I really enjoyed the version of this post that you shared at EAG SF. For posterity, my reaction after listening to the EAG talk was: “Wow, that talk was annoyingly helpful.”
Annoying because: the core premise is so obvious, and yet I found spelling out the implications surprisingly clarifying! I think listening to that talk may have substantially accelerated my thinking on a key life decision I have been mulling on.
Thank you so much, @Toby_Ord :) I strongly upvoted.
Annoying because: the core premise is so obvious, and yet I found spelling out the implications surprisingly clarifying!
This is actually the story of almost everything I’ve ever done:
You should give to charities that do more good with your money (and find out which ones these are)
Because you can save multiple lives with your donations, they are deeply morally serious and a key part of living a morally good life
It would be really bad if humanity’s potential were destroyed, so we need to prioritise making sure that never happens
…
It’s a byproduct of trying to find the most important, unarguably true, yet neglected things. I then work very hard on finding the deepest explanations until I find the ways of presenting each claim that make it effortless to see.
I like to think of it as working at the border of the trivial and the profound.
I really like that phrase, “working at the border of the trivial and the profound”.
The Ross Summer Mathematics Program’s motto “think deeply of simple things” also seems apt with respect to your work; I thought of it when reading your scaling series. You have a knack for finding fertile perspectives on ostensibly well-trodden topics and conveying them in luminously clear ways to nonexperts like myself, so thank you.
This reply made me smile :) Thank you for helping refine and spread so many simple, important ideas! I and many people I know owe so much to that work.
I really enjoyed the version of this post that you shared at EAG SF. For posterity, my reaction after listening to the EAG talk was: “Wow, that talk was annoyingly helpful.”
Annoying because: the core premise is so obvious, and yet I found spelling out the implications surprisingly clarifying! I think listening to that talk may have substantially accelerated my thinking on a key life decision I have been mulling on.
Thank you so much, @Toby_Ord :) I strongly upvoted.
Thanks Angelina!
This is actually the story of almost everything I’ve ever done:
You should give to charities that do more good with your money (and find out which ones these are)
Because you can save multiple lives with your donations, they are deeply morally serious and a key part of living a morally good life
It would be really bad if humanity’s potential were destroyed, so we need to prioritise making sure that never happens
…
It’s a byproduct of trying to find the most important, unarguably true, yet neglected things. I then work very hard on finding the deepest explanations until I find the ways of presenting each claim that make it effortless to see.
I like to think of it as working at the border of the trivial and the profound.
I really like that phrase, “working at the border of the trivial and the profound”.
The Ross Summer Mathematics Program’s motto “think deeply of simple things” also seems apt with respect to your work; I thought of it when reading your scaling series. You have a knack for finding fertile perspectives on ostensibly well-trodden topics and conveying them in luminously clear ways to nonexperts like myself, so thank you.
This reply made me smile :) Thank you for helping refine and spread so many simple, important ideas! I and many people I know owe so much to that work.