This is a repository for major, life-altering mistakes that you or others have made. Detailed accounts of specific mistakes are welcome, and so are mentions of general classes of mistakes that people often make. If similar repositories already exist (inside or outside of LW), links are greatly appreciated.
The purpose of this repository is to collect information about serious misjudgements and mistakes in order to help people avoid similar mistakes. (I am posting this repository because I'm trying to conduct a premortem on my life and figure out what catastrophic risks may screw me over in the near or far future.)
What would you have done? How would you have moved to the Bay Area at age 18, and what would you have done for work without a college degree? Not skeptical; just wondering what your specific plan would have been.
Programming. Interning various places. Even just working at Walgreens, so long as it was in the Bay Area so I could encounter in person the important memes of startup culture + rationality culture.