DMMF

8mo

While I'm heavily involved in the Effective Altruism community, this essay explores a question outside of EA's typical scope: How can we use an impact-focused mindset to improve our own lives by making our local communities flourish?

This isn't a critique of EA, but an expansion of its core toolkit. As a non-utilitarian who cares deeply about my immediate environment, I've been working on a framework for "spillover altruism"—the practice of making strategic personal choices that create positive externalities for those around you. This post is my exploration of that idea. I welcome any suggestions, compatible ideas, or critiques you may have.

I care. I care a lot. I want to live in a... (read 1420 more words →)

Replying to50 Ideas for Life I Repeatedly Share

DMMF8mo

50 Ideas for Life I Repeatedly Share

I think a big part of "greatness" is the self-confidence to feel comfortable doing the thing that you think is best.

In my opinion, the two best musical talent spotters of modern times are Miles Davis and Col. Bruce Hampton.

Miles was the biggest name in jazz, so most young musicians wanted to work with him.

Col. Bruce Hampton was not a huge name and couldn't offer conventional opportunity, yet he helped launch the careers of musicians like Jimmy Herring, Oteil Burbridge, Kofi Burbridge, Jeff Sipe, Kevin Scott, etc. When you read about Bruce (which I recommend everyone does, one of the most fascinating people of all time!), it seems clear these people had the... (read more)

50 Ideas for Life I Repeatedly Share

DMMF

9mo

These are the most significant pieces of life advice/wisdom that have benefited me, that others often don't think about and I end up sharing very frequently.

I wanted to share this here for a few reasons: First and most important, I think many people here will find this interesting and beneficial. I am very proud of this post and the feedback so far is that others seem to find it extremely valuable.

Second, writing this post has been my favourite writing experience ever. Writing a post of your most essential and frequently recommended life wisdom—as this one is for me—feels like my entire soul and personality are captured within it. Given how much I... (read 4271 more words →)

Replying towhat an efficient market feels from inside

DMMF1y

what an efficient market feels from inside

https://streeteasy.com/

what an efficient market feels from inside

DMMF

“I often think of the time I met Scott Sumner and he said he pretty much assumes the market is efficient and just buys the most expensive brand of everything in the grocery store.” - a Tweet

It’s a funny quip, but it captures the vibe a lot of people have about efficient markets: everything’s priced perfectly, no deals to sniff out, just grab what’s in front of you and call it a day. The invisible hand’s got it all figured out—right?

Well, not quite. This isn’t to say efficient markets are a myth, but rather that their efficiency is a statistical property, describing the average participant, and thus leaving ample room for individuals... (read 1645 more words →)

Deconstructing arguments against AI art

DMMF

Something I've been surprised by is just how fierce opposition to AI art has been. To clarify, I'm not talking about people who dislike AI art because they think it looks worse, but specifically, people with extreme animus towards the very concept of AI art, regardless of its aesthetic quality or artistic merit.

I'm interested in this issue because it's just one component of a broader societal conversation about AI's role in human society and it's helpful to see where the fault lines are. I suspect the intensity of the reaction to AI art stems from this serving as a proxy battlefield for larger anxieties about human value and purpose in an increasingly... (read 1301 more words →)

Every niche event should also be a meetup

DMMF

I was just at a Tyler Cowen lecture in NYC — one of my heroes and biggest intellectual influences — and watching everyone file out after the talk, I kept thinking about this really great comment someone had made on the event announcement: “Do these 92Y talks typically offer space to build community and talk with other attendees, or are they pretty stale pay > attend > leave?”

This hits on something important. The type of person who wants to attend a Tyler Cowen lecture is quite filtered — there is a very good chance that I would enjoy being friends with most people who love Tyler enough to show up. But we... (read 606 more words →)

Why good things often don’t lead to better outcomes

DMMF

Many people believe that when something good happens, positive outcomes naturally follow — but I'm here to explain why that's often not the case. In complex systems, improvements or advancements frequently set off a chain of reactions that can undermine the original benefits. This creates a paradox where progress in one domain often doesn’t lead to better results.

