I got my first legal job at 15 working as a host for this restaurant in Modesto called Baker’s Square.

I had mowed lawns and helped my mom with a paper route before but this was my first job with a W-2 (IRS tax form for you non-Americans).

Bakers Square was a casual American restaurant competing with Marie Callender’s that also served pies. My high school friend Travis got me the job since his dad was the manager there.

My time at Bakers Square, or the B-Square Lounge, as we called it, was very formative for me. It gave me a taste of independence (even though my mom usually had to drive me there and back when I didn’t catch a ride with my friends).

I learned a lot on the job. I loved the busyness and being in flow and having to get the time management right like those video games where you have to get the timing right of cooking and serving otherwise everything goes to shit.

I memorized my social security number for the first time because that was our sign in code.

I learned how to upsell people on pies, how to be more responsible on a job, and that a walk-in freezer is a choice place to cool down (and also make out).

If you’ve never worked in a restaurant, watch the 2005 movie Waiting. It paints an accurate picture, at least for the politically incorrect times back then. (I don’t know if most workplaces have cleaned up since.)

(Btw, I tell more Bakers Square stories in my friend Travis’ podcast.

John Greer

My Episode on Travis Birmley’s Podcast

Do you ever look back and think about all the mistakes you made, all the stupid things you did in high school…

Read more

4 years ago · John Greer

I learned about work relationships and work drama. We had fun trolling each other by doing things like calling in from the parking lot asking if they had watermelon pie.

I was in the middle of high school, full of hormones, and the cast of characters there was great.

Cast of Characters

There was Carlos, the cool Mexican guy who was always down to take more people in his section no matter how insanely busy it was.

There was Dawn, the tough broad who drank Hurricane out of a cup and showed up to work with a black eye from her old man. (She also had me feel her boob because she was proud they were real.)

There was the sweet MILF Barbara that us teenagers would flirt with and who later cried with me when I had to stop working.

There was Sara, the chill girl, who Travis and I became close friends with. The three of us would drive around and get into trouble together.

There was Miguel, a manager who deserves his own post, who I would drive around with in his giant SUV. We would hit shopping carts in the Best Buy parking lot and laugh while they went flying. This was when he wasn’t trying to get me to go to a strip club, or drink at the Applebee’s bar while he hit on the bartender.

Then there was Dan. Dan was a 19 or 20 year old guy with a goatee and gauges in his ears. He was crazy. He would go out to the parking lot and do lines of coke off his server book.

He talked about doing vodka enemas. The guy was a partier. I went to my first proper party with Dan and his friend Phil, and did my first shot there. I remember the alcohol burning on the way down. This would be the beginning of my anti-love affair with alcohol!

Dan loved the manga series Berserk and let me borrow it. I remember flipping through it for naked drawings of girls.

I eventually stopped working there and moved away from the Valley after high school.

Reconnect

I’ve moved a lot in my life. My original hometown was Hollister, CA where I went to a nice Christian school. We were all friends and it was really wonderful socially. (I wrote more about this in my post on bullying.)

John Greer

Bully For You

“Chink.” “Faggot…

Read more

6 years ago · John Greer

When we moved, I left a lot of really good friends. I always wondered what happened to them. This was before the age of MySpace so I never knew until I found some of them on Facebook many years later.

There’s something I really like about reconnecting with people from the past. Social media is a double-edged sword, though; it’s the best tool for looking people up and seeing what they’re up to, but it can take away some of the mystery and magic.

The same thing happened when I stopped working at Bakers Square and especially when I moved to Berkeley after high school, I lost touch with most of my coworkers.

I couldn’t find Dan on social media. Finally, I connected with him on Snapchat. He had moved to Georgia, but we texted back and forth once a year or so. At some point, I saw a meme about Berserk and texted him about it. Turns out he happened to be coming back to Modesto with his wife and daughter to visit his sick step-mom. The timing was perfect!

We planned to meet in San Francisco after he and his family visited Alcatraz.

I waited for him at the dock where people leave and return for the Rock. I was about to see the dude for the first time in 20 years! After scanning the crowds I finally spotted him and felt my heart race a little.

We had a really nice time. He was the same chill Dan, it felt like no time had passed.

I was surprised that Dan remembered a lot of detail from our past, even things I had forgotten about. For example, he remembered that I was always worried about my mom “beating my ass” if I came home too late. I brought up the coke on the server book, and without missing a beat he replied “Yep, that’s just what the job needed.” From my time doing interviews and discussing family history with lots of different people, I know how common it is to forget or confabulate, so I was impressed.

We ate lunch at Fisherman’s Wharf and saw the sea lions and his daughter went on the carousel. He told me about the jobs he was doing, like at a decommissioned nuclear site and all the cool architecture they had inside like a stainless steel floor. I love hearing about things like this, especially because of my fondness for urban exploration. We talked about other things like music. For you metal fans out there, Dan recommends the band Archspire.

It really is fun meeting up with people from the past because you can catch up and see how things turned out, but it can also be like a little time capsule where you reminisce and share stories the other may have forgotten. It’s great when you still “click”.

What has your experience been with reconnecting with people from the past? I’m actually curious about your answers so pls share!

I went to a showing of her dad’s film Stolen Kisses which she was introducing and then discussing in a Q and A afterward.

She was very French, very charming, and had a very kind affect!

I’ve met a decent amount of famous or minorly famous people. I never like being that overly forward person rushing up to them and interrupting the conversation they were having. But sometimes there’s never a natural opening.

I was lucky that I got to meet her right when I walked in. I just assumed it was the lady surrounded by a group of people (I was right). Luckily, they didn’t overstay and I caught her right before more people she knew walked up.

(I like knocking out meeting someone up front or taking a picture right away, so I don’t have to ruminate about it later.)

I first asked if she was tired of doing these events (presenting her father’s films and doing Q&As). She laughed and said not yet but that I should ask her at the end of the series.

I then of course asked what her favorite movie is. She started to say the one we were about to watch, but I said, “You can’t say your dad’s!” She happily listed Miracle Worker, To Be or Not to Be, The Lady Vanishes, Rear Window, and one I can’t remember. (I thought it was nice that she listed Hitchcock movies since her father was one of the Cahiers du Cinéma French film critics who helped defend and popularize Hitchcock critically. Her dad eventually made a famous book, Hitchcock/Truffaut, from his interviews with him.)

After talking with Laura, I went into the theater and sat in my usual seat in the front middle, where I sit for all the BAMPFA showings with the filmmakers present.

I’m an anxious person and tend to fixate on making preparations because I am very outcome-dependent. But I’ve been to so many BAMPFA showings and got to ask a question at every one because of my strategy, so now I’m pretty confident.

The movie was actually lovely and is a sequel to his most famous film 400 Blows.

I always loved Truffaut in front of the camera as well, whether that was in Close Encounters of the Third Kind or Day for Night. For whatever reason, certain actors seem really likable to me, even without seeing much of them in interviews. For example, I really loved Bill Paxton, and for some reason, he’s the celebrity death I was most sad about.

The question I asked during the Q and A was: “What was your childhood like with a famous dad?”

She said “pretty normal”, which I somehow doubt. She did mention visiting film sets, including the one of the movie we watched. She had mentioned earlier first meeting her husband at a movie showing at the BAMPFA because he worked there, so I also asked her which movie, but she didn’t remember.

Being able to meet filmmakers and artists is one of the benefits of living in Berkeley -- I got to meet my hero Werner Herzog as well.

Overall, Laura is an extremely charming woman, and I hope she does more showings in the future! Better yet, I’ll have to convince her to do an interview with me!

Meeting Logistics

• Meeting: Board of Supervisors

• Date: Tuesday, October 28, 2025

• Location: City Hall

• Members of the public present: 50

Overall Impression

To me it was relatively fast paced not in the “not boring” sense but in the getting through a lot of agenda items relatively quickly but I think this is because most of the work is done behind the scenes and they are now executing perfunctory steps. Not everything is like this obviously but much of it. There was a lot of self-congratulatory comments given that there were commendations given out.

Meeting Agenda Item(s) of Interest

Honestly, none of them were that interesting to me. But, I thought some of the discussion of the “250682 Planning Code; Zoning Map - Consolidating the North Beach Special Use and Neighborhood Commercial Districts and Expanding Allowable Uses and Use Size Limits in Certain Zoning Districts” from Sauter was mildly interesting given the economic incentives.

Most Surprising

I learned there’s much more grandstanding from the Board of Supervisors which makes sense given their higher profile nature and bigger audience the sessions attract.

Political Dynamics

No, I didn’t really but wondered how much there was and how much kayfabe there is at the local level given said grandstanding.

Questions

I want to learn more about the behind the scenes dynamic and work that happens that the meeting just shows the end result of. I didn’t feel too confused.

Meeting Debrief

Meeting Logistics

• Meeting: Sunshine Ordinance Task Force

• Date: Wednesday, November 5, 2025

• Location: City Hall

• Members of the public present: 5

Overall Impression

There were so many interesting things in such a short time but I think it was mostly luck. I walked in and sat down and there were only two other people in the audience but one of my classmates and another guy showed up as well. The clerk, Patricia Petersen, was very nice and asked if I was going to be speaking so she could learn my name to not “butcher it”.

Most of the committee seemed to not care that much and to not be paying attention. Many had to have things repeated to them because they weren’t listening.

It was nice seeing my teacher, Michael Adams, introduced and being at his first meeting as the mayoral designee.

The two most active members were the chair, Matt Yankee, and David Pilpel. Chair Yankee, seemed competent with trying to move the agenda forward and be diplomatic between the different personalities. David Pilpel seemed to be a pedant overly concerned with minutiae.

It’s one thing if he was very dedicated at his job and cared about the details and expected the same of others. But he seemed to have not done things he should have done already but was on everyone else’s ass about trivia. For example, he really want to carefully check the minutes from a meeting he wasn’t even at.

It was interesting to see the tension and bickering between him and the clerk. I thought this would be the peak of drama in the evening but I didn’t know how wrong I would be. In looking up Pilpel, I see he has some controversy already.

The highlight was when we got to “Remarks from Members Hyland and Pilpel regarding comments made at the March 5, 2025 Sunshine Ordinance Task Force Regular Meeting.”. Pilpel started by apologizing for something and then Hyland (who showed up like 30 minutes late) gave a weak apology as well. Then the woman who had been sitting in the front row when I got there went up to speak. It turned out they were apologizing for mean comments they had made on hot mics to her. She made some angry comments and responses back to them and seemed particularly angry at Hyland who mostly didn’t look at her. “Look at me when I’m talking to you.” she said.

Ankita Kumar asked if she was at the meeting and then said as a woman, she cared a lot and didn’t want these things to happen. I thought it was weak and transparent especially given her lack of investment overall. I did think it was funny when they asked her when Diwali was as if she would know better than Google.

She made her comments and then left. We made eye contact as she was walking out, and I gave her a weak, supportive smile and she gave one back to me.

I wanted to keep going and hear what the older guy who came in had to say but couldn’t stay longer so had to leave. I’m now extremely disappointed to see they only have audio recordings and now video.

Meeting Agenda Item(s) of Interest

“Remarks from Members Hyland and Pilpel regarding comments made at the March 5, 2025 Sunshine Ordinance Task Force Regular Meeting.” of course because of the drama!

Most Surprising

I wasn’t expecting so much drama in such a short amount of time. I learned that there is a lot of variance in engagement from the different committee members.

Political Dynamics

There was tension between the clerk and Pilpel mostly but the rest of the committee didn’t seem in love with him either.

Questions

I want to know more about the dynamic and motivations of the members and their backgrounds. Also how they interface with the rest of the administration.

The San Francisco Arts Commission is an agency that consists of fifteen members appointed by the Mayor for four-year terms. No Board of Supervisors control here. Eleven members must be “practicing arts professionals including two architects, a landscape architect, and representatives of the performing, visual, literary and media arts; and four members shall be lay members. The President of the Planning Commission, or a member of the Commission designated by the President, shall serve ex officio. Members may be removed by the Mayor.”

They are overseen by the Director of Cultural Affairs.

Two seats are currently vacant.

The commission was established under the 1932 San Francisco Charter.

The Arts Commission (15 member volunteer board) runs the Arts Commission (city agency with paid staff). It’s nice they both have the same name so no one gets confused!

How do you get money?

If you’re an artist, you apply for a grant, a panel scores and reviews the projects, and the Commission hopefully approves your grant.

Who decides what art goes on a site?

A selection panel made up for artists, community reps, and staff) recommends artists and proposals. They encourage public comment on proposals. Then the Arts Commission approves.

How much money are we talking about here?

For the 2025-2026 grant cycle, they awarded “$10.4 million to support 151 grantees, including more than $7.5 million in grant funding awarded to 98 individual artists and 47 arts nonprofit organizations, and nearly $3 million in funding support has been awarded to support cultural centers.”

There two main laws to know about:

Art Enrichment Ordinance (the 2%-for-art program)

In 1969, the Art Enrichment Ordinance (the 2%-for-art program) was enacted which is how public art is paid for for city construction. Two percent of the gross construction cost is set aside for public art.

This can be a significant amount. For example, the remodel of Terminal 2 at SFO Airport generated about $3.7 million in art enrichment funds.

What about art in POPOS (Privately-Owned Public Open Spaces)?

