Ben Mann Monthly Feb 2020: Toronto, long runs, drawing, quarantine
Purpose
An index for my memory
A menu of topics for my next conversation with you
A faster way to share what I’m excited about without the barrier of writing a complete blog entry on it
A skimmable way to spread content I found valuable
Experiments and experiences
Casual Hawk Hill
Armand texted me "Hawk Hill. Sunday. 630am." It wasn't a question. I responded "You're a monster. I'm in." I ran the farthest I've ever run: 21.5 miles, 1.8k feet vertical. The weather was perfect, the views beautiful. As we ran I high five'd every runner who passed us. The hardest part was mile 19 just before we got to the coffee shop in Cow Hollow. My body said, "stop. stop. stop." but I refused. Even stepping up onto curbs challenged me. My dad joined us for the last 3 miles. Afterwards we planked for 3 minutes, sauna'd for 20, and passed out for 90. Based on this I think I could do a flat marathon pretty easily. I've been stretching every day to help my joints recover.Toronto
Hiking to a waterfall, 11 donuts, lots of spicy cooking, $2 skate rentals at outdoor ice skating parks! A+. At the bouldering gym they don't rate new problems, so I tried everything. I like it!Procreate - iPad Pro
I spent 5.5 hours painting a portrait of me and Diana. Basic process: trace from a photo, fill in regions using color picker from reference, smudge edges, add details. Using this process taught me that my color perception is terrible, I could definitely make a great painting if I spent enough time on it, and the key to being good is knowing your tools and working at the right scale. If the piece is too small then you just can't do the detail work. This experience made me less interested in continuing down this learning path. Perhaps the process felt too mechanical. I think it'd take hundreds hours to get to the point that I could start painting well from imagination. I'm not sure I'd find it worthwhile.Roli Lumi
I got very good at Beatsaber because of the feedback loop. If learning is about quick feedback and rewards, perhaps I could learn to play piano quickly, too. It's been fun but the app is still early in development. There aren't that many songs and there's no improv mode, which they advertise in the Kickstarter trailer. It's very frustrating for people who already know how to play piano. All that said, I am seeing myself improve quickly. Interested to see where it'll take me.COVID-19
My house has decided to start a soft quarantine, which means don't leave the house unless you really need to and don't host any guests. I ordered 70lbs aka 100K calories of Huel in case of actual lockdown. Some of us are planning to go to Utah. I'm staying. Given my age group and lack of comorbid conditions, my risk seems low.
Life updates
Parents visited
Published life advice
Climbed second ever V6 at Mission Cliffs
Switching to Effexor for 6 weeks
Brainstormed my own AGI cruxes
Voted for Bloomberg 🤷♂️
Content
5 point Likert ratings for “I would recommend this content to a friend”, sorted
80k hours - Anders Sandberg 4/5
Life extension probably wouldn't make dictators stay in power longer. We should be more worried about tenured professors: "science advances one funeral at a time."
You can estimate the likelihood of events that haven't happened using the "Anthropic Shadow"
Solar flares could be surprisingly bad and might happen kind of often! Seems unlikely to be an X-risk.
Excellent discussion of what the effects of sex robots would actually be
Jojo Rabbit 4/5
A satirical look at Nazi Germany from a child's summer camp perspective
Great performances from Scarlett Johansson and Sam Rockwell added depth to the comedy
Had a Wes Anderson feel to the colors, pacing, and character interaction
Reminder that even when things get tough, remember to be human and dance
The Farewell 3/5
Awkwafina plays a Chinese American woman whose family decides not to tell her grandmother she has cancer, but gather in China to say goodbye anyway. Cultural conflict ensues.
While the acting and production value were excellent, I felt distant from the cultural context despite having lived in China and understanding most of the Chinese in the film. I imagine Chinese American viewers would feel more empathy.
My personal cruxes for working on AI safety 3/5
I'll just steal Buck's own summary, with conditional confidences. Note that point estimates suck, so these shouldn't be multiplied together.
AI would be a big deal if it showed up here. 95%
AI is plausibly soonish and the next big deal. ~60%
You can do good by thinking ahead on AGI. 70%.
Alignment solutions might be put to use by goodish people if you have good enough ones. 70%.
My research is the good kind. ~50%
Book thesis: enlightenment is available to everyone. Just choose it. Don't try to protect yourself from pain. Abandon your ego. Don't be afraid of death.
There were many claims about how the mind works, either unsupported or backed up by scriptures and traditions. I found it easiest to appreciate the book by ignoring these and instead consider the questions it asks.
Who are you? How can we learn from death before we're close to it? What would your life be like if you welcomed pain?
Honey Boy 3/5
On the surface, an autobiographical take on Shia LaBeouf, who as a child actor grew up supporting his dad. More deeply, an exploration of how we cope with our trauma, how we relate to each other and our parents.
Well made, and extremely painful to watch. I found myself having to pause frequently to sit with my discomfort. Shia plays his own father, whose ego constantly competes with his desire to be a good father.
Favorite scene: child Otis playing with Shy Girl as only children can play, juxtaposed against his forced adult responsibilities.
David Chalmers on the nature and ethics of consciousness 2/5
4 hour podcast episode covering a wide range of topics in philosophy
I gave it a lower than normal rating because, I felt the discussion was too scattered and unfocused.
Dave argues that consciousness is likely a spectrum. Illusionists argue that consciousness is an illusion while panpsychists argue that it is a fundamental property of the universe like magnetism. My intuition is that there's nothing magical going on, it's possible to create consciousness from simple physical processes, and we will build something that has the properties of consciousness within 100 years. This is very different from Dave's intuition
Regardless of how consciousness works, we should think about how to measure consciousness, and how it impacts ethics. Does more consciousness mean more ethical concerns? What if that consciousness doesn't have affect, like the Vulcans in Star Trek? The jury is out in the philosophical community.
People often criticize philosophy for not being experimentally falsifiable. Dave points out that this used to be true of many fields of science, such as math, physics, and biology, which were spun out as they became more mature. He thinks of philosophy as the incubator for theories that can't yet be tested.