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What I'd like to see are videos. Does anyone know if the presentations were recorded?
The presentations were not recorded, due to the Chatham House rules.
In response to
The Importance of Sidekicks
I'd rather be a hero than a sidekick. But my small contribution to mitigating AI risk has generally been in helping MIRI in whatever way seemed most valuable, rather than inventing my independent way to global utility maximization.
So, what does that make me? A cooperative small-time hero, like one of those obscure minor superhero characters in the comics who occasionally steps up to help the famous ones?
I think there is such a thing as a hero-in-training. My work with FLI has mostly been in a supporting role so far, but I view myself as an apprentice rather than a sidekick, and I would generally like to be a hero.
Note that there are enough good fictional male sidekicks to reduce the gender stigma, and fiction has at least as much power over people as reality. So maybe nothing special needs to be done?
Do you know of any examples, fictional or real, of a male sidekick to a female hero?
In response to
Open and closed mental states
Since you specifically use the term "open" and "closed" mental states, I have to wonder about the relation to "open mode" and "closed mode" as discussed e.g. here or here. (The actual John Cleese video these are referring to seems to be no longer publically available -- or at least, the part that talks about "open" and "closed", anyway.)
Thanks for the links! I think my definition is essentially the same as John Cleese's in the first article. I somewhat disagree with Blackshaw in the second article about the relation to productivity. Open mode is compatible with having a goal, as long as you are not overfocused on a particular approach to that goal, so it's not necessarily unstructured playful exploration. Closed mode can make you less productive if it results in obsessiveness, e.g. repeatedly checking email for updates, or skipping breaks and thus getting unnecessarily tired.
In response to
Open and closed mental states
Hey Vika, props for writing this. Putting myself in the open state seems to be my personal fully general argument for doing things I've been putting off (e.g. aversive phone calls). I like to think of myself as being open to new experiences, so once I can frame the decision to do the aversive thing as deciding between being open or being closed, well, of course I've got to be open :)
Engaging the "openness to experience" identity makes a lot of sense, and being open to potentially negative experiences is certainly a part of that. Have you tried doing things that are too aversive for you to be open towards them, or does this approach work in full generality?
In response to
Pomodoro for Programmers
I like to have a 25 minute reminder to stop and think about what I'm doing, but assuming I am, I often blaze through the "break" and only rest after a couple consecutive pomodoros. The 25 minute mark is more a safety net. I.e., if I've gotten distracted or gone down an unproductive path, at least I've only wasted no more than 25 minutes.
I use a similar approach. I find it too disruptive to interpret the pomodoro break signal literally as "stop what you are doing right now". Instead I interpret it as "take a break at some point in the next while", so I can blaze through it if I am being really productive.
In response to
We Haven't Uploaded Worms
Great post - I suggest moving it to Main.
In response to
Mistakes repository
- Not living on campus with friends during college
- Taking too many high-level math classes in my first year of college (including a really dense graduate abstract algebra course)
- Not getting therapy while in college (rectified during grad school)
- Not applying for internships in college (also rectified during grad school)
- Turning down a promising summer research project right before my PhD. I thought that summer was a bit overloaded and I was going to do research during the PhD anyway, but it took 1.5 years of classes and qualifying exams before really getting started with research, so in retrospect I should have dropped other things from that summer instead.
- Choosing a (somewhat) wrong field for grad school - I went into stats, but the main part of stats that interests me is machine learning, so I should have probably gone into CS.
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Did you mean to write January instead of February?
It was a typo on the FLI website, which has now been corrected to January.