An Introduction, an Overview of my personal resources, and how one might make use of them

post by ProofBySonnet (redheadbros) · 2023-07-01T21:00:21.093Z · LW · GW · 6 comments

Contents

  Introduction
  Some things I suspect I'm Better At Than Average
  Comments
  Remaining Uncertainties
None
6 comments

Introduction

Here's how I got here: a YouTuber I watch talked about 80,000 hours, so I started looking into it. I came to the conclusion that alignment work was both important in a global sense and a good fit for me personally, so I started working through their recommended readings.

While making progress through their alignment course, I noticed that a lot of the articles seemed to be coming from a weird website called "Less Wrong dot com." I vaguely remembered previously encountering it as a strange place, full of scary Atheists. However, my curiosity got the better of me. I followed some links and went down some rabbit trails, and before I knew it I was being inducted into a Baysian Conspiracy and my entire worldview was shifting under my feet because of a harry potter fanfic.

The reason for this post: I was inspired by So8res, first by one of his early productivity posts [LW · GW] and later by his "Replacing Guilt" series [? · GW]. I want to more effectively strategize about how to steer my life in a useful direction, and I want to start writing out my thoughts in order to connect with others. Or, something like that.

I don't know if posts like this would be better made elsewhere, like on a personal blog - but I've got to start posting at some point, better to do this now than in 6 months.

Some things I suspect I'm Better At Than Average

(I'd say "My Pareto Frontier," but I haven't earned those words yet since I don't know their actual meaning)

• I'm good at math (evidence: I got accepted into a master's of mathematical physics (I dropped out before finishing, though))
  • I can apply this to learning Alignment concepts, and generally to expressing or creating new ideas within the field.
• I'm good at coding (evidence: I've done a bachelor's in CS, and have made a handful of games)
  • I can apply this to coding up AI stuff: reinforcement learning environments, replicating existing results, et cetera.
  • I also want to keep making games, I want to be able to explore personal themes, and that leads me into my last two points:
• I have somehow gained the ability to draw (evidence: see below, some practice sheets from the last couple of months)
  • I could use this ability to draw diagrams, for any posts I make
  • I could create comics, tell short stories
  • I could create regular-old art, trying to express abstract feelings

• I took piano lessons, sang, and did musical theatre as a kid
  • I could hypothetically work on my musical skills, to provide sounds for game-like projects.
  • I could possibly develop my public speaking skills, that seems potentially useful but also potentially terrifying.

Comments

I'm not nearly as hardworking as So8res. As a reasonable estimate for a doable study routine, I took So8res' study schedule from here [LW · GW], and cut it in more than half. This is partially due to me being less focused, and partially due to his later posts [? · GW] about being realistic: I'd like to create a routine that is effortless in the short term and sustainable in the long term.

My skills are very different from So8res' skills. I have a bad habit of comparing myself too closely to people I admire, and I can feel myself doing that with him. The better way of thinking about this would be that "the strategy is to optimize how effectively one puts to use their resources in achieving their goal, while also optimizing for complete knowledge of said resources." He put his personal motivation and social resources to extremely good use, and I ought to judge myself in this domain by how effectively I use the above resources, to Do Good (tm).

Remaining Uncertainties

• I have no very little idea how to use singing in a useful way. I've got the talent, but I haven't put it to use in years.
• I don't entirely like the idea of purely using art as a means to an end, as a communication tool. I need to clarify what I mean in another post at some point, but a way to think about it is that there seems to be some sort of "aesthetic beauty created" term in my utility function. Part of me says that art isn't important because it's not directly Doing Good (tm) like how feeding people during a famine or making progress towards solving the alignment problem are, but another part of me simply INSISTS that creating quality art (in any medium) is something worth optimizing for. I have more thinking/reading to do here.
• In the end, there's still many strategy-based issues unresolved. Given the above resources, how do I achieve my goals?
  • I want to better understand why AI alignment is the most pressing problem for me to be studying. Can I fully explain it without stealing someone else's words to do it for me?
  • I want to put more work into optimizing for making my various study habits as effortless, as sustainable as possible. I don't want to be pushing myself (via willpower) to do a daily X, I want to reflexively do X every day without thinking about it. Daily art, regular writing, regular reading, whatever. I want this ship to effectively run itself. However: I'm not sure how to actually pull this off. 
• I don't entirely know whether posts like this are a good strategy (a strategy to accomplish what?). It's a semi-accurate representation of what was in my mind today, so perhaps that's good enough.

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