A complementary advice to the point 1 based on my work experience is that no matter how many priorities there are defined in a planning system, in practice it all collapses to only two values:

• Priority One
• Priority "this will never get done, because there will always be some Priority One task to do instead"

So whenever you propose a thing to do and your manager says "okay, we can give this a priority two", now you know that this is merely a polite way to say "no".

(My advice for software developers is that if you want to do things such as automated tests or documentation, you must insist that those are not separate tasks, but an inseparable part of the programming task, a part of the "definition of done". Otherwise, these tasks will get a priority two, and now you know what that means...)

If you work for free, you're doing whoever you're working for a favor.

Yes. Unless the other costs of letting you work there exceed the value you add. For example, if you actually damage something, waste other people's time, or just if you occupy a chair in a very expensive and small space.

If you work for money but never spend it, you're doing the world a favor.

Generally yes, unless the work has big negative externalities.

When you buy someone's goods or services for their set price, you're doing them a favor.

Yes.

The apparent paradox is that two things happen at the same time. People create value by cooperating. Also, people engage in a zero-sum competition for the created value.

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There is a simple story which says that if people only engage in mutually voluntary trade (also assuming perfect information, perfect rationality, et cetera -- I said it was a story), the result is a net improvement for everyone.

Well, that story is not true (even under the unrealistic assumptions). It is a good approximation, on average -- the societies where people engage in mutually voluntary trade (with sufficiently educated population, not too many scams, et cetera) are on average a nicer place to live than other societies.

And yet, it is possible for one person to get worse as a direct consequence of a mutually voluntary trade of everyone else. That's because different people have different abilities. And if the only thing you can ever produce is X, and someone else starts producing large amounts of X and selling it very cheaply... you just lost the only thing that helped you survive in this system. For everyone else, getting more of X more cheaply is a good news. So, from a global perspective, this is a good news. You should feel happy for your fellow citizens as you slowly starve to death. Our society is build on stories like this... and it is much better than the alternatives where people starve to death without making everyone else happier as a side effect.

...back to the original story: Yes, by never spending the money you're doing the world a favor, but by giving it to a specific person, you're giving that person an advantage at the zero-sum part of the game.

Now, I have read here about the might of irrational numbers, whose sequences go on and on, never ending, containing all the knowledge in the world.

This only applies to some irrational numbers. (Though you might say it is an overwhelming majority of them.)

Google fires 28 employees working on cloud and AI services for doing a ten hour sit in where they occupied their boss’s office until the police were eventually involved. And yes, if what you do at work is spend your time blockading your boss’s office until your policy demands are met, it seems like you are going to get fired?

In a company other than Google, I would say: yes, obviously.

But remember, when James Damore wrote his document, and as a reaction other people stopped doing their work in protest, it was he who was fired, not them. How were they supposed to know that this time it will be different?

Besides math and programming, what are your other skills and interests?

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I have an idea of a puzzle game, not sure if it would be good or bad, I haven't done even a prototype. So if anyone is interested, feel free to try... I hope I can explain it sufficiently clearly in words...

The game plan is divided into squares; I imagine a typical level to be between 10x10 and 30x30 squares large. Each square is either empty, or contains an immovable wall, or contains a movable block. The game consists of moving the blocks. Each move = you click a specific block, and try dragging it in one of the 4 directions, and either it is possible or not.

A block cannot move into a wall. A block can push another block. A block does not pull another block. For example, if there are 3 blocks in a horizontal line, and you click the middle one and try dragging it to the left, two blocks will move and the third one (the one on the right) will stay there. So far, it should be completely obvious, like what you would happen if you moved some actual objects.

In addition, each side of a block (or a wall) may be empty, or may contain a colored "magnet" (or perhaps a "lock" is a better metaphor). These add the following constraints for the movement of blocks:

• Magnets of different colors can never touch each other. If one block has a green magnet on the right side, and another has a blue magnet on the left side, you cannot put them next to each other so that the magnets would touch. (If you try to do that, the block refuses to move. Graphically, I imagine that it would move like half the way, and then you would get a visual indicator where is the problem, and when you stop dragging, it will return to its original place.) Though it is okay if the blocks touch on their other sides, where they don't have magnets.
• Magnets of the same color cannot be connected or disconnected by a move in a perpendicular direction. If one block has a green magnet on the right side, and another has a green magnet on the left side, if you move them next to each other, then when you try moving one of them up or down, it drags the other block along with it. Either both blocks move (in a direction perpendicular to their magnetic connection) or neither does. In a direction parallel to the magnetic connection, either one block pushes the other, or they disconnect if you pull them apart (i.e. the magnets do nothing when moving in a parallel direction).
• A magnet can touch a side without a magnet, doing so has no effect as if the magnet is not there.

Or, to describe it more like a programmer:

1. You choose a block and a direction to move. Now we create a set of "blocks that will move one step in given direction" like this: At first, the set contains the selected block. For each block in the set, a block next to it in the selected direction is also added to the set (pushed by the previous block). For each block in the set, a block next to it in a perpendicular direction is also added to the set if they are connected by magnets of the same color. We keep applying these two rules until we can add no more blocks to the set.
2. Now we check what would happen if blocks in the set moved one step in given direction, and all other blocks stayed at their place. If any block would move into a wall, the entire move is cancelled. (A block cannot move into another block, because by the set creation algorithm, that other block would also be in the set, and thus it would also move.) If two blocks -- one that moved, and one that didn't move -- would end up next to each other so that their magnets would touch each other (regardless of their colors), the entire move is cancelled. In both cases, the place that causes the problem is visually indicated to the player. (That is, even if you already know that the move is cancelled, keep checking which other places you also need to highlight. Then move all blocks in the set a few pixels in a given direction, so the player sees which blocks would be pushed along.)
3. If there is no problem, the blocks in the set all simultaneously move one step the given direction.

I think that these rules are time-reversible; whatever move you make, you can revert it by one or more moves. This is a desirable property, because it means you can never get stuck in the game. (It also means you can automatically generate levels by generating a solution and then making a few hundred random moves.)

A magnet can also be on the side of a wall. (The wall is basically a block that cannot be moved.)

The puzzle is solved when each magnet is connected to a magnet of the same color.

For bonus points, include a visual editor, and maybe an export/import of levels to a text file.

Oh, I hope so! But I would like to get the perspective of people outside our bubble.

If EA has a bad image, we are not the right people to speculate why. And if we don't know why, then we cannot fix it. Even if Paul Christiano can convince people that he is okay, it would be better if he didn't have to do this the next time. Maybe next time he (or some other person associated with EA) won't even get a chance to talk in person to people who oppose EA for some reason.

My first guess for bullying was: bullies typical choose a victim who has lower status than them. Of course the person with lower status gets punished more strictly for breaking the rules.

But the explanation "bullies are free to optimize for circumstances that make them less likely to get punished, and have more experience doing so" also makes a lot of sense.

I never want to hear anyone complaining about the use of the term “woke” again

Just because someone else uses the word, doesn't make it okay for you to use the word. 😛

They follow this motto: [every one should feel safe]

Except for the Israelis, I suppose...

If in extreme situations the ethical ideas fall apart, it might make sense to add an extra rule to stay away from the extreme situations. Like maybe not forever, but to proceed sufficiently slowly so that we have time to reflect on how we feel about that.

I like the rest of the article, but...

Cold calls. It's ok if you have a terrible response rate.

It's ok for you, but you generate negative externality as a side effect (waste other people's time and attention).