1% Art Program that requires all projects involving new building, or the addition of 25,000 square feet or more in the Downtown, SOMA, Dogpatch, and some other neighborhoods, provide public art equal to at least 1% of the total construction cost. It was established by the 1985 Downtown Plan and is governed by Section 429 of the Planning Code.

Since May 2012, developers can also choose to allocate their 1% to the City’s Public Art Trust instead or they can split the 1% between art on site and money to the trust.

Since May 2012, some projects may choose to dedicate a portion of their 1% Art requirement to the City’s Public Art Trust. To read more about the requirements, and the Public Art Trust, please read the Public Art Requirement Fact Sheet.

Recent changes

There have been recent controversial changes where they used to front a large amount of money to artists without much oversight and now they require much more paperwork and check-ins and focus more on reimbursement.

Payment advances will be capped at 50% (they used to do as much as 70%) and they will need to submit quarterly reports on spending and deliverables.

But after much pushback, they paused the changes until probably sometime next year.

1. Resources

Media

• SF Chronicle article: S.F. arts community fears for its future as City Hall eyes stricter control of grants (06/28/25)

Public/Gov Sources

• San Francisco Arts Commission policies (website)

Legal Sources

• SF Charter, Charter § 5.103. Arts Commission.

• SF Administrative Code, § 2A.150. Arts Commission; Functions, Powers and Duties.

• SF Administrative Code,§3.19. Appropriation for Art Enrichment of Proposed Public Buildings, Aboveground Structures, Parks and Transportation Improvement Projects.

• SF Administrative Code § 429. Artworks, Options to Meet Public Art Fee Requirement, Recognition of Architect and Artists, and Requirements

Experts to contact

• Arts Commission (email, phone)

• ​Director of Cultural Affairs, Ralph Remington (email for his secretary)

• ​Ex. Officio, SF Planning, Lydia So

2. Simple Map

Title: San Francisco will sue if Trump deploys National Guard, city attorney says

• Date: October 21, 2025

• Source: San Francisco Standard

• Summary: Trump threatened to send the National Guard in to San Francisco causing a lot of angry responses but what power the local government has seems to be very little.

Step 1: Relevant government entities from article:

• POTUS

• U.S. Supreme Court

• California Governor

• California Attorney General

• SF Mayor

• City Attorney

• District Attorney

Step 2: Relevant law(s) from article:

• Law: 10 U.S. Code § 12406 - National Guard in Federal service: call

  • Level: Federal

  • Type: Statutory

  • Details: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/12406

• Bonus Law: Administrative Code - Core Initiatives to Strengthen City’s Responses to Homelessness, Drug Abuse, Mental Health Needs, and Related Crises

  • Level: Local

  • Type: Ordinance

  • Details: https://sfgov.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=7096263&GUID=018BB08D-30AB-46B5-9B9B-8DC75FB0DB5D&Options=Advanced&Search=

Step 3: Relevant Government Subgraph:

I knew very little of anything and I think it would be a good exercise to have it roughly memorized as it’s a great framework to reference when people are taking about things going on in each district and who is in charge. Also, you seem like the incorrigible person at a cocktail party who knows all this stuff.

Name: Portsmouth Square

Location: Chinatown

Current image(s):

Historical image(s):

Why it’s interesting/why you like it:
When I first came here, I thought it was just a normal park where people hung out and ate lunch with their friends. But it’s actually one of the most important areas in San Francisco history. Our local author Gary Kamiya calls this San Francisco’s historic ground zero. It’s also where all Chinatown guides start their tour.

Namesake/History:

• Portsmouth Square has its claim to many oldest. It is the oldest park in San Francisco and was established before San Francisco was even San Francisco during the Mexican period of California. It was original the Plaza de Yerba Buena or La Plaza.

• The area is the first American flag was raised declaring this a part of the United States. The oldest street is Grant Ave (originally Calle de la Fundación and later Dupont St.) runs right by it. The first public school in California was here. The city’s first newspaper was published here. This is where the Gold Rush actually started when Sam Brannan, California’s first millionaire, waved around a bottle with gold flakes and shouted “Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River!”

• But what about today? Look around and you’ll see people playing cards, Chinese chess, exercising by doing tai chi. Chinatown is an extremely densely populated area, with most of the housing being SROs (single-room occupancy), rooms with no bathroom or kitchen that are around 70 to 100 square feet. Because the living spaces here are incredibly small so people hang out here, which is why Portsmouth Square is known as the living room of Chinatown.

A big benefit of learning this stuff is that you can understand what you hear in the news more. For example, whether something is “unconstitutional” or not is constantly discussed.

If you read the Constitution, you realize there isn’t a whole lot in it. Not that it isn’t important or amazing, but just that it’s incredibly brief. It’s not a long list of laws, but more “Here are the basic rules of this nation. You can fill in the blanks now.”

The Federal government is the highest authority for many things and the States are the highest authority for things the Feds leave up to them.

The Federal government is the highest authority for many things and the States are the highest authority for the rest. In practice, there is often tension between the two over their authority.

Then you learn that the legislative branch like Congress makes some of the rest of the laws. But it trickles down where more specialized and localized agencies pass laws for their field or location.

Everyone delegates. And then the courts are always interpreting the laws in this symbiotic circle.

It’s a good exercise to look up the local laws (which is often really annoying to do as many aren’t in a centralized location) and see what it looks like, from the mundane to the very impactful.

Homework #2 Below:

1. Hierarchy of Law

Complete Hierarchy of Law

Federal (US)

• Constitutional: US Constitution

• Statutory: US Code (USC)

• Administrative: Code of Federal Regulations (CFR)

• Case: United States Supreme Court Opinions

State (California)

• Constitutional: CA Constitution

• Statutory: CA Code

• Administrative: California Code of Regulations

• Case: CA Supreme Court Opinions

Local (San Francisco)

• Constitutional: subject to CA Constitution

• Statutory: SF Charter

• Administrative: SF Municipal Codes

• Case: subject to California state courts

2. Legislative Research: Statutory Law

2025 Legislation Sponsored by Supervisor Sauter

Ordinances introduced so far this year: # 1

Ordinances passed so far this year: # 1

Ordinance research: (choose the item most interesting to you and provide more information)

1. Title: Ordinance approving amendments to the rules and regulations for the Neighborhood Beautification and Graffiti Clean-up Fund.

   1. File Number: 250488

   2. Cosponsors: Joel Engardio, Rafael Mandelman, Stephen Sherrill, Shamann Walton

   3. Introduced: 5/6/2025

   4. Status: Passed 6/24/2025

   5. Book of law affected: Administrative Code

   6. Why is this interesting or important? I don’t think it’s that interesting but it’s the only thing Sauter has passed so far. Maybe he’s not a heavyweight or maybe it’s too soon? I guess I’ll learn more! They are amending it to take into account new grant rules from Administrative Code Section 21G.

3. Legislative Research: Administrative Law

2025 regulations made by the Police Commission

1. Item name or number: RESOLUTION NO. 25-44

2. Description: APPROVAL TO ADOPT A RESOLUTION URGING THE BOARD OF SUPERVISORS TO ACCEPT SAN FRANCISCO POLICE

   COMMUNITY FOUNDATION AND RIPPLE LABS, INC. DONATION OF FUNDS AND IN-KIND GIFTS VALUED AT

   APPROXIMATELY $9,381,571 TO SUPPORT THE REAL TIME INVESTIGATION CENTER (RTIC);

3. Date passed: June 4, 2025

4. Why is this interesting or important? I think it’s interesting to see how the city of San Francisco and the country at large deal with surveillance technology and how San Francisco fought it vigorously at first and is now embracing it. Seeing how the powerful can influence the city in a very direct way like this is notable and I also think it’s interesting how much of the Police Commissions resolutions deal with donations.

5. How does this regulation compare to the ordinance you researched? It’s much more interesting and consequential and not just administrative code changes.

I’ve started taking Michael Adams’ class “How SF Government Works”. I plan to write up more about the experience later but for now I want to say that just the initial information provides a useful framework for which to view the organization.

He encourages the class to write out their thoughts and share them because it’s an important step in accumulating political capital. People need to know why they should listen to you and trust you. Luckily, I already have experience doing this but it’s a good exercise for people who aren’t writers.

We are supposed to post about who our mayor , local supervisor, and another elected official are and what their background, etc. is but I live in Berkeley so am adapting it. Even the template for the SF government is very helpful to compare and contrast with Berkeley like Board of Supervisors vs the Berkeley City Council. And I think even identifying who the elected officials are, because there aren’t that many, is helpful for when I’m going to all these events and can put names to faces and have context for who they are and what they do. And identifying the margin of victory helps show how tight the race is and maybe how much room for influence there is.

More later but for now, my homework is below:

SF Gov Homework #1

Berkeley

1. Mayor

Mayor: Adena Ishii

Time in office: Since November 2024 so roughly 11 months

Margin of victory: 1,039 votes in November 2024 general election

Previously held public or private/party office:

• President, the League of Women Voters of Berkeley, Albany, and Emeryville

• Co-chair, Berkeley Unified School District Reparations Task Force

• Education consultant

2. City Council

City Council District: District 4

District Map:

Neighborhoods:

• Downtown Berkeley

• North Shattuck

• Part of West Berkeley

District Population: 15,728 in 2020 https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/2022-04/IRC%20Redistricting%20Summary%20Data%20Analysis%20of%20Unofficial%20Legacy%20Data%20for%20Berkeley%20Census%20Count.pdf

My District Supervisor: Igor Tregub

Picture:

Public profiles:

• Official website: N/A

• https://www.facebook.com/igor.tregub

• https://ballotpedia.org/Igor_A._Tregub_(Berkeley_City_Council_District_4,_California,_candidate_2024)

Email: itregub@berkeleyca.gov

Time in office: May 2024, 1 year, 4+ months

Margin of victory: 49 ballots, 10 raw votes

Board and Committee Assignments:

• Member, Berkeley City Council

• Member, Land Use, Housing & Economic Development Committee

• Member, Health, Life Enrichment, Equity & Community Committee

• Member4x4 Joint Task Force Committee on Housing

• Member Budget & Finance Committee

• Member, City/UC Berkeley/Student Relations Committee

• Member Mental Health Commission

Previously held public or private/party office:

• Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board member

• Clean energy consultant

• Chair, Sierra Club San Francisco Bay Chapter

3. Berkeley School Board

Berkeley School Board President: Michael Chang

Picture:

Public profiles:

• https://ethnicstudies.berkeley.edu/people/michael-chang

• https://www.facebook.com/RunWithMikeChang

• Ballotpedia: N/A

Time in office: November 2022, 2 years

Margin of victory: 1198

Previously held public or private/party office:

• Lecturer at UC Berkeley

• Civil Rights Attorney

• Berkeley’s Police Review Commissioner

I talk about the earthquake and fires on the tour and how they are the only reason I exist (come on the tour to hear the story!), so I have wanted to go for a while.

It’s always a struggle for people to make it because the quake was at 5:12 in the morning, so the ceremony starts at 4:45am. It’s at Lotta’s Fountain because it was an important meeting point for people after the quake.

I had three missions for the day, in order of priority:

1. Attend the anniversary.

2. Paint the Golden Fire Hydrant. For those that don’t know, during the earthquake, most of the fire hydrants didn’t work, but this one did and helped save the Mission district. They paint it gold every year to honor it.

3. Meet Donna Huggins, who has portrayed Lillie Coit (of Coit Tower fame) for 50 years. Lillie Coit loved the firefighters and became their patron. 2025 is Donna’s last year doing it!

Bonus mission: Get a picture with the current mayor, Daniel Lurie.

Lei and I had already met Daniel Lurie on the same evening we met then mayor London Breed. It was at the 175th banquet for the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (the “Six Companies”). He came to our table glad-handing, but I didn’t think to take a picture then because I didn’t know much about him or that he would win, haha.

I made it a bonus mission because I can ruminate too much on things I feel like I should do at social events. I can think too much about being very outgoing and making things happen, instead of being in the moment. But the benefit is I can often do some cool stuff. I just want the best of both worlds!

The commemoration itself was kind of a letdown. The fire chief, who was the MC, talked during the moment of silence. They screwed up the countdown to the quake. Many speakers like former mayor Willie Brown weren’t talking into the mic. And it was super cold!

Lei and I hung around after and met and took pictures with Donna (who is very sweet) and the fire chief.

We left and got to the Golden Fire Hydrant where the ceremony was already underway. We couldn’t talk to the mayor because he was already mid-speech. After he was done, he went to the opposite side from where we were. We followed him over there, but by the time we got there he was nowhere to be found. I thought he left but then spotted him behind the filming lights hanging out with his lackey.

I didn’t want to be awkward and move through people to get to him, so I hoped a better moment would come. A few minutes later, he was talking to a fellow City Guide and moving closer to us. I swooped in and we got our picture – bonus mission accomplished! Huge victory! (Lurie did a lot less sucking up post-election btw.)

The ceremony commenced with people giving speeches that were too long and then eventually spraying the hydrant with the golden spray paint.

I thought only the officials were giving the speeches (talking into the mic in front of everyone) and then they would switch to the public. But when they got to regular members of the public, they were still handing them the mic! They would say some words and dedicate their spray to a person usually. I was unprepared for this and wondering what I would say.

