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All ethics is a special case of animal welfare science only the most up-to-date discourse takes here on Thing of Things Art appreciation is a skill Cory Doctorow:
Bluesky lacks the one federated feature that is absolutely necessary for me to trust it: the ability to leave Bluesky and go to another host and continue to talk to the people I’ve entered into community with there. While there are many independently maintained servers that provide services to Bluesky and its users, there is only one Bluesky server. A federation of multiple servers, each a peer to the other, has been on Bluesky’s roadmap for as long as I’ve been following it, but … Avoiding false dichotomies
The post Developing the middle ground on polarized topics appeared first on Otherwise.
Royal Caribbean has a new giant cruise ship, Icon of the Seas, which has a large selection of food options. My blog is now generated by Eleventy 3.0, which was released last month. The upgrade process took me a few hours split over two evenings and I took a few notes. This probably isn’t an interesting write up for hardly anyone – but if you have any of the same 11ty concerns I do, you may find a solution in here.
I started out by following the instructions in the excellent Upgrade Helper docs.
When I tried to install the Upgrade Helper plugin, I got a dependency conflict with eleventy-sass:
npm ERR! co… It occurred to me recently that I don’t think there are any contra dances that feature a set and link figure. This is a figure from Scottish Country Dancing¹ which follows this sequence (for the purpose of this description I assume dancers are in contra dance formation becket, on the side with their partner):
Couples face the other couple across the set, taking convenient hands with their partner along the side
All balance right and left (4 beats)
All turn over their right shoulder as they trade p…
A lot of people play fiddle. Basically nobody starts by learning
chords before learning melodies. But that's actually how I learned.
I started with chords.
One of the nice things about learning to play violin this way is that
you can go busking even when you've only had just a few lessons. When
I go busking I like to go to Davis Square where there are lots of
people who are excited to listen to music. Part of busking is that
when people think you're good at playing, sometimes they&#…
I have some stuffies and I just have a bunny. Bunny is a rabbit.
Woof is a seal. My favorite stuffie is bun bun. I play with my
stuffies. Sometimes I jump up with them and I roll them. I can just
throw them in the air when I want to play bthululubp with them. I
like to quick get my stuffies and throw them in the air.
Selina watches me. When Selina has a different job Justina will watch
me. It's the same.
There's a common narrative that Microsoft was moribund under Steve Ballmer and then later saved by the miraculous leadership of Satya Nadella. This is the dominant narrative in every online discussion about the topic I've seen and it's a commonly expressed belief "in real life" as well. While I don't have anything negative to say about Nadella's leadership in this post, this narrative underrates Ballmer's role in Microsoft's success. Not only did Microsoft… A discussion I have with myself a lot
The post Inner dialogue, walking down the sidewalk appeared first on Otherwise.
This post was inspired by a week of working from Ambitious Impact’s office in London, and chatting with several of the startup charities there. While my experience is in the for-profit world, I think it’s applicable to entrepreneurs working on impact-driven endeavors in lower-income places, both for-profit and non-profit. (Acknowledging that much of this advice will be obvious to entrepreneurs from lower-income countries; I am mostly writing for readers who like me are from high-income countrie… Lessons learned from the first 10 years
The post Advice for getting along with your kids appeared first on Otherwise.
If you're a kid like me, most kids have probably never heard of contra
dancing before. You're probably wondering: contra dance -- what's
that? Contra dancing is in some ways similar to square dancing. It's
a group dance with a caller and a live band. When you think of
dancing you probably think of rock and roll or pop or something, but
no. It's folk music. If you are interested in learning more about
that, whether you're a grown up or a kid, you can try out contra
danci… Life for an American family in 1860s China
The post Two 19th-century missionary memoirs in China appeared first on Otherwise.
You’ve started a project or company. Great idea, great team, you’re cranking away. Build a prototype, work on acquiring the key partnerships, figure out launch planning, get a few initial users… simple enough right?
