Good question! The Al Smith example is from The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert Caro. The examples with Sam and Rohin were from personal conversations/interviews. I think I also drew in a bit from Rohin’s FAQ https://rohinshah.com/faq-career-advice-for-ai-alignment-researchers/. The Scott Young example I pieced together from his blog post and book. I tried to link to some of the relevant blog posts above.
lynettebye
Karma: 1,331
How do you prioritize?
If you could send a list back in time, what would you tell yourself?
What Is Most Important For Your Productivity?
Do you need to love your work to do it well?
Have You Ever Doubted Whether You’re Good Enough To Pursue Your Career?
Want To Be An Expert? Build Deep Models
A few quick meta comments: It feels like this level of polish is sufficient for getting some people to read the post to begin with. The alternative would be to put a lot of time into creating an engaging, compelling post building your idea, but I don’t actually have a good sense of how much better that would be than simple, conversational tone and brevity you used. The epistemic status note at the top was helpful.
On the other hand, I suspect that almost none of your readers will actually do anything based on this. You probably want to put more effort into making the suggested action easy and compelling if you want to get people to do something.
On net, I vote for more quick posts like this.
The individual receiving the grant has to pay taxes on it, so the net benefit may be somewhat less than you’re anticipating.
I love Miranda’s fanfic series “A Song for Two Voices” for EA-themed fantasy. https://www.archiveofourown.org/series/936480
“Major themes include the complexity of thinking about ethics, the challenge of taking on problems in the world that seem insurmountable, and trying to do good while dealing with serious mental health issues. The characters do not start out masters of rationality, but they do learn from their mistakes and grow as people, and do their best to help support each other.”
Compared to HPMOR, I think “A Song for Two Voices” does a much better job representing the EA community. I.e. trying to do good as a community with limited resources instead of a solitary hero single-handedly saving the day. (Not to bash HPMOR—it’s also an excellent read!)
What’s a skill you have spent deliberate effort in developing that has paid off a lot? Or alternatively, what is a skill you wish you had spent deliberate effort developing much earlier than you did?
I hear the vague umbrella term “good judgement” or even more simply “thinking well” thrown around a lot in the EA community. Do you have thoughts on how to cultivate good judgement? Did you do anything—deliberately or otherwise—to develop better judgement?
What is your process for deciding your high-level goals? What role does explicit prioritization play? What role does gut-level/curiosity-/intuition-driven prioritization play?
For you personally, do you think that loving what you do is correlated with or necessary for doing it really well?
Do you (or did you) ever have doubts about whether you were “good enough” to pursue your career?
(Sorry for posting after the deadline—I haven’t been on screens recently due to a migraine and just saw it.)
As a second data point, my thought process was pretty similar to Claire’s—I didn’t really consider medication until reading Rob’s post because I didn’t think I was capital D depressed, and I’m really glad now that I changed my mind about trying it for mild depression. I personally haven’t had any negative side effects from Wellbutrin, although some of my friends have.
Resources On Mental Health And Finding A Therapist
I’m guessing it’s mostly because I put less emphasis on them filling it out. When I started coaching, I got more information from new data than I do now, so I put more effort into getting as many people as possible to fill it out. Additionally, I got feedback that it seemed strange paying clients were spending so much time giving me feedback. So now, e.g., I haven’t been following up as much if people don’t fill it out, and the ask is probably easier to ignore.
Larger groups, coaching busier clients on average, and only asking at the end (instead of also after the first four calls) might also contribute.
Unfortunately, I don’t have an easy control group to do such a trial. I do my best to take on every client who I think is a great fit for me to help, so there isn’t a non-coached group who is otherwise comparable. Additionally, as a for-profit business, there’s an understandable limit to how much my clients are willing to humor my desire for unending data.
Fixed! Thanks for catching that.