I thought about who I would dedicate my turn to. I thought about saying AI safety people but thought no one would get it and it would feel kind of cringe. So I dedicated it to those trying to make sure our future goes well (of which, the AI safety community is most important) and to my family.

Lei was nervous to go up and talk, but he crushed it. He said a lovely piece about the Chinese not being included in the earthquake death toll, and dedicated his spray to all the forgotten groups.

Surprisingly, no members of the public talked for too long as opposed to some of the fire department brass.

It feels good being part of the community, and it’s nice thinking about everyone’s roots here including my own. You see a lot of familiar faces at these city events and slowly get to know people and their relationships with each other. For example, I didn’t realize I had already met Donna at the 150th anniversary of the cable car! Or that she’s friends with the guy who plays Emperor Norton (a notorious SF personality in the late 1800s). Or that Emperor Norton is married to the drag queen who also dresses up and gives drag tours!

Emperor Norton’s husband was really nice. I also met Laura Ackley, the author of the definitive book on the 1915 Panama–Pacific International Exposition that gave us the Palace of Fine Arts.

It’s nice when these events actually work and make you feel connected to the community and to the city and its long history. Like “Look at how much we’ve survived!” and “We’re all in this together!”

I’m not sure I’ll wake up early again next year, but it is the 120th and we know humans like round numbers! If you have a connection to the city, I recommend sucking it up and waking up early and connecting with the community by remembering one of the most important events in San Francisco’s history.

If you enjoyed this, you should definitely check out:

Taking a Knife Defense Class with Shivworks Craig Douglas

Trying Human Flesh for the First Time

Thoughts, questions, or suggestions for how I can improve? Email me.

Follow me on Facebook , Instagram, and X and for the goodies I don’t post here!

We need more people working on AI safety so we don’t all end up dead.

We need more people to understand the coordination problem as the central problem in politics and economics.

For those of us in the business of spreading ideas, it can be a tough row to hoe (I had to look up this phrase to make sure I was saying it right). It can feel like an uphill battle but the way you model it can help guide you.

This is my model when thinking about spreading ideas, especially ones outside the Overton window. It applies less in the later stages of a movement when the Overton window has shifted.

It’s about three boxes. I like buckets but I already have an important post about three buckets so boxes it is.

There’s the giant box. This box has the people that don’t agree with you. In fact, they probably think you’re a terrible person just for talking about these ideas.

There’s the small box. This box has the people that already agree with you.

Then there’s the Tiffany-sized box. These are the people who you may be able to reach with your ideas. The box is much smaller than the giant box.

Why is this?

Four reasons:

1. Efficient market hypothesis. The people who are open to these ideas already believe them.

The obvious caveat is the EMH applies less to new or radical or uncommon ideas since people are less likely to have heard about them. Think transhumanism vs democracy or AI safety research vs Christianity.

2. The amount of people who are smart enough/high enough in openness/reasonable enough to understand and accept a new idea is small. 

3. More often than not, the truth is something we don’t want to hear or don’t want to be true. I would love if there was an eternal paradise but there’s not. It would be wonderful if everyone was born smart and beautiful but they aren’t. I would love if we knew for certain that cryonics would work but we don’t.

4. Rationality people can be worse at selling ideas than non-rationality people for a number of reasons:

a. Autism and other neurodivergence are overrepresented in the rationality community which can make people less socially skilled than normies.

b. Many are uncomfortable using the so-called “Dark Arts” of persuasion/influence.

c. Rationality people promote epistemic awareness and humility and recognize that things are often shades of grey. They often provide confidence levels as opposed to blanket statements, e.g. “I’m very confident that my model of Covid-19 is right.” or “I have low confidence in my model of what’s going on with AlphaZero.” They also recognize there are usually pros and cons to issues and nuance. This can be less of a sell than “This is how it works! Big Pharma is evil!”

So how should we act based on all this? What do we do with this model?

Here are some implications:

1. Try not to be discouraged by the giant box.

As a cynic, I know this can be hard. There are some things we can do to alleviate discouragement:

a. Surround yourself with the people in the small box — the good and smart people who are on the same page — so you can find relief in them. “I’m not the only sane one!” The trick (besides finding such people) is not just surrounding yourself with yes men or having your group turn into an echo chamber.

b. Avoid spending a lot of time reading annoying shit on the internet. It can be addictive to read flame wars on Twitter but this is mostly a waste of time and just gets us worked up and not much else.

c. Keep a list of people who inspire you. I’m starting to do this by writing about my heroes.

2. Put your effort into the Tiffany-sized box: the people who are likely to be open to your ideas and smart enough to understand them.

Libertarians would love if there were more women among them. But focusing on just getting more women might be a huge waste of resources in the same way that it would be a waste of effort to get more women to be loggers (99.1% men in 2016) or men to be kindergarten teachers (97.5% women in 2016).

Yes, this can result in an overrepresentation but sometimes there’s not much you can do about it even if you make large attempts at being more “inclusive”.

To use your resources effectively in spreading ideas, it’s better to focus on more fertile ground first. 

a. Notice what beliefs, etc. correlate with being open to the idea and focus on people with those.

In the libertarian example, they might focus more effort on converting women gun enthusiasts vs women at liberal arts colleges.

Now, if you’re promoting veganism, you’d want to switch that and focus on the liberal arts colleges vs gun enthusiasts.

I wish it weren’t like this and we could have all the best beliefs instead of having these irrational strong constellations of beliefs, but we don’t currently live in that world.

3. Remember that it can get easier and breakneck change is eventually possible

As your numbers and in turn resources grow, you’ll be in a better place to shift the Overton window. Or at least be a major player in the future Culture Wars.

Once the Overton window has shifted, change can happen very fast! Support can increase quite modestly and then things hit a tipping point where things change metaphorically overnight. Support and legalization of gay marriage is the poster-child for this.

Major politicians of all parties (including Obama and the Clintons) were against gay marriage. While Bernie wasn’t 100% out and proud in supporting gay marriage, he was light years ahead of everyone else.

It’s a good thing to celebrate people changing their minds to better and more accurate beliefs. But when people just flip-flop because their tribe did or it’s politically expedient, that is less of a cause for celebration. 

Nerdy, liberal girls who were tripping over themselves to identify as Ravenclaws, now think that J.K. Rowling deserves death.

Culture is weird and volatile. (Even if you think Rowling is worthy of death, it still is weird and sad that people’s beliefs change that fast.)

Capriciousness just means they’ll give up a reasonable and rational belief for whichever one is in vogue. That’s bad.

“The mob is fickle, brother.”

This kind of capriciousness makes me feel like there should be a different word for beliefs that have been worked out and evaluated and then supported or not, vs this kind of tribal emotional bullshit, but that’s for another post.

A tipping point can also come because new technology has become available as opposed to just being theoretical. The old chestnut of “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” comes to mind.

A future example is longevity treatment. Very few people today support longevity research despite them supporting something much less effective but in the same direction like breast cancer research, etc. This is because people are stupid. 

But as Aubrey de Grey and others point out, the second we get real anti-aging treatment, you’ll have people overwhelmingly switch to wanting it. And bitching that they can’t have it despite actively not supporting it before, the fuckers…

What’s the point of getting people to change their minds now then if they’ll just end up changing them on their own in the future? 

The point is to get support in the form of money or people working on research or public policy changes. Every day we remain lax on things like AI safety research increases the risk we die from AGI. Every day we don’t have longevity tech is 100,000+ people dying. 99% of the things people purport to care about absolutely pales in comparison to causes like these. That’s why we work to spread ideas.

So in summary:

There are three boxes:

1. The giant box: the people that don’t agree with you.

2. The small box: the people that already agree with you.

3. The Tiffany-sized box: the people who you may be able to reach with your ideas.

The lessons from the three boxes model are:

1. Try not to be discouraged.

2. Surround yourself with people who inspire you and make you feel less cynical.

3. Write about the people who inspire you.

4. Sow your seeds in fertile ground.

5. Remember that it can get easier and rapid change is possible

6. Don’t forget the stakes matter. Keep up the good fight.

Understand the three boxes? Wonderful! How about the three buckets which are much more important?

The Three Buckets of Life: How to Spend Your Time and Money

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I finally checked off one of my bucket list items training with Craig Douglas and doing his Edged Weapons Overview course. It’s a course on how to manage criminal interactions and survive knife attacks, and how to defend yourself with knives.

I’ve been interested in martial arts since I was a kid. I was enamored with the cool moves of Bruce Lee or the Shaolin monks.

I’ve always been a skeptic. Anyone who knows me knows I hate bullshit. That’s a big problem with martial arts: it’s full of bullshit — things that are ridiculous and don’t work in real life. There’s an important concept known as “pressure testing” in martial arts, where you see if it works with full resistance. The UFC and combat sports were great at providing a testing ground to see what works and what doesn’t. While you may not be able to repeat test eye gouges and groin kicks, it’s still the best we have. Even the “real self defense” stuff often has a massive amount of BS.

When I was either in 8th grade or a freshman in high school, I started researching martial arts on the internet. I first heard about Craig on “selfdefenseforums.com” where he would post as “SouthNarc”. That was his nickname because he was a “dope cop” (an undercover narcotics officer) in the South.

That forum was one of the places where people really tried to focus on what works. It was like Bullshido where there was a lot of criticism of traditional martial arts being ineffective.

So I’ve known about Craig for 20 years. He is the best in the world at what he does.

So the course was finally going to happen in San Francisco! It was rare to have it here because most people aren’t exactly the target demographic. So I signed up!

I immediately regretted it. The closer it got the more I wanted to cancel! Were Craig and Brian going to be assholes in real life? Were the other trainees going to be weirdos? Who signs up for a class to learn how to stab people??

I was going to be around a bunch of strangers in a very stressful environment.  Shivworks famously has these “evolutions” where they do intense scenario-based sparring. For example: you have a knife and you’re being attacked by someone. Or you’re being attacked by a guy and you both have knives and his friend comes in to punch the shit out of you. The edits of these evolutions look very intense, and a lot of the attendees mentioned being intimidated by them.

It can feel embarrassing if you get beat up in front of the crowd of people encircling you. Many of these people have “years and years” of martial arts experience. More on that later.

I wanted to get them over with in the beginning, but that would of course have been pointless because the whole idea is to put together what we’ve learned and test it.

I also don’t enjoy being very out of breath or not being able to breath.

I was most worried about injury. If you’re reading this and haven’t sparred, you may think the common injuries are ones from being punched or kicked or whatever. They do happen, but the most common injuries are when someone moved wrong and your toe got bent or crushed. Or someone fell wrong and your knee is messed up. Not to mention the bruises that cover your body.

(The truth is, most people get way more injured from training than they do in violent encounters, unless you live in a very bad neighborhood.)

Anyways, I was anxious.

Different martial arts have different cultures. For example, judo is very academic, MMA has a lot of meatheads.

Getting there, I quickly saw the Shivworks people were overall very chill. (At least the ones coming to San Francisco.) They had a variety of backgrounds, but many people who trained off and on and had spent time in a lot of different martial arts.

The course was structured where Craig and his co-trainer Brian, provide an algorithm for dealing with sketchy approaches by people, which will honestly be the thing we all use the most in real life. Then you learn how to control people through wrestling, try to survive a knife attack, and learn how to use your own knife to stop adversaries.

I asked Craig a million questions — many about different martial arts and gun experts — to see what he thought. I’ll often ask people I trust about their peers in the field that I haven’t met and don’t know if they’re legit or not.

It was nice getting his insider view on the personalities I’ve heard about. Some good, many bad.

He talked about incidents where he was almost beaten or shot to death, and times where he had to shoot people. And he told me about times he used his service weapons.

I think stress inoculation — going through stressful experiences and building up resilience and knowing you got through that — can help you keep calm in other experiences. Training with my friend and MMA coach, Daron, helped me with knowing how to better move and strike, yes. But I also learned I could get through these intense and very uncomfortable training moments.

It also helped having the equipment ready to go like a cup and custom mouthguard. 

There were a variety of skill levels in the class. 

One problem trained grapplers have is that their BJJ gets them in trouble. They get attached to the person and may even get in a traditionally dominant position, but they get stabbed by their opponent, or stabbed or knocked out by their opponent’s friend. So you cannot get stuck to one person.

You learn how to deal with sketchy approaches and how to avoid getting knocked out by sucker punches.

They frequently emphasize that if you’re using this training, it’s going to be the worst day of your life.

To get really good at this or anything physical, you need to drill it a lot, and this was only a weekend. But sometimes having even a little knowledge and practice, along with an algorithm of what to do, can be a cheat code to win.

You can feel your adrenaline build up watching these primal fights in front of you.

I got to the evolutions and wasn’t feeling too nervous.

I’d rather play the defender first because being the attacker is much more fun. Especially when it’s two on one.

You get anxious not knowing who Craig or Brian are going to pick for you to fight. I don’t mind fighting people way more skilled than me but I didn’t want to fight some of the spazzes who had trouble following the rules in the moment. To avoid injury, you weren’t supposed to try hard to take people down or to really swing on them. Many people did these things anyways. “Shit happens,” as Craig said. But I like my face and joints and didn’t want shit to happen to me. But I was really lucky in that I had good sparring partners who weren’t spazzes.

Also, it’s sort of unspoken to go easier on less skilled people. Some people still go hardcore but I try to adapt when there’s a big skill disparity. Luckily the worst injury I got was messing up my thumb against this pro kickboxer’s iron abs.