About eight years ago, I was playing a game of Codenames where the game state was such that our team would almost certainly lose if we didn't correctly guess all of our remaining words on our turn. From the given clue, we were unable to do this. Although the game is meant to be a word guessing game based on word clues, a teammate suggested that, based on the physical layout of the words that had been selected, most of the possibilities we were considering would result in patterns that were … Getting to "good enough"
The post Relaxing my standards on housekeeping appeared first on Otherwise.
overall direction • people management • project management • technical leadership • example divisions of labor non-trust is reasonable • trust lets collaboration scale • symptoms of trust deficit • how to proactively build trust
There've been regular viral stories about ML/AI bias with LLMs and generative AI for the past couple years. One thing I find interesting about discussions of bias is how different the reaction is in the LLM and generative AI case when compared to "classical" bugs in cases where there's a clear bug. In particular, if you look at forums or other discussions with lay people, people frequently deny that a model which produces output that's sort of the opposite of what the user a…
From 2011-2012, the FTC investigated the possibility of pursuing antitrust action against Google. The FTC decided to close the investigation and not much was publicly known about what happened until Politico released 312 pages of internal FTC memos that from the investigation a decade later. As someone who works in tech, on reading the memos, the most striking thing is how one side, the side that argued to close the investigation, repeatedly displays a lack of basic understanding of tech indust… After 7 years at Deep End (and 4 more years in other group houses before that), Janos and I have moved out to live near a school we like and some lovely parks. The life change is bittersweet – we will miss living with our friends, but also look forward to a logistically simpler life […] I posted a postmortem of a community I worked to help build, Clarendon, in Cambridge MA, over at Supernuclear.
In 2017, we looked at how web bloat affects users with slow connections. Even in the U.S., many users didn't have broadband speeds, making much of the web difficult to use. It's still the case that many users don't have broadband speeds, both inside and outside of the U.S. and that much of the modern web isn't usable for people with slow internet, but the exponential increase in bandwidth (Nielsen suggests this is 50% per year for high-end connections) has outpaced web bloat for…
I'm lying in bed, pleasantly sleeping when it's supposed to be 6am.
Then my alarm goes off. Later, at school, I am very tired. Why do
you think this is? This is all the fault of daylight savings time.
Daylight savings time is a thing the government does so that in the
summer we have daylight in the evenings but in the winter it's light
out when kids are walking to school. They think it probably wouldn't
be fun to walk to school in the dark. For the record, I think it
would be ve…
When the nurse comes to give you the flu shot, they say it won't hurt
at all, right? And you trust them. Then they give you the shot, and it
hurts! They lied to you. A lot of nurses lie to children about shots
and blood draws.
Part of it is they probably don't remember what it's like to be a kid
about to get a shot. But also they kind of have to do whatever they
can to convince the children to let them give them the shot.
When they lie to kids, the next time that happens the kids won'… budget 2+ hours to build • think ahead about follow-ups and rubric • focus on a small number of skills • dig into details • make yourself a rubric I wrote ~2 years ago that it was hard to find concrete ways to help the most important century go well. That’s changing. I designed a puzzle for family for Christmas! This was designed to be solved in-person, but blog readers can solve it too (mostly – some pieces weren’t particularly web-friendly). I also wrote my notes below about how I designed it and what I learned. But first: This is an annual post reviewing the last year and setting intentions for next year. I look over different life areas (work, health, parenting, effectiveness, travel, etc) and draw conclusions from my life tracking data. Overall, this year went pretty well (and definitely better than the previous two). Highlights include a second kid, hiking in […] Last year, a major focus of my research was developing a better understanding of threat models for AI risk. This post is looking back at some posts on threat models I (co)wrote in 2022 (based on my reviews of these posts for the LessWrong 2022 review). I ran a survey on DeepMind alignment team opinions […] This post contains javascript content and must be viewed on site. This post contains javascript content and must be viewed on site.
One day my dad was reading this book called the "Going to Bed Book" to
my sister Nora. The book is
basically about a bunch of animals who are getting ready for bed on a
boat. They go down the stairs, take a bath, hang their towels on the
wall, find their pajamas, brush their teeth, go up and exercise, then
go down again and fall asleep.
