flâneur

Arden Berg

37 followers · 65 following · 2429 views

on the atlas — 166

highlights — 429

  • In April 2017, the Israeli Labor Party announced that it would reschedule its July primary election to avoid conflict with Spears' sold-out Tel Aviv concert, citing traffic, and security concerns.[228]
    Britney Spears - Wikipedia
  • You might protest that extrapolating straight lines on a graph is not a Nobel-worthy methodology, but then I would ask you — on what basis are you expecting 2% growth to continue?
    AK or just okay? AI and economic growth
  • Despite his misfortune with patents, Goodyear wrote, “In reflecting upon the past, as relates to these branches of industry, the writer is not disposed to repine, and say that he has planted, and others have gathered the fruits. The advantages of a career in life should not be estimated exclusively by the standard of dollars and cents, as is too often done. Man has just cause for regret when he sows and no one reaps.”[15]
    Charles Goodyear - Wikipedia
  • Suppose you want someone to quit smoking. The fantasy you want to plant is how youthful they’ll feel when they stop. The most effective way to incept a person isn’t to say those words. Instead, say something like: “it must feel wonderful to run 3 miles in the wilderness, take a breath of fresh air and really live life.” Conduct a movie in the mind with words that evoke vivid imagery. It makes for a much more engaging conversation.
    How To Become Convincing | Daniel Gross
  • To ensure consistency, Koons implemented a color-by-numbers system, so that each of his assistants[24] could execute his canvases and sculptures as if they had been done "by a single hand".[7]
    Jeff Koons - Wikipedia
  • Don’t be a tech worker who does pathetic side projects in his free time (an infrequently updated blog, a useless webapp, half-hearted attempts to learn more about math or ML). Instead, work multiple jobs at the same time for half a year, and use the earnings to spend the next few years fully engaged in hare-brained schemes
    Examples of barbell strategies
  • Anyone wanna hire an uncertified philosopher/programmer who may or may not be free from the chains of rebirth?
    What if hypotheticals were all meaningless?
  • According to secret documents issued to interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, obtained[13] and released by The Guardian, "the Casio F-91W digital watch was declared to be 'the sign of al-Qaeda'
    Casio F-91W - Wikipedia
  • “I have no mouth and I must rhyme.”
    Gwern visits BAIR – Yuxi on the Wired
  • If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second-greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first-greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they're happy.
    The_Elements_of_Style
  • Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason, must furnish all the materials for our future support and defence.--Let those materials be moulded into general intelligence, sound morality, and in particular, a reverence for the constitution and laws: and, that we improved to the last; that we remained free to the last
    Abraham Lincoln's Lyceum Address
  • It thirsts and burns for distinction; and, if possible, it will have it, whether at the expense of emancipating slaves, or enslaving freemen.
    Abraham Lincoln's Lyceum Address
  • As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.
    Abraham Lincoln's Lyceum Address
  • For example, humans find it easy to beat Pokemon games, but I expect AI agents to struggle with this task for some time to come.
    AI progress is about to speed up | Epoch AI
  • Luck isn’t a constant, it increases with surface area
    Principles - Nabeel S. Qureshi
  • Don’t network, make friends.
    Principles - Nabeel S. Qureshi
  • The people who matter won’t judge you for it
    Principles - Nabeel S. Qureshi
  • Status is fake and transient. Just focus on substance and doing valuable work.
    Principles - Nabeel S. Qureshi
  • If you find yourself dreading Mondays, quit
    Principles - Nabeel S. Qureshi
  • Days with 0 output are the killers.
    Principles - Nabeel S. Qureshi
  • Doing as much as you can every day is a form of life extension.
    Principles - Nabeel S. Qureshi
  • Things don’t actually take much time (as measured by a stopwatch); resistance/procrastination does.
    Principles - Nabeel S. Qureshi
  • Once you are ok with people telling you ‘no’, you can ask for whatever you want. (Make reality say no to you.)
    Principles - Nabeel S. Qureshi
  • Think about what makes you ‘imbalanced’ as a personality, & do things where this gives you an edge
    Principles - Nabeel S. Qureshi
  • If you want think originally and differently, seek uncorrelated inputs. Read minor works, older things, obscure journals
    Principles - Nabeel S. Qureshi
  • The last time your voice said someone thought something terrible about you, did you validate it? Did you ask the person? Or did you just "know".
    How to feel good | Evan Conrad
  • People can also credibly tell the state things like "invest in us and the country will be stronger in 10 years". But once AI can do all the labour that keeps the economy going and the military powerful, the state has no more de facto reason to care about the demands of its humans.
    By default, capital will matter more than ever after AGI — LessWrong
  • Since the industrial revolution, the interests of states and people have been unusually aligned.
    By default, capital will matter more than ever after AGI — LessWrong
  • (Above image is not realistic—shrimp do not actually attend lectures).
    The Best Charity Isn't What You Think
  • Our modern word “talent” comes from the Greek word talenton, a certain amount of precious metal sometimes used as a denomination of money. The etymology passes through a parable of Jesus’. A master calls three servants to him and gives the first five talents, the second two talents, and the third one talent. The first two servants invest the money and double it. The third literally buries it in a hole. The master comes back later and praises the first two servants, but sends the third servant to Hell (metaphor? what metaphor?). Various people have come up with various interpretations, but the …
    The Parable Of The Talents | Slate Star Codex
  • “I know what you are saying. I try not to think about it. But it’s not that unusual. Over the course of history, billions of people have lived this way. Think back to when you were living in suburbia. Your parents had a 3,000 square foot house and the pool at the turn of the century. You were living it up. Unfortunately, at that moment in history, there were billions of people around the world living in poverty — they were living off a dollar or two per day. Meanwhile, your family had 300 dollars a day. Did you do anything about it? Billions and Billions of people living in third-world countri…