Craig talked about how it takes courage to come to the seminars. I don’t like false empowerment but it’s true. You’re being vulnerable in front of a crowd of people.

I made some friends and have a new strong algorithm for sketchy approaches and weapons defense.

Overall, it was an honor to train with the legend. If you can, this is probably the shortest time you could spend and gain the most knowledge you would actually apply in a self-defense scenario. It lived up to all the hype and it’s cool to do something you’ve been wanting to do for a long time. Like finally seeing the Eiffel Tower and knowing what it’s actually like.

If you enjoyed this, you should definitely check out:

Bully For You

Trying Human Flesh for the First Time

The Apocalypse is Coming or Why I’ve Been Existentially Depressed

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The post Taking a Knife Defense Class with Shivworks Craig Douglas appeared first on John Greer.

Imagine you’re on a plane to Russia to become the new president of an aluminum factory. Conditions are abysmal. People are dying every year due to unimaginable safety conditions. Corruption is everywhere from the mayor on down. You’ll have to deal with oligarchs who’ve assassinated people. You’ll even be robbed by the cops.

What would you do? How would you fix things?

This is the position Bill O’Rourke found himself in.

I first met Bill when we toured the Carrie Furnaces in Pittsburgh. I liked Bill right away and knew I needed to record an interview with him.

We talked about everything from growing up in Steel City in its heyday, to teaching Delta Force operators about ethics, to turning around a Russian factory that killed five people a year, to Putin stealing a Super Bowl ring.

Bill has not only led an incredibly interesting life but he’s also a man of integrity and character (and that’s something I would rarely say!).

Enjoy the interview!

Timestamps below:

Introduction: How I Met Bill

0:00

Introduction

2:17

Bill’s background – storied childhood and career!

5:18

Bill’s book: The Business Ethics Field Guide

6:20

Adapting his book for Special Forces
Ethical dilemmas in the military

8:13

How Bill and I met
Why Bill gives tours of Carrie Furnaces

9:38

Family history and working in the steel industry

White hat status symbol

Ironically not being encouraged to go to law school

10:40

Bill’s family, and where he is in the sibling lineup

His dad teaching him ethics, no profanity

How his dad dealt with bribes

13:57

Did Bill play basketball? Being coached by his dad – anti-nepotism

15:13

Did he ever feel like his goody two shoes dad was too ethical?

Didn’t know he was poor

16:10

Being an altar boy, did he have any priest issues?

Was a Boy Scout, any issues there?

Vietnam War

16:44

What made Bill want to go into the military?

Fear of Vietnam, mother cried

Draft lottery

Captain of the Pistol Team

18:11

The Deer Hunter

Why didn’t he stay an engineer?

Going to law school

19:48

Law school doesn’t have any answers

20:37

What does he think of patent law?

Edison’s lightbulb

Working on trademarks, first trademark in China

Patent trolls

Working at Alcoa

24:30

Why did he work at Alcoa

Getting promoted

Paul O’Neill

Chief Financial Officer, Rick

Integrity

27:34

What was it like when outsider Paul O’Neill took over Alcoa?

People in line to take over were pissed they didn’t get it

Safety was number one

The most enlightened leader he’d ever seen

The best company in the world

How fast can you close the doors?

Only Yahoo was as fast

31:11

Becoming the CIO of the company

Going from 108 data centers to two: Is that the best? How can you be the best?

Getting excited about coming into work

Discretionary effort: plus or minus 20

32:27

Moving from a closed to open office pissed off a lot of people

Escalators, not elevators

Everyone had same 9×9 cubicle with same furniture

10 design principles

34:34

Paul must have been pretty polarizing

He started attracting rather than polarizing

Working in Russia

34:58

Abysmal Russian conditions

Bribery and corruption

Where do you start?

If you get safety right, you’ll get everything right

Incident rate 10x higher

5 people killed on average for 50 years

1 or 2 fatality risks a month, stopped looking after finding 2500 fatality risks

37:49

Why did he go to Russia?

Alcoa’s growth

Switch from plastic to aluminum

40:42

How did he prepare for Russia?

It was extremely overwhelming

Trying to meet all the new employees

41:39

Did he feel like an outsider?

He had a translator, a bodyguard, and a driver

Being robbed by the police – Who do you call?

43:01

Expectation of corruption: bribery to get accepted into university

Not paying corruption, didn’t break even until the 4th year

Pressure to give into corruption (even the mayor wanted it!)

Why was Bill selected?

Bringing values into Russia

How did other companies handle Russian culture?

Coca-Cola okay with bribing; Shell and Exxon, not

Smaller companies have to deal with the Russian mafia

47:24

Did Bill know he would never have to budge?

It’s in the cities interest to have his company employing people

The federal government and Russia itself benefiting

Damage of companies pulling out because of the war now

48:33

How do he and his Russian wife feel about the war?

Russian and Ukrainian corruption

Companies pulling out of Russia

Energy exports propping them up

52:45

Meeting Putin

Putin steals Bob Kraft’s Super Bowl ring

53:32

Bob Kraft visiting the Tree of Life synagogue

Bill running the Tree of Life synagogue after the shooting

Muslims and Jews positive relations

Christchurch shooting

Touring the synagogue with one of the survivors

More about Bill

57:38

Did Bill realize he was exceptional when he was young?

Bill got good grades and got awards

Bill is so humble

Bill’s personal mission statements

59:41

Bill mentors soldiers 

Americans Corporate Partners

Jake Voelker and Voodoo Brewery

Joe Grant and PNC Bank

102:48

Does Bill identify as an extrovert?

Bill goes to a bar

Bill talks to strangers at the airport

Thomas Edison

1:03:18

The magic of learning the stories people have and how things work

Where does electricity come from?

Henry Ford, Greenfield Village, Edison & Ford Winter Estates in Fort Myers

Historical figures interacting

1:05:06 

Edison’s impressive resume

Michelangelo vs Da Vinci, Edison vs Tesla

John is an Edison defender

Edison, Westinghouse, war of the currents

Electrifying elephants and bear fights

Bill’s Heroes and Family

1:06:31

If you could have dinner with anyone, who would it be?

Bill’s eleven heroes

Bill McDonough

Yuri Gagarin

Neil Armstrong’s humility

Thomas Jefferson the architect

Mother Theresa

Gandhi

Pope John Paul II (and Bill’s wife’s gracious sacrifice!)

The Pirates Pierogies

His dad and his trip to Annapolis and the WWII Monument

His impressive Matryoshka doll collection

1:13:56

Was it hard moving his wife over from Russia?

Did his family accept her?

1:14:55

A Special Operations Forces Ethics Field Guide

Cute kids’ drawing

Signing John’s copy of his book

Old School Values

1:15:42

Interlude: Bill’s old school values

Deontologist vs consequentialist

Kobayashi Maru

Rationalist, Effective Altruists

Applied examples where you could actually see yourself using his advice

1:16:58

Bill’s old school values and what he thinks of modern society

Wokeness, losing traditions

George Washington, historical figures weren’t perfect, important to learn from them

George Washington deserves more respect, could have been King

Judging people by modern day standards vs the standards of the time

Bill has hope, is impressed with the next generation

Hearing negative news stories, meeting kids helps combat the cynicism

Ethical Dilemmas

1:20:06

Asking Bill ethical questions

The Trolley Problem

Bill doesn’t like those types of problems. Bottom line: at least do something!

Recognize you have an ethical issue

What about people lacking discernment?

The importance of reputation

Reputation as a defense

The cost of awkwardness

1:25:13

What is Bill’s model of people? Are people inherently good or bad?

Dennis Praeger and Bill have opposite models

Everybody comes in at a 10/10 with Bill. Lose points from unethical acts

Important to admit mistakes to yourself

Compliance vs agency

Lessons from Paul O’Neill: What would the best company in the world do?

Legal culpability mindset vs moral compass pointing true north

Teach people that compliance is your floor, not your ceiling

People want to invest in socially responsible companies

1:31:32

More timely ethical questions: Vaccine mandates? Politics in the workplace?

Paul O’Neill’s “just the facts” approach to climate change

You shouldn’t be able to predict political beliefs based on one hobby but you can

Bill is an environmentalist

Bill gets a Cadillac LYRIQ

Where does your electric car get energy from? Coal!!

What does Bill think of nuclear?

John talks about scale

1:40:59

Would Bill go to space?

Weird that nuclear isn’t on the liberal agenda

Bill would be on both sides of the political aisle – shows he’s more of a thinker

Movies

1:41:44 

What is Bill’s favorite movie of all time?

Top Gun: Maverick

Jurassic World Dominion

Groundhog Day

Mission Impossible movies

James Bond (Bill and John were skeptical of Craig at first)

Russia Now

1:43:43

Technological development is amazing

How long would the trip from Michigan to Pittsburgh have taken before?

Eisenhower’s interstate system (Russia’s highway system sucks!)

Bill is able to talk to his wife in Russia

1:44:34

Is it crazy in Russia now?

Does Bill get along with his wife’s family?

Do his wife’s kids still live in Russia?

Sketchy advice for getting to the US

1:46:48

Bill wouldn’t let his kids download music

1:47:08

Bill advising Bob Dole on not giving oligarch Oleg Deripaska a visa

Was Bill ever afraid of getting hurt?

The Russian mafia was who you had to worry about hurting you (Alcoa was too big)

The cops robbed Bill

Bill would be detained in airports (longest detention: 9 hours)

If you stick to your guns, it’ll pay off

Smartest Person of All Time

1:48:59

Who does Bill think is the smartest person of all time?

Bill likes JFK

John will say his moon speech when he’s trying to do something hard

Kennedy gave hope, current president doesn’t

Those two are our best candidates??

Did Bill ever think about politics?

Bill’s brother Tom was involved, wanted to save drowning black kids

Genesis Holmes

O’Rourke have a family safety record

Outro: Feeling Less Cynical

1:52:52

Parting thoughts on Bill

I am too cynical and believe in the best predictive power

Bill makes me feel less cynical about life

I have a lot more interviews already shot that I’m in the process of editing so subscribe for more!

If you enjoyed this, you should definitely check these out:

Interview with Nectome CEO Robert McIntyre – Brain Preservation, Personal Identity, AGI, and More

What Arnold Means to Me

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The post Interview with Bill O’Rourke – Russian Corruption, Putin, Applied Ethics, and More appeared first on John Greer.

Kelsey officiated and our two friends Jen and John witnessed it. It was at home, we didn’t have a wedding.

Oh, and the three of us are having kids! Adri and Kelsey are both pregnant!

Here are some questions and answers:

(CW: This will probably be upsetting to read if you don’t have a partner, or if you want kids but can’t have them.)

Did you propose?

Yes!

Adri and I used to go on long night walks when we lived in Berkeley. We went back to California for our 10th anniversary trip and spent the day walking around Berkeley, visiting all the places we used to visit. We had dinner at our favorite restaurant and caught up with an old friend there. Then we went walking in North Berkeley where we used to go so many years ago. I was anxiously texting Kelsey throughout the night. We stopped in front of a random church and I set up my Go Pro like I was taking a picture. Then I just dropped down on one knee and proposed! Spoiler alert: she said yes.

Kelsey and I picked out the ring. Adri doesn’t like how big the rock is but I wanted it to be at least one carat. Alas.

What about Kelsey?

We plan to propose to Kelsey sometime too! 

Why did Adri and I get married rather than Adri and Kelsey or Kelsey and I?

If all three of us could get legally married, then we would. But we’re playing the game, we’re pragmatists.

We sometimes want to avoid social friction and discomfort as much as we can. If Kelsey and I are staying in the closet about being poly, we will usually individually mention Adri as our partner because otherwise our living in Michigan or Florida wouldn’t make sense. 

Also, Adri and I being married is best tax-wise, so Uncle Sam robs us less.

We’re conscious of people like Kelsey’s family feeling weird in the back of their minds about her not being “really” married, despite us thinking government-sanctioned marriage is bullshit. 

Does it feel different? 

Not really. I guess it feels settled in the sense that we don’t have to go through the bureaucratic hoops anymore.

What about a wedding?

We may have a wedding sometime! We think it’d be really nice to celebrate our relationship with loved ones. We also think it’d be nice to have a wedding for the three of us, but that may feel extra weird for some people.

Relatedly, we know it can be psychologically taxing that our parents don’t have “normal” kids, hitting society’s milestones like getting married to one opposite sex person and having children, or not caring about things outside the Overton window like life extension and AI safety. But that’s the price you pay for having smart kids!

Overall, they’ve been pretty supportive!

You and Adri have been together for over 11 years. You, Adri, and Kelsey have been together over 6 years. Why are you getting married now?

Because we’re having kids!

To be clear: we didn’t get married because Adri was pregnant. We decided we should have kids so we got married before trying to conceive.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=FC7DRBBEiUw%3Fclip%3DUgkxXCq4vUcYtqhE8GpFNfcbXOj1sS5wR21_%26amp%3Bclipt%3DEPyYBhi88AY

I wanted us to be married before we had kids because it felt trashy otherwise. Philosophically, I don’t think people need to be married before they have kids, but it was a thing that would have bothered me personally.

And besides the image, we of course wanted to get married for the ease of navigating medical situations and legal protection. We’re also doing all the legal paperwork we can for the three of us to have power of attorney, be responsible for the kids if one of us dies, etc.

