LessWrong team member / moderator. I've been a LessWrong organizer since 2011, with roughly equal focus on the cultural, practical and intellectual aspects of the community. My first project was creating the Secular Solstice and helping groups across the world run their own version of it. More recently I've been interested in improving my own epistemic standards and helping others to do so as well.
Well, this is the saddest I've been since April 1st 2022.
It really sucks that SB 1047 didn't pass. I don't know if Anthropic could have gotten it passed if they had said "dudes this this fucking important, pass it now" instead of "for some reason we should wait until things are already
It is nice that at least Anthropic did still get to show up to the table, and that they said anything at all. I sure wish their implied worldview didn't seem so crazy. (I really don't get how you can think it's workable to race here, even if you think Phase I alignment is easy, as well as it seeming really wrong to think Phase I alignment is that likely to be easy)
It feels like winning pathways right now mostly route through:
I don't know if I'd go as strong as the OP, but, I think you're being the most pro-social if you have a sense of the scale of other things-worth-doing that aren't in the news, and consciously checking how the current News Thing fits into that scale of importance.
(There can be a few different ways to think about importance, which this frame can be agnostic on. i.e. doesn't have to be "global utilitarian in the classical sense")
FYI I do currently think "learn when/how to use your subconcious to process things" is an important tool in the toolbox (I got advice about that from a mentor I went to talk to). Some of the classes of moves here are:
I've now worked with 3 Thinking Assistants, and there are a couple more I haven't gotten to try out yet. So far I've been doing it with remote ones, who I share my screen with. If you would like to try them out I can DM you information and my sense of their various strengths.
The baseline benefit is just them asking "hey, are you working on what you mean to work on?" every 5 minutes. I think I a thing I should do but haven't yet is have them be a bit more proactive in asking if I've switched tasks (because sometimes it's hard to tell looking at my screen), and nagging me a bit harder about "is this the right thing?" if I'm either switching a lot, or doing one that seems at-odds with my stated goals for the day.
Sometimes I have them do various tasks that are easy to outsource, depending on their skills and what I need that day.
I have a google doc I have them read in advance that lays out my overall approach, and which includes a journal for myself I'm often taking notes in, and a journal for each assistant I work with for them to take notes. I think something-like-this is a good practice.
For reference, here's my intro: