This post was hard for me to read. A few months after I wrote it I developed medical issues that are still ongoing and really sapped my ability to work. Right now I feel on the precipice of developing Large Scale Ambitions, and that I’d probably have taken the plunge to something bigger if I’d hadn’t gotten so sick for so long.
On the other hand, I spent the past 2 years trying to dramatically reform Effective Altruism. I expected to quit in May but got sucked back in via my work with Timothy TL. I didn’t think of this as ambitious, but looking back I do find it ridiculous that I thought I would succeed, which is kind of like ambition except I’m not having any fun with it.
I remain really happy with the “dear self” format. Most advice is advice to your past self anyway, and it’s nice to be straightforward about it. It avoids friction with people very different from me, because they can’t argue that that they know better for me personally.
I like the balance I struck between treating social motivations as real and important, and encouraging people to look beyond them.
You might also enjoy my twitter thread on Frying Pan Agency, where you start with small actions like fixing a wobbly frying pan handle and work your way up.
Still no answer to “how do you tell when to release subpar work and when to keep improving?”. I have a sense I should be working on my ceiling and not my floor right now, but don’t know how.
I’m having trouble parsing but I think the first point is about the mutation rate in humans? I don’t expect that to be informative about flu virus except as a floor.