Should you have kids?

(This section that may be upsetting for some to read, especially for women without children.)

The decision to have kids is a really unfair one.

Assuming you have a partner and that both of you are fertile, you have a very limited window in which to make the decision.

You also have to decide with imperfect information. Unless you’re one of those people who “always knew” you wanted kids, you have to guess if you’ll be net happier with or without kids.

How do you find out? 

Maybe you look around and see what kids and their parents are like. But you’re not necessarily encouraged by what you see. It seems like for every nice moment with a baby laughing or kids happily playing, there are innumerable ones of kids screaming and crying, not to mention their exhausted and harried-looking parents.

Maybe you even know some parents around your age. You’ll hear them go into long tirades about how they haven’t slept in months since their baby was born. Of course, they’ll add a perfunctory “But it’s all worth it!” at the end of the spiel.

“Is it?” you think to yourself. Are they trying to convince you or themselves?

You try to probe them more but it’s not kosher to say you regret having kids or wish you hadn’t. You’d be seen as a monster, so only with really close friends behind closed doors might you hear those dark thoughts. There’s a selection effect: you’re never going to hear those horror stories about how people truly regret having kids. (We tried to find some of those stories on the Internet, places like r/nokids where people were very motivated to prove to themselves and each other that they made the right decision to *not* have kids, but the only stories they came up with seemed to be along the lines of: “I am a single mom with no social support who just had a baby two months ago and now I hate my life.”)

Your parents’ and grandparents’ generation will tell you it’s worth it to have kids. With mild or full-on condescension, they tell you that eventually you’ll want kids, that you will be happier with them even if you say you won’t.

The problem is that none of this is falsifiable. The parents don’t know what their lives would have been like without kids. And the people without kids don’t know what it would have been like with them. Would they have been happier? We can only guess.

Okay, those are anecdotes. “Let’s look at some ‘scientific’ data!” you say.

You look up some research. Hmm, the data is mixed. Some say parents are happier and some say they aren’t. When you look closely, it seems like parents can report being less happy at any given moment but they also say they’re “happier” overall. What accounts for this discrepancy? 

Distinguishing between experiential happiness and reflective happiness helps clear up this mystery.

Experiential happiness is the pleasure you get from something in the moment. Like the taste of a succulent Chinese meal. Reflective value, on the other hand, is the value you get from having done it and looking back on it later.

Let’s say you’re visiting Berkeley and eating at the famous Cheese Board Pizzeria. You bite into a slice of pizza and it tastes so good! That’s experiential happiness.

Now, let’s say it’s a year later, and you’re reading a list of the best restaurants and see the Cheese Board listed. Now you’re thinking about what a great time you had there, and the friends you shared it with, and you feel glad you’ve visited one of the best restaurants! That’s reflective happiness. (Yes, you could argue this is also experiential happiness but it’s more about whether it’s from something in the moment or not.)

I usually end up having more reflective than experiential happiness. For example, when I’m traveling, I can often be stressed out. I may not actually be that happy in the moment. I may be too distracted and overwhelmed. But after the trip is over, I get a lot of reflective value about it either way.

A couple who is watching a movie or going on a trip to Paris may be happier in the moment than parents cleaning up their toddler’s mess. But the parents could feel more reflective happiness or “fullness” looking back at their life than the people who didn’t have kids.

Okay, maybe having kids is best in theory but what about in practice?

(Having kids? In this economy?)

That’s another annoying thing about the timing. There’s a tension between the biology and the economics of it. Biologically, the earlier you have kids, the better. Economically, the later you have kids, the better.

“And is this the world you want to bring them into?” people say while broadly gesturing at the world and pointing to some war or climate change or whatever.

Ironically for an AGI doomer, I think most people talking about how terrible the world is are misguided. I generally buy into the Better Angels of Our Nature argument that things are better now in many ways than they’ve ever been. Most of the things people point to as being worse are actually way better than any other time in history. So unless they’re arguing that no one should have ever had kids at any time in history (anti-natalism is a valid argument), their argument is inconsistent.

Okay, let’s say you’ve decided you want kids!

(This section may be triggering for people without good partners or who cannot have children.)

Great! Do you have a partner you want to have kids with and they want to have kids with you and you’re fertile? Great! 

But what if you don’t have a partner? Okay, well how old are you? Because you need to start finding one ASAP.

There are some facets of modern society that make this difficult. I’m thinking of roughly three things that make it particularly hard.

First off, there are a lot of mental health problems and unhappiness in general from the decline of strong social connections, friendships, communities, and otherwise that people like Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone have talked about.

For good and bad, humans are tribal creatures and we don’t thrive without strong social connections. Part of those social connections are relationships and families. Living in good economic conditions and in a high-trust society would make having kids much more appealing.

Second, there’s the growing infantilization of the current generation where independence has been delayed and adolescence has been more and more drawn out. Our grandparents were married and had kids before most of us figured out our college major.

Some of this is the shitty economy and some of this is other stuff. There are tons of depressing memes about this trend:

My parents at 24 vs me at 24 pic.twitter.com/iG1q1mdTpj

— Perc Nowitzki (@Bloody5Iveezy) December 7, 2020

Now you may look at the current trend and say it looks great! I agree that we should have the freedom to do what we want.

If you’re happier not going down the traditional path, more power to you (and to me being in a poly triad!).

I just think it’s important to acknowledge the tradeoffs to both the individual and society. 

It’s a mistake to tell people that they can focus on a career for the majority of their child-bearing years if one of their goals is to find a partner (or partners) to have kids with. They can’t expect the odds of success to be in their favor.

(This is a general problem people have in arguing. The right thing to do may be whatever they’re advocating, but they don’t give any ground in acknowledging the downsides and tradeoffs.)

I obviously believe in the freedom to go against traditional societal standards. Yes, women should be free to pursue whatever career path they want, and should be free to choose a career over children. But it’s a huge mistake to act like you have plenty of time to figure out finding a partner or having kids after that.

I acknowledge that this is totally unfair, and not the way I would design things if I could. We should be able to have our cake and eat it too! 

However, people don’t acknowledge there are tradeoffs in life, and act like “I’m just going to have a career and have children and it’s going to be great!” and then they don’t actually find a partner they like or get around to having kids. Or they do have kids and don’t get to spend time with them. Either way, they aren’t happy with the results, and if they say they are, they are probably defensively lying about how happy they are.

This brings me to the third problem: the current dating market.

Dating apps have probably made things worse on average for the majority of people.

The majority of men lose, with just a small fraction of men getting all the women. And the majority of women lose because they get strung along by the most attractive men who want sex instead of a relationship.

Hookup culture, as fun as it can be, isn’t generally conducive to being in a happy relationship. (Come join the ethical non-monogamy side for that, peeps.)

Dating apps also contribute to women having unrealistic expectations and standards for potential partners. I don’t mean unrealistic like “not being an asshole”. I mean unrealistic like “6’2” college-educated athlete who makes six figures. Also not a conservative!”

Women reading this may think that sounds fine and that they shouldn’t feel bad for wanting such a man! But it’s important to know how few of these men exist and that you face great competition for them. Not to mention, most women would be uncomfortable reading the reverse: “I want a girl who’s skinny with big tits and also a great cook! Not to mention great between the sheets!”

There’s also a cynicism that develops from being on dating apps for too long.

One of the other inherent problems in the dating market is efficient market hypothesis. In a mostly monogamous society, the longer time goes on, the fewer “quality” mates are available because they are already in relationships!

“Wait a minute!” you might be saying. “I’m a quality partner! I’m exceptional even!” I hear you. I know plenty of quality, single people. But you’re like a Lamborghini. Many people want to drive a Lamborghini but most people can’t afford it. The more exceptional you are, the more exceptional you want your partner to be. And by definition, there are fewer exceptional people than normal people, so you already have a much smaller pool of potential partners, in the same way that fewer people can afford a Lamborghini.

So getting back to the kids thing, how in the heck are you supposed to have your dream career AND find a quality partner who has mutual feelings about kids, all long before age 35? I know women personally who have had to make the decision to either:

-Hold out for a good life partner and have kids with them whenever that happens

-Lower their standards and get whoever they can get to knock them up

-Find a sperm donor

“Not great, Bob!”

Men have their own problems to deal with but I think because we have more time biologically to have kids, and women traditionally have more identity placed on having children or being mothers, it’s a bit different.

What was the decision-making process for us?

Was the biological clock ticking?

On the one hand, yes, and on the other hand, absolutely not.

I think the biological clock is always ticking in the sense that aging and entropy in general is always happening and fertility is decreasing.

It wasn’t ticking in the sense that we all felt a strong urge to have kids.

Adri never felt a natural maternal urge and always thought we wouldn’t have kids. Kelsey had mixed feelings about having kids. Historically, I’ve been open to doing whatever my partner wanted. When I was with my first partner, we talked about having kids. When I was with Adri, we talked about not having kids. We continued to assume we wouldn’t have kids when we all got together.

The only thing that changed when I got older was that I would notice myself feeling wistful or warm towards seeing sweet moments between parents and their kids.

This section may sound foreign to some of you. “We didn’t even think about it! We wanted kids so we had them!” Most people just do things. But we don’t take the responsibility of bringing new consciousness into the world lightly.

We recognized the implications of this decision, and that we have a limited window in which to make it. This was important enough to warrant a significant amount of time and consideration. By a lot of consideration, I mean *a lot*.

We ended up spending close to two years deliberating! And I don’t mean it just took that long to get around to it. I mean very long, difficult discussions, journaling, shared Google Docs, etc. We talked about pros and cons on walks, on drives, long into the evenings. I even paid someone to compile all the posts in the rationality sphere about having kids so we could go through them! Part of what we found difficult about this decision was that we didn’t identify with many of the reasons people seem to list for having kids (e.g. “I felt an emptiness that needed to be filled”, or “I love babies, I’ve just dreamed of having them my whole life!”).

Why we thought we should

Humans evolved to enjoy having children. The three of us are all unique snowflakes, but because we enjoy all the other things humans evolved to enjoy, like food and sex and status, we thought we’d enjoy having kids too.

We also think it’s best to try to avoid the biggest average downside surrounding children, which is being existentially upset we didn’t have them.

When I say average, I’m contrasting that with horrific but very unlikely potential downsides, like having kids with extreme health problems that make them suffer a lot and require a ton of care, or having a little Omen psychopath kid.

If you don’t have kids, you don’t have to worry about issues like that, but the biggest *average* downside surrounding children is regretting not having had them. We thought it best to let the most common potential downside guide our decision-making rather than extreme but very rare ones.

Based on our personalities and spontaneous desire for kids thus far, we do think we’d be less likely to be very psychologically affected by not having kids the way others are.

Why?

I think that much of this suffering comes from either being in a mediocre to bad relationship, or being single and alone.

People also have a lot of confusion about “meaning” and “life’s purpose” that contributes. They keep their preferences and desires in a Schrödinger cat’s state of uncertainty, so they don’t have to acknowledge they are in a shitty place in life.

I think some people’s hesitation in saying they want kids is the same type of copium where people say they’re happy being single. If they were in a great relationship, they’d feel differently.

We thought about freezing eggs or embryos to buy us more time, but it seemed like an extreme hassle, and the odds of success aren’t encouraging.

Even though all of us are the kind of people who would naturally stress about doing parenting “right”, it helps that we recognize that parenting matters very little for long-term outcomes. (Read Bryan Caplan.) Genes matter most.

We’ll also be raising kids in a very different world. One in which they can’t be competitive in a job market and one in which they won’t need to be competitive (because of AGI).

(It’s kind of a bummer considering the three of us would make some rapacious kids.)

What about AGI? Or the crazy future in general?

Good question.

All parents have children knowing their children will one day die. Some unfortunate ones live to see it.

We thought about waiting to have kids because (if humanity doesn’t kill itself first) we’ll probably develop the technology for people to have kids at any age.

This would be amazing because then you wouldn’t have to guess if you wanted kids in the future. You could just wait until you wanted them and have them then.

There’s also the benefit of being able to have *gasp* designer babies in the future, which would be better so we could eliminate disease, neuroticism, and other things that make people suffer. What I wouldn’t do to get rid of my unnecessary biodetermined suffering!

People against designer babies are usually hyper-empathetic to those less fortunate, and rather than trying to raise people up so no one suffers, they bring everyone down. It’s the equivalent of making more people poor rather than ensuring that other people can be rich.

They also feel insecure about themselves and their own characteristics and imagine no one wanting them.

They also don’t understand that sexual selection does the same thing, just less efficiently.

As for AGI and the AI apocalypse, we don’t think our children will suffer if it goes wrong. It’s likely AGI will wipe us out very quickly and indifferently, like by releasing a toxin in the air that kills us instantly.

Obviously, we’re hoping for the post-scarcity and post-suffering utopia for us and our children, and for everyone.

Why it’s a bit easier for us

First off, there are three of us. Having kids will be *much* easier with three people.

One of us can watch them while the other two go out on a date. Adri and Kelsey can sleep in different rooms while I stay up and watch a movie or play video games or whatever while the babies (hopefully) sleep.

There are tradeoffs. If we had kids, it would be more difficult for all three of us to travel, especially internationally. But this is a normal downside all parents face.

We’re also not poor. Parenting is stressful enough without being constantly worried about how you’re going to afford everything. I knew since I was young, I would never have kids while being poor.

The only real downside to having three parents is that it makes the poly thing even weirder for people. We already get funny questions at border crossings because there are three of us together. We usually say Adri and I are married and Kelsey is our friend, but as one border guard astutely pointed out, “You’re married and you live with your friend…?”

What has it been like so far?

The process of trying to conceive is stressful. If you don’t already have kids, it’s easy to ruminate on whether pregnancy is going to happen at all because you don’t know if you can until it happens. “Will this be the time?” It’d be especially stressful if you’ve struggled at all with infertility! Luckily for us, it happened very quickly.

And once you do conceive, you also have to try to not get too attached to the baby because there’s such a high rate of miscarriage in the first trimester.

How extreme should you get with your diet or not? How extreme should you get with your environment? Should we be taking extreme measures to reduce microplastics or fluoride? What is pseudoscience, and what is something that’s just understudied and probably best to avoid?

Some people might say, “Just don’t worry about it!” but would those people be okay with children ingesting lead paint or asbestos?

Other people might say, “Just don’t stress too much about it if you’re getting the lower-hanging fruit right,” and I would say they have something of a point. It’s easy to Pascal’s-mug yourself.

Liberals and conservatives both get science wrong.

Liberals think we should “believe” and “trust in science” which is mind-blowingly naive. (Remember the replication crisis? Or how in February and March 2020 when the Surgeon General and the CDC told everyone to not use masks for COVID?) This is coming from someone who mostly just cares about technological development which is based on science.

Conservatives get too into conspiracy theories. They have too many false positives and can reject life-saving things like measles vaccines. They fall victim to the naturalistic fallacy and don’t realize the universe is indifferent and hostile.

Clinicians and scientists also have their own problems. (Don’t get me started with bioethicists!)

Clinicians will give you this blanket list of things to avoid like alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, more than 200mg a day of caffeine, raw fish, soft cheese, fresh fruit juice, and cold lunch meat. There’s no distinction between something that’s harmful in any amount, something that’s harmful above a certain threshold, and something that’s only harmful if it’s already contaminated. But then again, they have to make rules that are easy to follow for most people (and most people can’t follow rules as simple as “Take your heart medication”).

As for scientists, it’s very hard to run good studies and get good evidence. And nutritional science is one of the worst fields. This video illustrates this perfectly. One minute, eggs can be like smoking a cigarette and the next they can be essential.

So you can have the view that you shouldn’t worry about anything by default, and you only restrict something if the evidence meets a certain threshold.

Or you can have the opposite view, where everything is restricted until it meets the threshold of being safe.

Or you can be somewhere in the middle.

Ironically, I think medical professionals are too much on the side of the former: if there’s no evidence for it, they don’t worry about it. Some of this is practical because they don’t want to freak patients out about trivial things, and because most patients won’t change their behavior anyway, and they just want them to focus on not smoking or drinking or whatever. But if you’re trying to play a tighter game with regards to optimal baby health, you have to explore these things.

One way of doing this is to think about the ancestral environment and what we likely adapted to. This is more refined than just going by what’s “natural”. You’d have to take your own ancestral background into account. Maybe you’re not adapted to drink milk. Maybe you’re more adapted to a vegetarian diet, like if you’re from South Asia.

The 80/20 that’s recommended is to take folic acid and not smoke.

We know we got the most important thing right, though, which is choosing good partners to mate with. Adriana Lima got her beauty secret on point:

So here we are, nervous but excited!

It’s been quite the adventure getting here! Adri and my long journey here. The three of us getting together. Being in the closet for so long. Coming out to our family. Then coming out to everyone. And finally deciding to have kids!

Please hit us with all the advice you have!

What are your parenting tips?! Favorite resources?

If you enjoyed this, you should definitely check out:

Optimizing Communication

The Three Buckets of Life: How to Spend Your Time and Money

Did this post make you think? Are you someone who likes thought-provoking content and making other people feel good? Of course you are!

Follow me on Facebook and Twitter for the goodies I don’t post here!

What would you do if you thought the world was going to end? How would you live?

That’s the question Adri, Kelsey, and I have been asking ourselves.

I’ve been really existentially depressed lately and thought I should finally talk publicly about it.

Why have I been depressed?

I think humanity is going to be wiped out by artificial intelligence in less than 10 years. Maybe 15-20 years but probably less.

Normal people are going, “Wtf?! Isn’t that a bit alarmist?!” while those in the rationality community are going “Yeah, sucks big time…”

History of Apocalyptic Predictions

Apocalypticism is nothing new. The religious have been thinking they were in end times for millennia. The early Christians and Jesus himself (if he existed) believed they were living in end times. Modern-day Christians love to point to current events as fulfilling the eschatological (apocalyptic) prophecies described in Revelations.

People in the Bay Area will remember Harold Camping’s church’s billboards declaring Judgment Day coming on May 21, 2011.

Well, as everyone reading this knows, that day came and went…

Given the long history of failure in predicting these types of events (I mean just look at this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_apocalyptic_events), why should this be different?

Description and Dangers of Artificial General Intelligence

Why do we need to worry about AI so much? After all, the ones we have now aren’t really dangerous.

It’s artificial general intelligence, or AGI, that will kill us. 

My description of AGI and why it’s so dangerous is going to be relatively short (because there are much better resources out there that I link to below.) A layperson can picture an AGI as the AIs that are depicted in movies. Picture Vision in the Marvel movies or C-3PO in Star Wars. They are generally intelligent in the way humans are in the sense that they can solve a variety of problems.

C-3PO isn’t just a fancy Google Translate. He can solve novel problems (albeit neurotically). 

Contrast this with narrow AIs that can only do very specific things. A chess AI can easily beat the best human players in the world, but it can’t figure out how to make coffee or take the SAT for you.

Movies tend to have AGIs as casual characters but hyper-dramatically downplay how different things would be if they actually existed. They are depicted as smart assistants rather than entities that would completely change the entire landscape of the earth.

Okay, so an AGI could understand things and solve novel problems at least as well as humans do. Why is this a gigantic problem?

The Dangers from AI are Not What Most People Think

Artificial constructs have always struck fear into us, from the tales of the golem in Jewish folklore to Asimov’s laws of robotics failing to prevent mayhem in his stories.

But popular culture has made people confused about what the real dangers of AGI are.

People anthropomorphize AIs. They think the “oppressed” robots will rise up and overthrow their human slavemasters. Or that they’ll want to betray and kill humans for some other malicious reason like the Terminator.

Even worse, people are worried the AGI won’t be “fair” or will say an offensive word.

The main difficulty in safely building an AGI is the “alignment problem”. The alignment problem refers to the difficulty in building an AI that does what humans actually want rather than exactly what they asked for.

Toy example: parents and teachers want their kids to have better grades. The AI changes their grades in the computer. Even though this accomplishes the goal on paper, what parents and teachers actually want is for their kids to have learned the material.

The tl;dr is it’s incredibly, incredibly difficult to figure out what we as humans actually “want” and get an AGI to do that.

It might be the most difficult problem humanity has ever faced because we have to get it right on the first try. This hardly ever happens, the first iteration is never perfectly safe. We didn’t build a death-proof car on the first try. We still haven’t!

It’s like those old stories with a genie where you have to be super careful what you wish for because, while you may get exactly what you asked for, it wasn’t what you actually wanted.

The classic fictional example is Nick Bostrom’s paperclip maximizer. Imagine you’ve started a company that sells paper clips. It’s a boring but honest living. Business is absolutely booming (paper clip jewelry has become all the rage on TikTok) so you tell your AGI to make as many paper clips as possible.

“The AI will realize quickly that it would be much better if there were no humans because humans might decide to switch it off. Because if humans do so, there would be fewer paper clips. Also, human bodies contain a lot of atoms that could be made into paper clips. The future that the AI would be trying to gear towards would be one in which there were a lot of paper clips but no humans.”

The story ends with a lot of paper clips and all of us dead.

“…given enough power over its environment, it would try to turn all matter in the universe, including human beings, into either paperclips or machines which manufacture paperclips.”

“Wait, why would we all die?”

One reason the AI might kill us is to ensure we don’t stop it from accomplishing the goal we originally gave it.

Another way it might kill us is by using up the resources we need to survive to help it accomplish its goal. It might help to picture FernGully or Avatar where people are chopping down the rainforest which kills off the species that live there. In this case, the AGI could chop down our “rainforest”.

I know what you’re thinking. “That’s stupid, John!” You’ve already thought of a bunch of solutions to this silly problem! Maybe we just keep the AI isolated in a box and it can only give instructions that we can just decide to ignore. Or we have a big red stop button we can push to turn it off. Or we come up with a set of rules it has to follow like Asimov’s Laws of Robotics.

All good ideas on the surface that don’t work in practice. If you’re wondering why, please see the resources I link down below!

“Isn’t it silly to think an AI could get this powerful?”

Imagine you’re in a Rubik’s Cube solving contest with an AGI named Puzzler.

Solving a Rubik’s Cube for the first time with someone’s instruction takes a person about an hour. Solving it for the first time with no help takes a very, very long time.

Now, it’s the first time solving the Rubik’s Cube for both of you. All you know is what the Rubik’s Cube is supposed to look like when it’s solved and how you can move it. 

The catch is that you have a minute to solve the cube and Puzzler has 100 years.

Think of everything that’s happened your whole life, and then multiply that by two or three or four. That’s how long Puzzler has to solve the Rubik’s Cube. 

Not much of a competition, is it?

The real-life analogy here is that we are thinking in super slow-motion compared to an AGI. The AGI is like the Flash zooming around the globe at superspeed before you’ve even gotten up off the couch.

“Can’t we just not build AGI? Or wait until we’ve solved the alignment problem?”

Unfortunately, some of the most difficult problems humans face are called coordination problems. You could even argue they are the central problem humans face.

You’ll hear smug assholes who think they’ve solved the world’s problems by saying, “If only we could just…” For example, “if only we could all just be grown-ups” and get rid of nuclear weapons or agree not to go to war. People who talk like this don’t understand the game theory or perverse incentives involved.

If coordination problems were easy, then we wouldn’t have wasted trillions in the Cold War and would have elected better leaders than Trump and Biden.

Not building AGI is a coordination problem. Currently, the richest and most powerful countries and companies on earth are pouring billions of dollars into developing it as fast as they can because it will be insanely profitable right up until it kills us. This is even more difficult because a majority of those involved don’t truly understand AI safety.

Imagine there’s a spell that if cast destroys the world. Unfortunately, you have to be 99th percentile wisdom to realize that the spell destroys the world, if you have less wisdom than that, you will almost always think the spell saves the world.

— Ronny Fernandez (@RatOrthodox) July 29, 2022

It is much harder to build safe AI than to stop nuclear weapons development because nukes require resources that are much scarcer than those required to build an AGI.

Heaven and Hell

We’re probably going to fail and inadvertently kill us all.

But on the other hand, if we get everything right and successfully develop a safe AGI, we will be living in a post-scarcity and post-suffering paradise. It’ll be like our wish to the genie went more right than we could have imagined.

We’ll face tough philosophical questions like how to deal with wireheading, etc., but still, it will be heaven on earth. We’ll solve all problems facing humanity: scarcity, aging and disease, etc.

A part of me wants us to roll the dice on building AGI so our parents and other loved ones have a better chance of hitting longevity escape velocity. But I know that it’s far more likely we’ll build an unsafe AGI and all die instead.

“I’m skeptical this will happen!”

Let me just say it: I’m a bigger skeptic than you. Everyone knows I’m a huge skeptic, to the point of annoying them by not buying into most of their beliefs. “We believe in nothing, Lebowski. Nothing.”

“But this sounds like science fiction!”

So does traveling thousands of miles in a few hours in a flying metal box, but we do it every day. Something sounding like science fiction now doesn’t mean it’s bullshit.

If you believe AI can never do the things a human can do, would you have believed AI could do all the things it can do now? Are you even aware of what AI can do now?

Would you have thought it could chat as well as LaMDA can or generate images like DALL-E can, or are those just novelties?

2018: The GAN is are failing at AI. Look, it can't even generate a consistent bedroom.

2022: DALL-E2 fails at AI, look it can't even generate "A donkey is playing tug-of-war against an octopus. The donkey holds the rope in its mouth. A cat is jumping over the rope." pic.twitter.com/CLSs8nXRdZ

— Ferenc Huszár (@fhuszar) May 4, 2022

https://t.co/bXEqFi8zqr pic.twitter.com/0IM2uxpHze

— Daniel (@growing_daniel) April 7, 2022

Long-time rationalists watching people freak out about AI safety after seeing DALL-E pic.twitter.com/B6UXBbgiJg

— John Greer (@JohnCGreer) April 14, 2022

The goal posts keep moving.

How did I first hear about this?

In some ways, I’ve been a rationalist my whole life. But I discovered the rationality community many years ago when my friend, Robert, introduced me to the rationality blog and forum, LessWrong. 

LessWrong is where I first learned about the dangers of AI and it all made sense to me. People in the rationality community, especially Eliezer Yudkowsky, have been among the very early advocates of the alignment problem.

I’ve been aware of this problem for years but am posting this now because it really feels like we’re getting close. The advancements in AI have only gotten more incredible, and I still haven’t seen any convincing arguments against the alignment problem.

There are debates about how fast and how dangerous AGI will be. Among the people aware of this problem, I’m firmly in the doomer camp, as opposed to the optimistic or at least slightly less doomer camps.

ok doomer pic.twitter.com/QFL9YaGhpt

— Michaël Trazzi (@MichaelTrazzi) June 9, 2022

Why?

I think when you recognize some basic assumptions about AGI, it becomes clear.

It’s analogous to how I see the landscape around life extension. The average person doesn’t know anything about life extension and doesn’t support it even if they do. But the second we get life extension technology, they would be bitching they didn’t have it yet.

And even among those actively working in “anti-aging”, most of them are doing unimportant work and aren’t focused on the problems that actually matter. It’s the streetlight effect where they are working on things that are publishable rather than important.

This is why Hamming questions are important:

‘Mathematician Richard Hamming was known to approach experts from other fields and ask “what are the important problems in your field, and why aren’t you working on them?”.’

So it is with AGI and AI safety work. Most AI researchers don’t care about safety at all or are worried about stupid shit like “fairness” or if the AI will create enough art with black people in it.

And even many people working in “AI safety” are confused about what the real problems are. In other words, the field is “Not great, Bob!”

Does it mean anything that many AI people and other “smart” people are not worried? Absolutely not. People who are supposed to be smart and are successful in certain areas say dumb shit all the time. Like believing in free will or buying into braindead political arguments. This is the natural state. Very few people are good at reasoning and taking their own beliefs seriously.

It’s Isolating

I feel isolated. Even more isolated than I normally do.

It’s been sucking away motivation to work on projects because it feels pointless if I’m just going to die in ten years, and in most cases it is. 

I already have a problem with feeling too cynical. I already have a problem relating to most people and their conversations.

Everyone is so tribal. Climate change is basically a non-issue existentially, but that’s all people care about! (And if you do care about climate change but don’t support nuclear power, you’re worse than the rolling coal assholes!)

If you believe climate change is going to kill us, you can feel good watching Greta Thunberg. You can shit-talk big corporations while feeling smug with your friends.

If you’re conservative, you can lament to your fellow church members about how evil abortionists are, and talk about how society needs more Jesus in their lives and feel validated and connected.

With AI, there’s the rationality community that gets it (although, that isn’t universal) and then there’s everyone else. I wish more people in my daily life, and in general, got it.

Most people don’t understand these issues, and many of the people who do are kind of cold and not personable. Don’t get me wrong, some rationalists are among the warmest and best people I’ve met. But when you’re at Effective Altruism meetups and people are purportedly trying to do the most good while being some of the least warm people on the planet, it feels a little disillusioning.

There are so few truly smart people. It’s isolating and hard not to succumb to cynicism.

When I was a kid, it was always hammered into us that we could be a big (smart) fish in a small pond, but there was a great big world out there with even bigger (smarter) fish. 

Well, where the hell are they?

Most of the people I interact with are physicians, PhDs, professors, programmers, engineers, accomplished artists, etc. They are in the 99th percentile of intelligence. And most of these people suck at thinking! They can’t reason through arguments or take beliefs seriously.

To be clear, I know super smart people exist, I’m just depressed at how few of them there are. Even fewer actually smart people exist than you’d think, because even most “super smart” people have an incredibly big hole in their ability to reason through things philosophically.

Most of the responses from the few people I’ve talked to about it have been pretty underwhelming. I know it’s a hard thing to process, but Jesus. Only a couple of people have had anything close to a rational response to it.

It’s like Don’t Look Up except with a working analogy.

What are we doing differently?

It colors most of our discussions. When Adri, Kelsey, and I talk about the future, it’s always with the assumption that the AI apocalypse is coming, and coming fast. We’ve stopped imagining past ten years into the future, and it’s a really bitter pill to swallow.

Our focus is switched now to maximizing the next five to ten years, especially the next five.

We’re considering sacrificing career capital (which may be rendered moot by near-term narrow AI anyways) and taking a lot of time off to travel. We’re less focused on doing a startup. I’ve been winding down projects to the few I really want to do. I’ve been reading the books and watching the movies and listening to the music I really want to before I die. 

We’re lucky we haven’t had to make any hard trade-offs yet. An example would be if Adri had to do five more years of training, and she got accepted into a place like Mayo Clinic that is a great place to train but a pretty mediocre place to live. That would be a tough trade-off because she’s come this far (sunk cost or not) and loves what she does, but do we really want to spend the potential last years of our lives living in the middle of nowhere, far away from friends and family?

Luckily, her getting a fellowship position at UCSF is perfect. It’s her dream program, and we’ll be close to most of our family and friends.

Kelsey has been considering working in AI safety, but there’s a trade-off. We don’t know how much we could contribute, and if we’re going to die anyways, that time would be better spent trying to enjoy the time we have left.

It’s pretty hard to function when you know it’s more than likely that everyone you’ve ever known, everyone you’ve ever loved, everyone in the world is going to be dead soon.

Conclusion

As a kid, I was obsessed with the Terminator movies. That connection is not lost on me given that I feel how Kyle Reese and Sarah Connor felt — knowing the apocalypse is coming, and not only does no one give a shit, they actively try to stop them from doing anything.

“Skynet becomes self-aware at 2:14 am Eastern time, August 29th.” That’s been one of my favorite movie lines to quote. I think it’s appropriate that I share my fear about extinction from AI today of all days.

Some smart people are doing their best. I feel gratitude toward the people who have been trying to do something about this and I really hope we can make it and come out alright.

Otherwise, I expect we’re all going to be dead by 2030.

There’s nothing more I’d love to be wrong about. Thanks for listening. I appreciate all of you.

Would you like to know more?

Stampy AI:

https://ui.stampy.ai/

Scott Alexander’s Superintelligence FAQ is probably the best succinct post for the smart layperson. Keep in mind, it was written six years ago so the technology has only gotten more insane since then:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/LTtNXM9shNM9AC2mp/superintelligence-faq

Robert Miles’ videos are great. These are a good start:

https://youtu.be/pYXy-A4siMw

https://youtu.be/3TYT1QfdfsM

Wait But Why’s posts:

https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-1.html

https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-2.html

Superintelligence:

There’s also a popular book by the great philosopher Nick Bostrom, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, that’s commonly recommended.

Most Important Century series:

https://www.cold-takes.com/ai-could-defeat-all-of-us-combined/

Mental Health Resources for this specifically:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/pLLeGA7aGaJpgCkof/mental-health-and-the-alignment-problem-a-compilation-of

To think about how you should live the rest of your life, read my Three Buckets post:

The Three Buckets of Life: How to Spend Your Time and Money

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“Eight villages in our district have had significant to total structural damage from mudslides. Furthermore, the weather conditions conducive to mudslides have only been increasing in the past decade.”

Professor Cristian Avendaño clicked the button and a list of temperatures, wind conditions, and annual rainfall popped up on the screen. He looked every bit the absent-minded professor in his weathered sport coat with elbow patches. But his mind was far from absent.

“As you can see, the water accumulation is a serious problem.”

More graphs and figures appeared.

The professor glanced up and saw half the council nodding politely and the other half trying to stifle yawns. Most of the villagers were on their phones or peering around the auditorium.

If they would have read the slide, they would have seen that the professor’s model predicted the chances of a mudslide destroying their village were one in three in the next five years.

The head of the council pressed down on his mic.

“Thank you for your presentation, Professor. We’ll take your suggestions under advisement. Now, Ms. Zelada, you have something you’d like to speak to us about?” his voice perking up at the end.

Eliza Zelada stood up confidently and smiled.

“Yes, thank you, Councilman Ricardo.”

Her stroll up to the lectern would have been equally at home on the runway with her long, red dress flowing around her. She leaned forward and tapped the mic.

“I am here today to talk to you about a grave problem that requires our immediate action,” she said, spreading her arms out for effect.

The villagers began sitting up in their seats and clearing their throats. The room was suddenly at attention.

She clicked the remote.

A giant photograph appeared on the screen. It was of a bunny huddled in a trash pile, surrounded by plastic bottles and dirty newspapers.

Gasps filled the room.

“Is the bunny okay, Mamá?” a little girl quietly sobbed.

Eliza paused and took in the moment before continuing.

“How can this be our lovely village? How can this be our Salgar? We must do something about this! Immediately!”

Cheers filled the room. Councilman Ricardo clapped the loudest of anyone. It had been rumored the councilman and Eliza were having an affair.

Gerardo the restaurant owner stood up. “From now on, I will only use sustainable products!”

Applause. Eliza nodded approvingly.

Mrs. Domingo, the matronly figure who watched many of the village’s children while their mothers worked, stood up. “We will switch to reusable diapers!”

The professor started scribbling some calculations on his yellow legal pad. His brow furrowed. Taking into account the energy required to manufacture reusable diapers and the cost of washing them, he doubted they would result in a net reduction in pollution. It might take years to break even. They would also pose an increased risk of spreading disease, especially given the shoddy hygiene standards of some members of the village.

Edgar, the shopkeeper, promised to get rid of plastic bags.

More cheers.

Eliza was speaking again. “Councilman, how much is in the emergency fund account?”

The councilman cleared his throat and adjusted his tie. Obviously, a little uncomfortable at having to actually put a figure on it. “Around 50,000.”

“It’s not nearly enough but it will be a start!”

All of the villagers stood up and met her words with thunderous applause. Councilman Ricardo looked a little less enthusiastic but clapped nonetheless. The cheering and assurances to act closed out the night.

The village held another meeting the following month.

“Now, an announcement! Reusable totes with a lovely illustration of a bunny on them will be available for purchase after the meeting. A percentage of the proceeds will go to the Beautify Salgar Project!”

Councilman Ricardo watched nervously as his wife and Eliza smiled and exchanged banter. Eliza had designed the bag and his wife had drawn the bunny. They had gone to great lengths to find material for the totes within the region after an anxious villager brought up “the importance of buying local”.

Avendaño knew that it was much cheaper and required much less energy to produce material in the East than here and that the efficiency in global transport would make the travel cost a pittance. He thought about proposing the village focus on its comparative advantage but had learned enough to know that the work of Adam Smith and David Ricardo would be lost on the villagers.

“The bunny will soon be nesting among the totes.” he muttered to himself.

After the meeting, Eliza waved at him on his way out. “Have a good night, Professor. Oh, and take a bag!” She handed the professor one of the totes. The bunny on it was quite cute, he had to admit.

“Thank you, Eliza.”

Avendaño’s mother was getting up in years, so he would visit her every few months to be a good son.

He packed his clothes, some books, and the tote in his worn brown suitcase and lugged it to the bus stop. The clouds in the sky foretold rain. He felt his lips moving and realized he was mouthing a prayer of protection. Something his mother taught him when he was a boy. He knew it was superstitious and silly but couldn’t seem to shake the habit, especially in moments of worry like this.

The bus came and they were off. The bus’ lurching up and down the mountain roads made his heart race and he tried not to calculate the odds of a catastrophic accident.

His mother lived in a village even more remote than Salgar. The professor had made many fruitless attempts to set her up with a generator for electricity but she would have none of it. The old woman was stuck in her ways and happy enough.

At least it was a good opportunity to pour himself into his work. That is, when his mother wasn’t telling him stories of how different the world was back then. He looked around the humble home and wondered if his mother knew just how much the rest of the world had changed.

The rains came and poured and poured. He patched some holes in the roof to stop the leaks coming down. His thoughts went to his home and his village but he had no way to reach them.

Finally, it came time to leave. He kissed his mother goodbye.

“Focus on finding a wife, Cristian, as much as you focus on your books.”

“Yes, Mamá.”

She said the same thing each visit.

He walked in the rain to the bus stop, huddling under the awning with the only other person waiting.

“Hello,” said the man. A poor farmer by the look of him.

“Hello,” said the professor. He liked poor farmers. They were honest.

“Quite some rain,” the farmer said, looking up at the storm.

“Yes, quite some rain,” said Avendaño somberly.

The bus made its way back through the mountain roads and by a miracle, didn’t get stuck anywhere despite what seemed to be the driver’s intent.

It finally stopped and he waved goodbye to the farmer.

He suddenly felt light-headed. As he looked up, his knees buckled and he dropped to the ground.

Mud covered everything. The homes that once housed him and his neighbors were now mangled casualties of nature. The belongings of the villagers were now mixed among the mud and trash.

His village of Salgar was no more.

He cursed the villagers and cursed himself for not doing enough.

Some movement caught his eye. A white flash in the brown sea. It was the bunny, hopping off in the direction of the trash-strewn village of Magallo. The professor let out a defeated sigh and stood up to join it.

Epilogue

Six months later…

“Professor Avendaño, we appreciate your presentation on uh… ‘the likelihood of H. hampei destroying the local economy in the next five years’. A little bleak and alarmist but I suppose someone should play the pessimist.”

Avendaño sighed. The Councilwoman was already moving on to the next speaker.

“Santiago, you have something you like to talk about?”

“Yes, thank you, Councilwoman Medina. There is an issue we must do something about. An issue that absolutely requires immediate attention! Our church is in vital need of remodeling. Is the House of the Lord supposed to look like a rundown dump? Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe deserves the best!”

“Would the council like to vote on an emergency measure to increase the sales tax to raise funds for the church?” Mr. Castillo asked.

