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The Psychology of Long-Firm Fraudsters

Don't do fraud!

via Thing of Things December 4, 2024

Animal Welfare Implications of Silk and Wool

Silk fine, wool meh

via Thing of Things December 2, 2024

Weird Nerd Moralism

Let's talk about Nietzsche without having read him!

via Thing of Things November 29, 2024

Contra Emile Torres Contra Me Contra Torres Contra The So-Called 'TESCREALists'

I'm so meta even this acronym

via Thing of Things November 27, 2024

Developing the middle ground on polarized topics

Avoiding false dichotomies The post Developing the middle ground on polarized topics appeared first on Otherwise.

via Otherwise November 25, 2024

In Defense Of Compensated Kidney Donation

Pay people for their work!

via Thing of Things November 21, 2024

How to eat vegan on Icon of the Seas

Royal Caribbean has a new giant cruise ship, Icon of the Seas, which has a large selection of food options.

via Home November 21, 2024

Notes on Upgrading to Eleventy 3.0

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…

via Harris Lapiroff November 21, 2024

Set and Link Contras

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…

via Harris Lapiroff November 16, 2024

Starting With Chords

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&#…

via Anna Wise's Blog Posts November 15, 2024

Stuffies

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.

via Nora Wise's Blog Posts November 15, 2024

URLs are better than handles

One micro-idea that occurs to me in our new era of fragmented social media is maybe we should bring back the primacy of URLs in place of social media handles. Instead of: Instagram: @harrislapiroff I’ll use instagram.com/harrislapiroff/ Bluesky: harris.social.coop.ap.brid.gy I’ll use bsky.app/profile/harris.social.coop.ap.brid.gy Mastodon: @harris@social.coop I’ll use social.coop/@harris The former in each case requires being part of the “in group” that knows what you’re talking about. You know what…

via Harris Lapiroff November 14, 2024

Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

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…

via Posts on October 28, 2024

Inner dialogue, walking down the sidewalk

A discussion I have with myself a lot The post Inner dialogue, walking down the sidewalk appeared first on Otherwise.

via Otherwise October 10, 2024

Startup advice targeting low and middle income countries

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…

via Home September 27, 2024

Advice for getting along with your kids

Lessons learned from the first 10 years The post Advice for getting along with your kids appeared first on Otherwise.

via Otherwise September 16, 2024

Don't Help Kids With Contra Dancing If They Don't Need Help

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…

via Lily Wise's Blog Posts September 9, 2024

Two 19th-century missionary memoirs in China

Life for an American family in 1860s China The post Two 19th-century missionary memoirs in China appeared first on Otherwise.

via Otherwise August 24, 2024

When it gets complicated is when your impact is spiking

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?

via Home August 19, 2024

How good can you be at Codenames without knowing any words?

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 …

via Posts on August 11, 2024

Relaxing my standards on housekeeping

Getting to "good enough" The post Relaxing my standards on housekeeping appeared first on Otherwise.

via Otherwise July 31, 2024

Categories of leadership on technical teams

overall direction • people management • project management • technical leadership • example divisions of labor

via benkuhn.net July 21, 2024

Trust as a bottleneck to growing teams quickly

non-trust is reasonable • trust lets collaboration scale • symptoms of trust deficit • how to proactively build trust

via benkuhn.net July 13, 2024

A discussion of discussions on AI bias

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…

via Posts on June 16, 2024

What the FTC got wrong in the Google antitrust investigation

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…

via Posts on May 26, 2024

Moving on from community living

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 […]

via Victoria Krakovna April 17, 2024

Clarendon Postmortem

I posted a postmortem of a community I worked to help build, Clarendon, in Cambridge MA, over at Supernuclear.

via Home March 19, 2024

How web bloat impacts users with slow devices

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…

via Posts on March 16, 2024

Why We Shouldn't Have Daylight Savings Time

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…

via Lily Wise's Blog Posts March 13, 2024

When Nurses Lie to You

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'…

via Lily Wise's Blog Posts February 28, 2024

How I build and run behavioral interviews

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

via benkuhn.net February 25, 2024

Good job opportunities for helping with the most important century

I wrote ~2 years ago that it was hard to find concrete ways to help the most important century go well. That’s changing.

via Cold Takes January 18, 2024

Solve My Mini Puzzle Hunt

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:

via Home January 7, 2024

2023-24 New Year review

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 […]

via Victoria Krakovna January 3, 2024

Retrospective on my posts on AI threat models

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 […]

via Victoria Krakovna December 20, 2023

My first brush with covid

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via Harris Lapiroff December 6, 2023

11ty and Observable

This post contains javascript content and must be viewed on site.

via Harris Lapiroff November 11, 2023

A Big Problem With The Going To Bed Book

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…

via Lily Wise's Blog Posts September 18, 2023

When discussing AI risks, talk about capabilities, not intelligence

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” […]

via Victoria Krakovna August 9, 2023

Fiddle

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. …

via Lily Wise's Blog Posts July 13, 2023

Some mistakes I made as a new manager

the trough of zero dopamine • managing the wrong amount • procrastinating on hard questions • indefinitely deferring maintenance • angsting instead of asking

via benkuhn.net April 23, 2023

Near-term motivation for AI alignment

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 […]

via Victoria Krakovna March 9, 2023

What does Bing Chat tell us about AI risk?

Early signs of catastrophic risk? Yes and no.

via Cold Takes February 28, 2023

How major governments can help with the most important century

Governments could be crucial in the long run, but it's probably best to proceed with caution.

via Cold Takes February 24, 2023

What AI companies can do today to help with the most important century

Major AI companies can increase or reduce global catastrophic risks.

via Cold Takes February 20, 2023

Jobs that can help with the most important century

People are far better at their jobs than at anything else. Here are the best ways to help the most important century go well.

via Cold Takes February 10, 2023

Leaving Wave, joining Anthropic

love for Wave • why leave • where to • why there • what’s next

via benkuhn.net February 1, 2023

My Rainbow Kit

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…

via Anna Wise's Blog Posts January 5, 2023

Corncob Dolls

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…

via Anna Wise's Blog Posts November 7, 2022

On the Beach

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.

via Anna Wise's Blog Posts July 12, 2022

Buckingham Palace

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.

via Anna Wise's Blog Posts April 25, 2022

via openring