Consider the case of restaurants awarded Michelin stars. Surely this must be good for the restaurant, right? However, a recent academic paper showed that when restaurants receive Michelin stars, ostensibly a good thing, they paradoxically become more likely to go out of business than similar restaurants without the star. Staff seek higher salaries, leveraging their elevated... (read 996 more words →)

things that confuse me about the current AI market.

DMMF

DMMF, Nathan Helm-Burger

Paging Gwern or anyone else who can shed light on the current state of the AI market—I have several questions.

Since the release of ChatGPT, at least 17 companies, according to the LMSYS Chatbot Arena Leaderboard, have developed AI models that outperform it. These companies include Anthropic, NexusFlow, Microsoft, Mistral, Alibaba, Hugging Face, Google, Reka AI, Cohere, Meta, 01 AI, AI21 Labs, Zhipu AI, Nvidia, DeepSeek, and xAI.

Since GPT-4’s launch, 15 different companies have reportedly created AI models that are smarter than GPT-4. Among them are Reka AI, Meta, AI21 Labs, DeepSeek AI, Anthropic, Alibaba, Zhipu, Google, Cohere, Nvidia, 01 AI, NexusFlow, Mistral, and xAI.

Twitter AI (xAI), which seemingly had no prior history... (read 391 more words →)

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my favourite Scott Sumner blog posts

DMMF

Given Scott's invitation to LessOnline and general embrace of this community, I thought many here would appreciate this curated list of my favourite Scott Sumner blog posts.

Scott Sumner is best known as an economist who was praised for positively influencing economic policy during the Great Recession through blogging, as well as the leading voice for market monetarism. But to me, as someone uninterested in monetary policy, Scott stands out as one of the world's best, warmest, and wisest generalist bloggers. He writes on a wide range of topics, often touching on issues adjacent to politics, economics, and art, but irrespective of the topic, his wisdom always shines through. I might be biased... (read 632 more words →)

Things I tell myself to be more agentic

DMMF

I'm sharing this here since being agentic has become somewhat of a meme in EA circles. Despite its meme status, I find the idea very helpful and empowering, though difficult to put into action.

This is written as a personal self-affirmation — my hope is that by writing it up and sharing it publicly, I will internalize these words more and act on them. In the context of this post, being agentic means being more ambitious, doing more things out in the world, putting myself out there more, and tolerating higher levels of rejection, discomfort, and failure.

Your life can become much better or worse based on your actions and, more generally, the randomness

... (read 871 more words →)

Applying simulacrum levels to hobbies, interests and goals

DMMF

One of the things I've been very confused by for most of my life is why it seems like few people truly care about the things they say they like. That is, they don't spend their spare time thinking about it; they don't read Wikipedia about it, let alone subreddits/blogs or actual books on the topic; they don't practice the thing, or they don't actively incorporate that thing into their life.

I recently came across an article by Jim Leff that crystallized a lot of thoughts in my mind:

"Everybody dreams of being on stage and singing The Note, or of being elected to high office and giving The Speech. We chase that image,

... (read 1102 more words →)

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things that confuse me about the current AI market.

what an efficient market feels from inside

my favourite Scott Sumner blog posts

50 Ideas for Life I Repeatedly Share

DMMF

DMMF

Towards a theory of local altruism

50 Ideas for Life I Repeatedly Share

what an efficient market feels from inside

Deconstructing arguments against AI art

Every niche event should also be a meetup

Why good things often don’t lead to better outcomes

things that confuse me about the current AI market.

DMMF

things that confuse me about the current AI market.

what an efficient market feels from inside

my favourite Scott Sumner blog posts

50 Ideas for Life I Repeatedly Share

DMMF

DMMF

Towards a theory of local altruism

50 Ideas for Life I Repeatedly Share

what an efficient market feels from inside

Deconstructing arguments against AI art

Every niche event should also be a meetup

Why good things often don’t lead to better outcomes

things that confuse me about the current AI market.