my framework, it sounds like podcasts for you would fall under the Trivia or Mental Masturbation categories, and not Effective Information.
I also wrote a post called Mental Masturbation and the Intellectual Comfort Zone which goes more into depth on how our brains convince us to consume more information than we need.
Nonfiction books are typically around 300 pages because that’s what sells, and to hit 300 pages, authors often need to add a lot of fluff.
Agreed. That’s why when I occasionally find a book less than 300 pages (say at only 100-200 pages), I think, “Wow, this author managed to not only streamline the book, but also convinced their publishing house that the book is better for it.” This makes me want to read that streamlined book more.
Less Wrong has changed my life for the better. But it’s time to say goodbye.
When I discovered LW over a year ago, it was reading your posts that inspired me to start writing my own LW posts. Publishing my thoughts has dramatically increased my rationality and writing skills. Your Fear Heuristic, in particular, helped me overcome my social anxiety when I moved to a new city. So thank you for posting on LW. ❤️
No, I wasn’t using a third-party. I was viewing it on PC.
It looks normal today and I’m seeing paragraph breaks now.
I enjoy reading your posts, but I skip over the 300-word blocks of text like the following. Without new paragraphs or white space, it’s too dense for me to want to read them.
Thinking about AI impacts down the line without robotics seems to me like thinking about the steam engine without railroads, or computers without spreadsheets. You can talk about that if you want, but it’s not the question we should be asking. And even then, I expect more – for example I asked Claude about automating 80% of non-physical tasks, and it estimated about 5.5% additional GDP growth per year. Another way of thinking about Dean Ball’s growth estimate is that in 20 years of having access to this, that would roughly turn Portugal into the Netherlands, or China into Russia. Does that seem plausible? If you make a sufficient number of the pessimistic objections on top of each other, where we stall out before ASI and have widespread diffusion bottlenecks and robotics proves mostly unsolvable without ASI, I suppose you could get to 2% a year scenario. But I certainly wouldn’t call that wildly optimistic. I will reiterate my position that various forms of ‘intelligence only goes so far’ are almost entirely a Skill Issue, certainly over a decade-long time horizon and at the margins discussed here, amounting to Intelligence Denialism. The ASI cuts through everything. And yes, physical actions take non-zero time, but that’s being taken into account, future automated processes can go remarkably quickly even in the physical realm, and a lot of claims of ‘you can only know [X] by running a physical experiment’ are very wrong, again a Skill Issue. On the decreasing marginal value of goods, I think this is very much a ‘dreamed of in your philosophy’ issue, or perhaps it is definitional. I very much doubt that the physical limits kick in that close to where we are now, even if in important senses our basic human needs are already being met.
<🔔 dingggggggggggg 🔔>
A unique writing motif that I haven’t seen before. I think this is cool for a post related to meditation!
3/10/2025 Author’s note: It’s been a year since I started posting on LessWrong. In that time, I’ve become a better writer. This was my first LessWrong post. I’ve rewritten this post more concisely here. I’m leaving up this original version to showcase my improvement.
Costco’s brand:
It’s only two ingredients: peanuts and salt.
I’m not sure how I feel about seed oils generally, but I know they’re higher in Omega-6 fatty acids. From the NIH:
Omega-3s are utilized by the body to resolve and lower inflammation, whereas omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids are primarily used for increasing inflammation. Thus, the rise in the omega-6/3 ratio over the past 100 years may be driving chronic low-grade inflammatory conditions including autoimmune diseases, allergies and asthma.
I have considered the powdered option, but given my inflammation, it’s possible I have a minor allergy. I’m going to take a break for a while.
Assuming you’re serious about the psychological impact of removing all peanut butter products
^Nope, I’m exaggerating. I gave this post a “humor” tag and wrote it to laugh at myself.
I’m legitimately confused about using an LLM to generate actual text
LLMs are in their nascent form with limited capabilities. As they continue to develop, they’ll likely become more adept at creating large cohesive narratives.
I have a soft rule that I never upload the actual text of my book for feedback. I keep the actual text of the book out of the LLM’s memory.
I’m not sure where that fits in your model.
It’s interesting that you have this soft rule. Why? Are you worried that it’ll steal your ideas? Or possibly concerned that it’ll strip you of the feeling of authorship?
if someone wrote a book while holding a pen with their toes while doing a headstand, it’s not a good signal that the book will be of any interest to you.
Agreed, though I would definitely want to meet this insane person.
After writing his first 100-page short story, my brother realized that he’d become a better writer over the course of creating it. The beginning chapters therefore needed more rewriting than the ending chapters.
He just finished writing his first novel this week (and is getting ready to pitch it to publishers). Because of his prior writing experience, this story needed less overall editing as he has developed his writing style.
I did not replicate his argument in full. I merely selected interesting excerpts to comment upon.
The full essay can be read online here.
Agreed. The Unhook Youtube chrome extension is great. Another extension I use in combination with it is Improve Youtube.
Together they’ve saved me hundreds of hours.
I’ll add: No internet on my phone.
My friend recommended I delete the browser on my phone. It’s saved me time from going down curiosity rabbit holes.
Selling my TV was one of the best decisions I ever made. In that same post I wrote about the underlying scientific principles behind Supernormal Stimuli.
If you’re interested in the topic, I’d recommend author Deirdre Barrett’s book Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose, and also Eliezer’s post Superstimuli and the Collapse of Western Civilization.
Sports betting increases domestic violence. When the home team suffers an upset loss while sports betting is legal, domestic violence that day goes up by 9% for the day.
Stress researcher, Dr. Robert Sapolsky of Stanford University, in his book Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers: A Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and Coping found that, unfortunately, one of the best ways to cope for stress is displacing aggression onto another person. (Though, he primarily studied the phenomenon with respect to baboons.)
I find this context helpful in trying to understand why some people might commit domestic violence—a perpetrator (who has not learned emotional regulation and developed healthy coping mechanisms) is experiencing incredibly high stress levels that need to be mediated through some form of coping.
In reckoning with my feelings of doom, I wrote a post in which I drew upon Viktor Frankl’s popular book Man’s Search for Meaning. Here’s an excerpt from that post that discusses why hope is not cheap, but necessary for day-to-day life:
I concluded that post with this: