Hi! I’m looking for help with a project. If you’re interested or know someone who might be, it would be really great if you let me know/share. I'll check the forum forum for dms. 1. Help with acausal research and get mentoring to learn about decision theory * Motivation: Caspar Oesterheld (inventor/discoverer of ECL/MSR), Emery Cooper and I are doing a project where we try to get LLMs to help us with our acausal research. * Our research is ultimately aimed at making future AIs acausally safe. * Project: In a first step, we are trying to train an LLM classifier that evaluates critiques of arguments. To do so, we need a large number of both good and bad arguments about decision theory (and other areas of Philosophy.) * How you’ll learn: If you would like to learn about decision theory, anthropics, open source game theory, …, we supply you with a curriculum. There’s a lot of leeway for what exactly you want to learn about. You go through the readings. * If you already know things and just want to test your ideas, you can optionally skip this step. * Your contribution: While doing your readings, you, write up critiques of arguments you read. * Bottom-line: We get to use your arguments/critiques for our projects and you get our feedback on them. (We have to read and label them for the project anyway.) * Logistics: Unfortunately, you’d be a volunteer. I might be able to pay you a small amount out-of-pocket, but it’s not going to be very much. Caspar and Em are both university employed and I am similar in means to an independent researcher. We are also all non-Americans based in the US which makes it harder for us to acquire money for projects and such for boring and annoying reasons. * Why are we good mentors: Caspar has dozens of publications on related topics. Em has a handful. And I have been around. 2. Be a saint and help with acausal research by doing tedious manual labor and getting little in return We also need help with various grindy tasks that a

Disclaimer: I think the instant USAID cuts are very harmful, they directly affect our organisation's wonderful nurses and our patients. I'm not endorsing the cuts, I just think exaggurating numbers when  communicating for dramatic effect (or out of ignorance) is unhelpful and doesn't build trust in institutions like the WHO. Sometimes the lack of understanding, or care in calulations from leading public health bodies befuddles me. "The head of the United Nations' programme for tackling HIV/AIDS told the BBC the cuts would have dire impacts across the globe. "AIDS related deaths in the next five years will increase by 6.3 million" if funding is not restored, UNAIDS executive director Winnie Byanyima said." https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdd9p8g405no There just isn't a planet on which AIDS related deaths would increase that much. In 2023 an estimated 630,000 people were estimated to have died from AIDS related deaths. The WHO estimates about 21 million Africans on HIV treatment. Maybe 5 million of these in South Africa aren't funded by USAID. Other countries like Kenya and Botswana also contribute to their own HIV treatment. So out of those 16ish million on USAID funded treatment, over 1/3 of those would have to die in the next 3 years for that figure would be correct. The only scenario where this could happen is if all of these people went completely untreated, which means that no local government would come in at any stage. This scenario is impossible I get that the UN HIV program want to put out scary numbers to put the pressure on the US and try and bring other funding in, but it still important to represent reality. Heads of public health institutions and their staff who do this kind of modelling should learn what a counterfactual is.

Part of me thinks we should spend years reflecting on lifelong decisions before making them; hence, we ought not encourage young people (e.g., university students) to sign the GWWC pledge. However, a bigger part of me thinks locking in altruistic desires to mitigate future selfishness is *exactly* what we should be doing. Some argue that we shouldn't make life-long decisions as young people because our preferences and values may change. Yet, to me, this is all the more reason to take the GWWC pledge; it is precisely because our altruistic tendencies might weaken that we should lock those values in. I want to do things that increase the likelihood of future-Sam still wanting to help others as much as current-Sam.  Separately, starting to donate when you're young can make the process much easier! I began giving 10% when I got my first job at 16, and it has never felt aversive or difficult. I don't think "I've earnt £100, so now I have to give up £10", instead, I just view it as earning £90. I imagine that if I started this practice aged 40, I would long for that extra £10 much more.

Offer subject to be arbitrarily stopping at some point (not sure exactly how many I'm willing to do) Give me chatGPT Deep Research queries and I'll run them. My asks are that: 1. You write out exactly what you want the prompt to be so I can just copy and paste something in 2. Feel free to request a specific model (I think the options are o1, o1-pro, o3-mini, and o3-mini-high) but be ok with me downgrading to o3-mini 3. Be cool with me very hastily answering the inevitable set of follow-up questions that always get asked (seems unavoidable for whatever reason). I might say something like "all details are specified above; please use your best judgement"

Quick take on Burnout Note: I am obviously not an expert here nor do I have much first hand experience but I thought it could be useful for people I work with to know how I currently conceptualize burnout. I was then encouraged to post on the forum. This is based off around 4 cases of burnout that I have seen (at varying levels of proximity) and conversations with people who have seen significantly more. * Different Conceptions of Burnout * Basic conception that people often have: working too hard until energy is depleted. * Yes, working too hard can lead to exhaustion, but there's a difference between exhaustion and burnout. * Exhaustion vs. Burnout * Exhaustion: * Result of working very hard/ a lot of hours. Possibly including sleep deprivation or just brain fog. * Can often be resolved with a short break or vacation (eg: one week) * Burnout: * More pervasive and affects many areas of life/work. While it shared many physical symptoms of exhaustion, it is deeper. * A short vacation isn't sufficient to resolve it. * Core Feelings Tied to Burnout * Burnout is often tied to more core feelings like motivation, recognition, and feeling good about the work you're doing. It is more tied to your feelings of motivation and value than pure sleep deprivation or lack of rest. If someone is unsure of the value of their work and isn't super recognized, especially if they're also working really hard, that can really get into your brain and feels like a recipe for burnout. * Importance of Motivation * This is why I stress the value of motivation so much * Nuance: we should distinguish motivation from being overly enthusiastic about programs. * Jessica take is that we should have set times for re-evaluating the value of programs. Having set evaluation times helps reduce constant worry about program value but still maintains our ability to have a critical eye toward making sure we are having a large impact. * To so