But I noticed there was a big problem: my whole life everyone has been
telling me "don't exercise before bed". The reason you shouldn't
exer… Public discussions about catastrophic risks from general AI systems are often derailed by using the word “intelligence”. People often have different definitions of intelligence, or associate it with concepts like consciousness that are not relevant to AI risks, or dismiss the risks because intelligence is not well-defined. I would advocate for using the term “capabilities” […]
I first started playing fiddle when I was five, just around my
birthday. I had really wanted a fiddle because I wanted to learn how
to play it and my parents got me one for my birthday so I started
taking lessons. Though after a couple of lessons I started to find it
more and more boring and at the time I wasn't really prepared for my
fingers to hurt when I did it, so I didn't really like it that much
and also overall I think that probably starting from that age wasn't
the best idea. … the trough of zero dopamine • managing the wrong amount • procrastinating on hard questions • indefinitely deferring maintenance • angsting instead of asking AI alignment work is usually considered “longtermist”, which is about preserving humanity’s long-term potential. This was the primary motivation for this work when the alignment field got started around 20 years ago, and general AI seemed far away or impossible to most people in AI. However, given the current rate of progress towards advanced AI […] Early signs of catastrophic risk? Yes and no. Governments could be crucial in the long run, but it's probably best to proceed with caution. Major AI companies can increase or reduce global catastrophic risks. People are far better at their jobs than at anything else. Here are the best ways to help the most important century go well. love for Wave • why leave • where to • why there • what’s next
For Christmas I got a really fun kit about rainbows. It had a rainbow
catcher, a really cool necklace, a streamer thingy, and it also had a
really really cool pinwheel, and it also had a bracelet and a pinata.
Unfortunately the pinata didn't work out that well. I didn't make the
bracelet yet. The pinata just didn't fall apart when we hit it. We
had to take it apart with our hands to get it open.
It even had a really really fun part. Actually, it wasn't really that
fun. It did m…
I went to a farm and at the farm I got to see a corncrib and the corn
that had fell out of the corncrib that no one wanted I got to use my
fingers to take off the corn kernels and once the cobs were empty I
put them in a bag and then once I got back to the house I was staying
in I ate dinner and I got to work with a few pencils some tape and some
paper and some markers and I used some of the markers to make the eyes
and mouth but I didn't want to add a nose so what I did was I made
little pink s…
I really like going in the water and this beach is a great place for
building sand castles and boogie boarding. I also like trying to
float on top of big waves. I'm not very good at it. I only float on
the flat waves.
I love England. Especially because of the big castle called Buckingham
Palace. I got to see the outside there, but my mom showed me some
pictures of the inside. I love it there. But the outside doesn't look
very fancy to me. But I never knew why those people wear big bear skin
black poofy hats.
Animal Welfare and Capabilitarianism
In Defense of Mystery's Hat
In Defense Of The Reality Of Good Taste
Bluesky's Enshittification Risk
Developing the middle ground on polarized topics
How to eat vegan on Icon of the Seas
Notes on Upgrading to Eleventy 3.0
Set and Link Contras
Starting With Chords
Stuffies
Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO
Inner dialogue, walking down the sidewalk
Startup advice targeting low and middle income countries
Advice for getting along with your kids
Don't Help Kids With Contra Dancing If They Don't Need Help
Two 19th-century missionary memoirs in China
When it gets complicated is when your impact is spiking
How good can you be at Codenames without knowing any words?
Relaxing my standards on housekeeping
Categories of leadership on technical teams
Trust as a bottleneck to growing teams quickly
A discussion of discussions on AI bias
What the FTC got wrong in the Google antitrust investigation
Moving on from community living
Clarendon Postmortem
How web bloat impacts users with slow devices
Why We Shouldn't Have Daylight Savings Time
When Nurses Lie to You
How I build and run behavioral interviews
Good job opportunities for helping with the most important century
Solve My Mini Puzzle Hunt
2023-24 New Year review
Retrospective on my posts on AI threat models
My first brush with covid
11ty and Observable
A Big Problem With The Going To Bed Book
When discussing AI risks, talk about capabilities, not intelligence
Fiddle
Some mistakes I made as a new manager
Near-term motivation for AI alignment
What does Bing Chat tell us about AI risk?
How major governments can help with the most important century
What AI companies can do today to help with the most important century
Jobs that can help with the most important century
Leaving Wave, joining Anthropic
My Rainbow Kit
Corncob Dolls
On the Beach
Buckingham Palace