December 22, 2023

2023 updates

Hi everyone,

Starting with the most important stuff: thanks for making it through the year. I love you all.

I spent the last several years working on making the institutions of science work better, forayed into AI in 2023 & it's time for me to take a break. Sasha Targ -- New Science's Head of Research -- will be taking over as the Executive Director starting January 1st. I admire Sasha enormously, she's better than I am at almost everything, and I'm looking forward to seeing her help bring the vision of radically better science and academia to life. New Science will be fundraising next year, so if you're looking for donation opportunities, this one's going to be my favorite one.

Writing

My top 7 favorite pieces I wrote this year:

1. My 2022 self (I don't know them) was very wrong about meditation, huge monitors, and... sleep.
2. (unauthorized) advice from guest 04 & Advice from Tyler Cowen
3. lifehacks
4. Omens of exceptional talent
5. Is AI alignment on track? Is it progressing... too fast?
6. Ramanujan, Einstein, Tolstoy, Napoleon, Richard Muller, and Michael Jackson on God
7. questions

Links

1. "An unspoken but obvious...corollary of the Longtermist-AGIdoomist doctrine is that, if all else seems poised to fail, one perfectly viable «pivotal act» to prevent «the loss of all value in the far future of the light cone» to an ASI is genocide of humanity ... save for a forewarned/vaccinated "minimal breeding population" of longtermists".
2. Presidents Work at McDonald's
3. "Can a Grey Goo scenario happen? No, if you consider dispersal speed, limited energy sources, waste heat output, competition from microorganisms and other hindrances that considerably slow down the replication of nanomachines."

Other

1. I'm going to be in Europe early 2024, but I'm unemployed starting a week from now & my net worth is negative, so if you have couches to sleep on (especially: Germany, France, Balkans), I would appreciate offers.
2. I've been studying physics in my free time, so if you studied physics or are doing research in physics, I'd love to talk (I wanted to do cosmology when I was in high school but decided I wasn't smart enough for it back then; maybe I am now? I really want to figure out what caused the big bang).
3. AMA.

Stay Frosty,
Alexey