(allowing some space is the most effective way to make the fastest progress, i think, because otherwise natural defensiveness makes it too much of an uphill battle.)
Sam Altman’s Tweets
someday eating meat is going to get cancelled, and we are going to look back upon it with horror.
we have a collective continual duty to find our way to better morals, and to allow some space for that process.
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there must be a better way for society to continually make moral progress, one that everyone can feel a duty and a sense of pride to be part of
culture wars don’t make it easy to “bring people along”, which i think is why they are so ineffective
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we are now in the era of forever culture wars
they are, like all forever wars, an astonishing waste of human potential
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if you hire for extreme amounts of aptitude and drive
and put those people in positions that are "ahead" of their career trajectory
you are almost guaranteed success
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the most dangerous ideologies are the ones that sound compelling but slowly lead to ruin
especially if they reward pledging allegiance over everything else
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The idea of having a new constitutional convention every 30 years or so is interesting.
It might not be a good idea, but in principle the thought that each new generation gets to modify governance in response to a changing world and changing ideals seems intriguing.
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National debt (as a percentage of GDP) over the last 40 years.
What's the plan here?
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we should be nervous because experts can be wrong about the "misinformation" label.
2 years ago, the experts said masks didn't help reduce the spread of covid.
50 years ago, the experts said being gay was a mental disorder.
glad we were allowed to share contradictory info.
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we should be much more nervous about the growing calls to censor "misinformation" than the misinformation itself
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we should be much more nervous about the growing calls to censor "misinformation" than the misinformation itself
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Key early-stage investing questions:
Of all the things you could work on, why this?
How does this eventually become a $100 billion business?
What do you understand about this that others don’t?
What progress have you made in the last week?
What are you really great at?
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Technological progress is not sufficient, but it is absolutely necessary. More and better!
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These things won’t be easy to achieve, and they’ll be even harder to deliver at mass scale. They will not automatically solve society’s problems—along with the technology, we also need to figure out the policies to push the effects in the most positive directions.
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We can build AGI. We can colonize space. We can get fusion to work and solar to mass scale. We can cure all human disease. We can build new realities.
We are only a few breakthroughs away from abundance at a scale that is difficult to imagine.
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This is where understanding exponential growth is important. It’s obviously better to save a million lives in the future than one life today, but without really appreciating the power of compound growth, it’s hard to reason about the likelihood of such a tradeoff.
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A frequent argument against investing in progress is that it’s better to use the money to improve people’s lives today than to gamble on breakthroughs.
We should do both things, of course, but we can’t accept techno-optimism getting thrown out, and right now it’s on defense.
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(The “degrowth” mindset is also incredibly entitled—it’s not fair to tell other cultures they can’t use the same amount of resources we used to get where we are.)
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But most people want “more and better”, not “less and worse”, and technological progress is how they get it.
We should demand technological progress, and the funding and talent it requires, and relegate austerity and pessimism to the depressing corners they deserve.
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Take climate change. Some people seem to prefer shaming others into doing as little as possible and not having kids, instead of pushing for technological breakthroughs that can deliver limitless, cheap, clean energy.
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Techno-optimism is the only good solution to our current problems.
Unfortunately, somehow expressing optimism about the future has become a radical act.
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~All cultural formation in our time is now the development and propagation of memes that battle their way through a supply chain in cyberspace.
Most die; some thrive.
The memes that make it through encode deep meanings.
This is as serious a process as has ever existed.
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When I started this project 2 years ago I couldn't have dreamt of us getting that far. But this is also only the beginning💥
Some thoughts on what we achieved so far 🧵
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We trained a neural network that solved two problems from the International Math Olympiad. openai.com/blog/formal-ma
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and the cost of intelligence should eventually trend towards the cost of energy
lotta energy in the universe
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intelligence and energy are upstream of ~everything
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riemann hypothesis wen
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Super excited that OpenAI solved two IMO problems (🤯!), but now I feel extra bad that I never solved one.
openai.com/blog/formal-ma
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Our tests show that is onto something with their new embeddings product. For our real-world use case, it blew away the competition.
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We tested different embedding models and show the data behind why GPT-3 was the clear winner for our clustering needs
askviable.com/blog/why-we-ch
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i really try to hear the kernel of truth in any unfair/mean attack, but something about the way twitter works makes it extra hard
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even people who really understand compounding consistently underestimate the power of compounding.
if you can get close to internalizing and acting on the true power of compounding and momentum, you will outperform almost everyone.
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at least in the tech industry, it's remarkable how fast the signal value of old-world prestige (e.g. universities) is declining.
starting to wonder about eliminating resumes entirely for hiring. feels like we could do much better evaluating direct evidence instead of proxies.
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looks like a normal warehouse; will hopefully be where commercial fusion first happens
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The roof is up just before another PNW snowfall. Work on the Polaris facility interior begins!
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two mindsets that produce greatness:
"everything is important."
"ruthlessly ignore everything but the most important."
the former works more often. the hardest part of the latter is being right about what's most important.
the mindsets in between don't seem to work very well.
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shape rotation can create a wordcel but not the other way around
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Replying to @eigenrobot
what is GPT but the construction of a wordcel via shape rotation
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techno-pessimism gets the retweets; techno-optimism gets the future
(pls don't retweet, i am in the optimist camp)
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"#science vs actual science" is such a brilliantly compressed version of so many of the problems we face twitter.com/eladgil/status
This Tweet is unavailable.
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i bet it'll be above 50% in not too long!
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GitHub Copilot writes about 25% of my code now and I usually end up keeping about 75% of it as-is
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"If you can't figure out what kind of work you like, pay attention to what's easy to concentrate on and gives you energy vs. what makes you tune out and feel tired"
sounds obvious but remains some of the best advice I ever got.
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i dont know ryan but ive heard good things about him and assume they're all true!
but id encourage people considering YC to talk founders who have recently gone through the program, and form their opinion that way.
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i no longer work at YC, so i think i can say this more easily than the current partners:
although you can certainly succeed wildly without YC, YC is the best deal in the industry for increased odds of success vs cost.
track record of YC vs non-YC companies supports.
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