Emmanuel Awosika — LessWrong

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It goes without saying, but the willingness to look stupid is a big part of having agency. "Do non-obvious things" sounds easy in theory, but looks like wearing a clown suit and becoming a lonely dissenter in practice.

I suspect more people (including yours truly) would be agentic if they could get over the fear of looking stupid, but it's a complex problem so agency will remain the preserve of a minority. That said, it's possible to progressively build agency by starting off with low-stakes projects and increasing the difficulty and stakes (something like rejection therapy could work).

Replying toImpact, agency, and taste

Emmanuel Awosika10mo

Impact, agency, and taste

For those who want another take on agency, here's a good article on the subject: https://usefulfictions.substack.com/p/how-to-be-more-agentic

Emmanuel Awosika's Shortform

Emmanuel Awosika

11mo

This is a special post for quick takes (aka "shortform"). Only the owner can create top-level comments.

Replying toOn the Rationality of Deterring ASI

Emmanuel Awosika11mo*

On the Rationality of Deterring ASI

I'm yet to read the paper, but my initial reaction is that this is a classic game-theoretical problem where players have to weigh up the incentives to defect or cooperate. For example, I'm not sure if Manhattan Project-style effort for AI in the US is extremely unreasonable when China already has something of that sort.

My weakly held opinion is that you cannot get adversarial nation-states at varying stages of developing a particular technology to mutually hamstring future development. China is unlikely to halt AI development (it is already moving to restrict DeepSeek researchers from traveling) because it expects the US to accelerate AI development and wants to hedge bets by developing AI... (read more)

Emmanuel Awosika11moQuick Take

Morality must scale to be useful. A common failure mode for people is to engage in "performative morality" where they choose low-cost signaling over high-cost action. What's easier to do—starting a sustainable energy company (and scaling it) or donating $10 to climate change activism and tweeting about the seas rising 24/7?

But "easy" doesn't mean "effective". A sustainable energy company has 1000x the impact of a $10 donation on reversing climate change. Sure, not everyone can—or should—build a company; but then it shouldn't be the case that the person donating $10 feels some mysterious aura of morality and feels like they're just doing just as much as the person running a sustainable energy... (read 645 more words →)