    Manna – Two Views of Humanity’s Future – Chapter 4 | MarshallBrain.com
  • In other words, by 2030 it will be very likely possible to train models that exceed GPT-4 in scale to the same degree that GPT-4 exceeds GPT-2 in scale.2 If pursued, we might see by the end of the decade advances in AI as drastic as the difference between the rudimentary text generation of GPT-2 in 2019 and the sophisticated problem-solving abilities of GPT-4 in 2023.
    Can AI Scaling Continue Through 2030? – Epoch AI
  • He was initially advised by Jürgen Habermas,
    Alex Karp
  • Karp has described himself as a socialist
    Alex Karp
  • Karp has said that protestors should be sent to North Korea.[25]
    Alex Karp
  • The most important moment, in my mind, in the history of Facebook, occurred in July of 2006. The company had been around for 2 years, it was still just a college site. Maybe 8 or 9 million people on the site. The revenues were tracking to about 30 million, no profits. And we received an acquisition offer from Yahoo for a billion dollars. …full disclosure, I think that both Breyer and myself thought that on balance we should take the money and run. But Zuckerberg started the meeting, and the first thing he said was “it’s kind of a formality, we have to have a quick board meeting, shouldn’t take…
    Become a Billionaire Part II: You're Not Even Trying | Applied Divinity Studies
  • Yesterday’s leaders were charismatic strongmen who could dominate a room. Tomorrow’s leaders may be introverts better at writing than they are at speaking. Yesterday’s crypto billionaires were libertarians who flouted fiat and hated the FED. Tomorrow’s may be whoever has the closest ties to the SEC, or whoever best understands the shifting regulatory environment.
    Life Advice: Become a Billionaire | Applied Divinity Studies
  • In the course of making Prince of Persia, Mechner: Takes 6 months off to write a screenplay. Drives out to Skywalker Ranch, meets George Lucas, fails to get his script acquired. Applies to NYU film school, gets rejected.
    Life Advice: Become a Billionaire | Applied Divinity Studies
  • At one point, he left his job at Atari for several months to make a mendicants’ spiritual journey through India, and on returning home he began to train seriously at the nearby Los Altos Zen Center. …these are hardly the actions of someone passionate about technology and entrepreneurship, yet this was less than a year before Jobs started Apple Computer. In other words, in the months leading up to the start of his visionary company, Steve Jobs was something of a conflicted young man, seeking spiritual enlightenment and dabbling in electronics only when it promised to earn him quick cash.
    Life Advice: Become a Billionaire | Applied Divinity Studies
  • Drury argues that Strauss teaches that "perpetual deception of the citizens by those in power is critical because they need to be led, and they need strong rulers to tell them what's good for them"
    Leo Strauss - Wikipedia
  • Some critics of Strauss have accused him of being elitist, illiberal and anti-democratic. Journalists such as Seymour Hersh have opined that Strauss endorsed noble lies, "myths used by political leaders seeking to maintain a cohesive society".[65][66] In The City and Man, Strauss discusses the myths outlined in Plato's Republic that are required for all governments. These include a belief that the state's land belongs to it even though it may have been acquired illegitimately and that citizenship is rooted in something more than accidents of birth.[67]
    Leo Strauss - Wikipedia
  • Every association of men is necessarily a separation from other men ... the political thus understood is not the constitutive principle of the state, of order, but a condition of the state.
    Leo Strauss - Wikipedia
  • Therefore, based on the economic logic above, the prospect of transformative AI – unaligned or aligned – will result in high real interest rates
    AGI and the EMH: markets are not expecting aligned or unaligned AI in the next 30 years — Basil Halperin
  • “Here are some questions that not only will elicit stories but also might yield relatively interesting answers: • “How did you spend your morning today?” • “What’s the farthest you’ve ever been from another human?” • “What’s something weird or unusual you did early on in life?” • “What’s a story one of your references might tell me when I call them?” • “If I was the perfect Netflix, what type of movies would I recommend for you and why?” • “How do you feel you are different from the people at your current company?” • “What views do you hold religiously, almost irrationally?” • “How did you pre…
    Talent Quotes by Tyler Cowen
  • and a homeless person from Washington, D.C. named "Alexander the Grate".
    Tyler_Cowen
  • The top 10% of scientists receive five times more citations throughout their careers than the other 90%.4
    The Talent Scout State - Institute for Progress
  • Some associates of Lewis, primarily George Sayer and Derek Brewer, have remarked that Lewis lost the subsequent debate on her paper and that this loss was so humiliating that he abandoned theological argument and turned entirely to devotional writing and children's literature
    G. E. M. Anscombe - Wikipedia
  • I often tell myself I want to leave Canada, to be different, but in reality, I find myself following the same path as everyone else. While overseeing previous ventures, I interacted with people from various backgrounds, each seeking their own breakthrough. Returning to the workforce, it feels like I’m no longer the protagonist of my own story, but rather a side character building someone else’s dream. Reflecting on my journey, I sometimes see my life as a highway. In the left lane, you’ve got your Ferraris racing ahead with clear destinations, the middle lane which sometimes keeps pace with th…
    Navigating Life’s Highway of Reflection — Protagonist to NPC | by haohao du | Medium
  • I knew it would only happen if someone was willing to go full-time on figuring out exactly what that would be and who would be a part of it.
    My path to OpenAI
  • This was my first time meeting Elon and Ilya, and I strongly remember my impressions of both. I was struck by how inquisitive Elon was, and how much he sought others opinions and really listened to them. Ilya on the other hand was a source of grounding: he was a clear technical expert with a breadth of knowledge and vision, and could always dive into the specifics of the limitations and capabilities of current system
    My path to OpenAI