Everyone has fascinations and pleasures, but only a limited time alive to indulge in them.
If you know that you can expect to grow in potential, capability, power in almost any area of life if you set your attentions to it, you must be left with the problem of "what do I intend to make of myself?".
This is a very serious question with very serious implications😅
If you're a person who wanders, uncertain what project deserves the most attention and resources next, maybe you can use "gatekeeping" as a tool to sharpen your mind.
If you feel lost, alone, and tribe...
I feel like there's a very serious risk of turning a 'broad rationalist movement' reaction, feeding on PARC adjacent extreme-aspirationals and secreting 'rationalists' into a permanently capped out minor regional cult by just deciding to move somewhere all avowed 'rationalists' choose.
I doubt most 'rationalists' or even most of the people who are likely to contribute to the literature of a rationalist movement have yet been converted to a specific sort of tribal self-identification that would lead them to pick up roots and all go to the same place at one t...
time to crash this party
unfortunate problems:
this list of topics is legitimately too big.
nobody can try to cover all of it in a reasonable amount of time.
possible solutions:
the general patterns of 'skip (lazy evaluate) prerequisites and audit classes' is good, but the best thing you can do if you want to keep up with ai research is to directly court mentors who are well-established in this field.
and to trust those mentors to give you the personal guidance you individually need the most in order to make the most rapid progress you can.
this pattern is extrem... (read more)