“Excellent idea, Mr. Castillo!” said Santiago. In fact, he had arranged for Castillo to ask the question at that very moment.

“Very well. All in favor?” Councilwoman Medina said, surveying the room.

The vote was a unanimous yes except for Salvador, the shopkeeper.

“Old Salvador!” called Santiago. “Always a holdout.”

Salvador scoffed. “I heard that your cleaning company got the contract for this job,” he said. “How much was the contract for, Santiago?”

“Come now, Salvador!” said Santiago with a smile. “We can’t only think of ourselves. How can you put a price on the beautification of our holy church?”

“You deserve to be beatified for your graciousness,” Salvador said, gritting his teeth.

A few weeks later, the professor and the bunny were on their morning walk along the coffee plant fields.

The church was as filthy as ever. Cleaning efforts were supposed to start last week but Santiago was holidaying in the city.

Mrs. Martinez passed by.

“What a lovely bag, Professor! We need something like that for Magallo.”

“Thank you, Julia.”

Just then, he noticed a small black beetle land on her shoulder. He peered down at it. H. hampei. The coffee borer.

Professor Cristian Avendaño groaned, wondering where he and the bunny would go next.

Background

I was writing a message to a friend about how to think better about cause prioritization and decided to write a short story to illustrate the points better.

I was trying to convey these themes:

• Not all causes are of equal importance.

• Things that seem more virtuous on the surface are often not, or at least they’re much more complicated than they appear (e.g. banning plastic bags or buying local).

• Presentation and persuasive ability matter.

And these were some of the articles I was thinking about while writing:

• https://medium.com/@robertwiblin/what-you-think-about-landfill-and-recycling-is-probably-totally-wrong-3a6cf57049ce

• https://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/budiansky-and-local-food/

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omayra_S%C3%A1nchez

If you enjoyed this, you should definitely check out:

Dumped – My Short Sci-Fi Story Published in Waste Advantage Magazine

Caffeine, Gas, and Plywood Frenzies: How to Prepare for a Hurricane

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The post The Bunny: An EA Short Story appeared first on John Greer.

Grandpa

Grandpa always liked to tell you about his glory days, as a schoolboy and when he was a young buck in the Navy.

“I was so rowdy as a youngster. The dumb things us boys would feud about… mostly girls,” he says, winking.

He leans back in his chair and continues. “We’d puff our chests out, talking big and acting tough, and at least a couple of us would always go home with a fat lip or missing tooth. I feel dumb just thinking about it. We were so young and stupid. Take it from me: don’t act so foolish! Learn from Grandpa’s hard-won wisdom!”

Grandpa thinks he doesn’t do those things anymore because he’s gotten wiser.

I say Grandpa isn’t really wiser, he just has less testosterone. After all, why doesn’t Grandma have a bunch of stories of her getting into bar fights? Because Grandma was built different.

“I have a genetic condition. People like me are prone to violent fantasy and jealous rage; we are over 10 times more likely to commit murder and over 40 times more likely to commit sexual assault. Most prisoners suffer from my condition, and almost everyone on death row has it. Relative to other people, we have an abundance of testosterone, which is associated with dominance and aggression, and a deficit in oxytocin, associated with compassion. My sons share my condition, and so does my father.” –Paul Bloom

https://aaafoundation.org/rates-motor-vehicle-crashes-injuries-deaths-relation-driver-age-united-states-2014-2015/

https://qz.com/582720/americas-most-prolific-wall-punchers-charted/

“Males and females play quite different roles in reproduction. It would be a striking coincidence if the distribution of abilities and behavioral patterns that was optimal for one sex turned out to also be optimal for the other, rather like two entirely different math problems just happening to have the same answer.” – David Friedman

Chris

Mary and Chris had been happily married for twenty-five years. They had three beautiful kids. Mary loved watching Chris play catch with the kids or seeing him teach them about one topic or another. Their friends felt envious of their close and loving relationship.

But, one day, Mary realized Chris had been acting differently. He hardly paid attention to her or the kids. He started acting erratically, making impulsive decisions, and spending recklessly. She wondered if he was having an affair or if it was something like a midlife crisis.

She tried talking to him. He agreed to go to a couples therapist. The sessions seemed to go well enough but there wasn’t any real change from them.

The sessions would go something like:

“Mary, it sounds like Chris was more frugal before and although you’re okay with some spending, you feel he’s going overboard. Chris, what do you think?”

“Life’s short, Doc. After all, what’s money for?”

One morning, Chris slammed into the trash cans as he was backing the car out of the driveway.

Mary came running out. “Are you okay, honey?”

“Where’d they come from?” said Chris. “I didn’t even see them!”

“Maybe we should make an appointment with the optometrist,” said Mary.

“Okay.”

A week later, Chris sat down in the optometrist’s chair. The optometrist said, “Cover your right eye, look at this picture of a barn, and tell me what you can see on the barn.”

“What barn?” said Chris. “I can’t see a barn at all. What are you talking about?”

“Hmm, that’s not good,” the optometrist said.

He ended up referring Chris to a doctor who had Chris get an MRI.

As he lay down in the giant magnet, Chris felt lucky he wasn’t claustrophobic like Mary. The hum of the machine was almost relaxing.

The imaging of his brain came back and showed a pattern that looked almost like a butterfly. It was a glioblastoma, a brain tumor.

“This explains the sudden behavioral changes,” the doctor told Mary.

Chris didn’t watch an inspirational talk on life being too short that imparted wisdom and caused his impulsive and erratic behavior. A brain tumor caused those changes.

Jane

The move from sunny California to not-so-sunny Minnesota was stressful but Jane made the best of it. She always did.

She felt lonely at first but luckily Jane was someone who tackled problems head-on. Soon she had signed up for most of the local meetups. The people were nice enough but Jane still felt down. A few months in and things hadn’t improved. In fact, they had gotten worse. She felt downright depressed. Her mood seemed to match the gloomy weather.

By chance, a coworker talked about how the bright lights he had gotten had cured his problem – something called seasonal affective disorder – and he finally felt happier than he had in years. She was skeptical lights were what caused such a big change, but he kept going on and on about it so she decided to try it.

She ordered the lights he recommended and set them up. They were so bright! She felt like a lizard in a terrarium. But then she noticed something. She had more energy! Her mood was like night and day compared to before.

Jane didn’t need positive thinking to fix her mood. She needed light therapy.

Summary

It’s easy to fall into these types of narratives about getting wiser. After all, they make sense right? The longer you live, the more knowledge and experience you accumulate, which naturally leads to becoming wiser, right?

Yes, people can grow wiser over time, and thoughts can cause physical and behavioral changes, but it is too easy to fall under the illusion that we’re more affected by wisdom than we actually are.

People like to talk about “hard work” as copium. Sure, someone may have incredible “natural talent” but they would be outperformed by someone who keeps putting in the work. So the myth goes. What people miss is that industriousness and related things like perseverance and grit are innate too. They would be better placed in the “natural talent” bucket. 

This is why watching an inspirational video with a Navy Seal talking about perseverance, or a motivational speaker who still has a bright and bubbly attitude despite being severely disabled, won’t make the viewers watching it suddenly develop “grit” or lower their innate neuroticism. 

Better evidence for an intervention is that it had *lasting* change on someone who didn’t already have those traits.

What should we do about this?

Now that we’re all a bit wiser after reading this, what should we do?

I’m glad you asked. 

Let me tell you one of the biggest misconceptions people have when it comes to irrational thoughts and poor mood.

Ready?

Most people think they have irrational thoughts and then feel bad, when in actuality they are feeling bad and then having irrational thoughts.

Read that again.

Most people think they have irrational thoughts and then feel bad, when in actuality they are feeling bad and then having irrational thoughts.

They have the causal direction backward.

In the same way that researchers are wasting time focusing on curing Alzheimer’s or cancer rather than fixing the upstream problem of aging, we tend to focus on issues too far downstream.

So what should we be doing differently knowing that?

Focus on upstream interventions.

In other words, less Eckhart Tolle and Alan Watts, and more morning walks for exercise and sun exposure.

Those about to reply with the “Why not both?” GIF, if CBT-type exercises are effective for you, then by all means please keep at them.

Yes, if your executive function is broken it can be hard to work on anything, but experimenting with physical interventions often takes less work. If you greatly improve your sleep by taking melatonin at the right time, or fix your energy levels by supplementing vitamin B12, you’ve vastly improved your life without grappling with your executive function.

Plus, the energy and mood increases from easier interventions can give you more fuel to tackle harder improvements.

Also, it’s good to just try things and experiment. https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/try-things

Some examples:

Find the path of least resistance to exercising. Exercising doesn’t have to suck. We evolved to be active. Put effort into finding movement that feels fun.

Keep it simple and just go for a walk outside. Play whatever music gets you most pumped. Watch inspirational videos or just workout videos on YouTube. Try different sports. Do a boxing workout one day and a yoga workout the other. Did you like one better than the other?

Experiment with Supplements/Nootropics

https://www.gwern.net/

Melatonin for Sleep

https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/07/10/melatonin-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/

https://www.gwern.net/Melatonin

Vitamin D in the morning

Caffeine + L-Theanine

https://www.reddit.com/r/nootropics/wiki/beginners

Modafinil

https://www.reddit.com/r/modareviewsnotbought/

Etc. etc.

Other links of interest:

Autistic redditor has massive behavioral and experiential changes after taking oxytocin (take with big grain of salt): https://twitter.com/punished3liza/status/1485750408643432448

Come up with ways to deal with the most violent members of society (young males) until they grow out of it (not necessarily the military):
https://twitter.com/robkhenderson/status/1207791050766471170

Conclusion

While this can be pretty blackpill, focusing on upstream interventions is a better way to focus our efforts.

What situations have you encountered where people aren’t attributing something to biology that they should?

If you enjoyed this, you should definitely check out:

The Benefits of Taking Cold Showers: A 3 Month Trial

The Three Buckets of Life: How to Spend Your Time and Money

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The post It’s Not Wisdom, It’s Just Biology appeared first on John Greer.

So I email them to set it up. 

This would be easy if it was just me meeting them:

“Hey, would love to grab a coffee or whatever when we’re both free…”

(I don’t drink coffee or beer but it’s smoothest to say “grab a coffee” to indicate a casual meeting. “Or whatever” shows I’m flexible if an alternate activity works better like lunch or walking around or whatever, haha.)

It’s also easy for two of us:

“Hey, my wife and I would love to grab coffee or whatever when we’re all free…”

It’s a little non-standard to have your wife come to a meeting but not super weird.

But the three of us make it awkward no matter what:

“Hey, my wives and I would love to grab coffee when we’re all free…”

I sound like a polygamist living in the Utah desert now. 

Okay, “wives” sounds really odd and no one uses it. How about “partners”?

“Hey, my partners and I would love to grab coffee when we’re all free…”

Now there’s an ambiguity problem. Does partner mean “wife” or “business partner”?

And it doesn’t acknowledge or show self-awareness that it’s a bit strange.

It sounds like something a neurotic hippie parent would lead with:

“Our son Caldex has to have his morning beet juice otherwise his day is completely thrown off. And he can’t be next to any WIFI signals. Or gluten.”

@reallyverycrunchy

When a crunchier mom drops in unexpectedly… #crunchymom #crunchyliving #holistic @Seventh Generation #breastmilksoap

♬ original sound – ReallyVeryCrunchy

https://youtu.be/e1IUr_TnC7g

Even though most of the people I meet are weird or different in many ways, I still try to have the first interactions go as smoothly as possible given we have no rapport built yet.

Many people are chill with the poly thing but starting the interaction like that can feel a little high-maintenance. It’s like saying “Hi, I’m Anna and I have three dogs!” It’s like, “Okay, that’s cool but no one asked…”

Now, none of us mind being in the closet for the purposes of making an interaction less awkward. In this case, one of us plays the best friend.

But that’s awkward too…

“Hey, my wife and our best friend would love to grab coffee when we’re all free…” 

Who brings their best friend to a meeting like this? Now we sound like weird people who blog about vacations together.

We can meta-communicate and explain that we’re poly:

“Hey, my partners and I (we’re in a poly triad and aren’t trying to make it weird but just want to give context as to why there’s three people there, haha) would love to grab coffee or whatever…”

But then it feels like we are those people who need to shove our outlier status in people’s faces. I’m not saying it should be like that but it *feels* like that. It feels like it misrepresents us.

I still haven’t found a perfect solution to this problem. In the end, we usually either meta-communicate that we’re poly, or someone plays the best friend.

Maybe in the email, I’ll just include a link to this post. (But then it looks egotistical and self-indulgent to link to my own posts. It’s signaling all the way down!)

Have any ideas/recommendations? Do you encounter any similar problems for your own particular situations you have to explain/give context for?

If you enjoyed this, you should definitely check out:

Coming Out

Sunday

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Stop quoting the time of the Doomsday Clock like it’s evidence of something. The Doomsday Clock is always predicting apocalypse. The earliest it’s ever been was 17 minutes to midnight in 1991. If your position is that humanity is always on the brink of extinction, then you really don’t need to check what the clock is at, do you?

I’m very much on Team Eliminate Existential Risk, but acting like humanity is at an ever-changing apocalyptic precipice isn’t helpful. It’s a political statement that doesn’t do much except inspire alarmism and hopelessness.

It does look cool in Watchmen, though.

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