quotes 2
when i come across good quotes, i write them down. the below are those i collected between my last quotes post and the day i published this — november 19, 2023 through august 5, 2024.
[T]he work that needs to be done is not a finite list of tasks, it is a neverending stream. Clothes are always getting worn down, food is always getting eaten, code is always in motion. The goal is not to finish all the work before you; for that is impossible. The goal is simply to move through the work. Instead of struggling to reach the end of the stream, simply focus on moving along it.
— Nate Soares, Rest in Motion
[You’re] looking for ... 1) someone that you will find fascinating to talk to after you’ve talked for 20,000 hours, 2) you feel comfortable with them talking through the hardest and most painful decisions you will face in your life, and 3) the conversation is wildly generative for both of you, in that it brings you out, helps you become.
— Henrik Karlsson, Looking for Alice
[S]how the inside of your head in public, so people can see if they would like to live in there.
— Henrik Karlsson, Looking for Alice
A mid cameraman finds the sheer magnitude of angles, scenes, props, and lighting decisions impossibly complex, and necessarily conveys camerawork through such a lens. The very best, on the other hand, finds it all very natural, and indeed is able to convey camerawork as such to intelligent inquirers.
— Tanner Hoke, Really knowing things
[M]aking Anki cards is an act of understanding in itself. That is, figuring out good questions to ask, and good answers, is part of what it means to understand a new subject well.
— Michael Nielson, Augmenting Long-term Memory
[M]assive leverage can be had when you're surrounded by people who are locked in to normal incentives, and you get to play by other rules.
— Andrew Connor, Playing with incentives
At some point, I realized there are certain games you can never win, and I resolved to stop playing those games.”
— Cate Hall, h/t Things you learn dating Cate Hall
If you’re a real philosopher, you don’t need privacy, because you’re a living embodiment of your theory at every moment, even in your sleep, even in your dreams.
— Agnes Callard, tweet — h/t Agnes Callard's Marriage of the Minds
All you have to do is find the action that best brings about the stuff you care about, and then do it.
— Ronny Fernandez, Think on Purpose
The great benefit that I experienced from thinking of integrity as a virtue, is that it encourages me to build accurate models of my own mind and motivations.
— Oliver Habryka, Integrity and accountability are core parts of rationality
[P]eople who care a lot about making the best decision often neglect the implicit costs of the decision making process such as time and money.
— Duncan Sabien, CFAR Handbook, section entitled “Units of Exchange”
[P]eople make the mistake of thinking that rationality is the process of muting those primitive, intuitive processes and just relying on System 2. It’s an understandable mistake—after all, those are the “higher brain” functions, the ones that allow us to do things animals can’t, like writing and philosophy and math and science. But turning off or ignoring large parts of your brain is rarely helpful, and applied rationality is about using every tool in your possession.”
— Duncan Sabien, CFAR Handbook, section entitled “What is ‘Applied Rationality’?”
I have come to believe that people's ability to come to correct opinions about important questions is in large part a result of whether their social and monetary incentives reward them when they have accurate models in a specific domain.”
— Oliver Habryka, Integrity and accountability are core parts of rationality
[H]umans instinctively execute good game theory because evolution selected for it, even if the human executing just feels a wordless pull to that kind of behavior.”
— Ruby, Friendship is transactional, unconditional friendship is insurance
[I]n the presence of anthropic effects, you can still reason and receive evidence about the latent variables and mechanistic factors which affect those anthropic effects.”
— Nuno Sempere, Updating in the face of anthropic effects is possible
[S]ometimes, you can only give to the commons, but you can’t take from the commons. This is dysfunctional, and defeats the whole purpose of the commons.
— Nuno Sempere, Sometimes you give to the commons, and sometimes you take from the commons
[A] powerful person doesn’t protest, or sort their recycling and hope for a gold star. A powerful person plans, prepares and acts.
The central conceit of EA — the part of it that, for some reason, drives people nuts — is that it dares to ask: what if there is no system oppressing you, just thoughtlessness? What if the problems in the world come not from villains, but from an uncaring void in the world that simply doesn't care? What if the way to fix the problems in the world is not to protest and rail against them in the hopes, but to acquire the technical, political and operational skills you need to solve them yourself, and then actually go and solve them?
— Leila Clark, Our Post-EA World
One thing I find it helpful to do, when debugging a community, is to ask myself, "How can an outsider come in and quickly become well-respected?" From this you find what it is that the community values, and what it is really about. In sports, it’s winning. In finance, it’s making money. In Silicon Valley, it’s developing new technology.
— Leila Clark, Our Post-EA World
[I]f it is true, I should be able to make predictions with it. If it cannot make predictions, then I will dismiss it.
— Defender of the Basic, Geoffrey Hinton on developing your own framework for understanding reality. reminds me a lot of eliezer's Making Beliefs Pay Rent (in Anticipated Experiences), but with normal, non-jargon-y words.
[A]s you get better models of the world/ability to get better models of the world, you start noticing things that are inconvenient for others. Some of those inconvenient truths can break coordination games people are playing, and leave them with worse alternatives.
[...]
Poetically, if you stare into the abyss, the abyss then later stares at others through your eyes, and people don't like that.
— Nuno Sempere, comment on “Thoughts on EA Epistemics Projects” (emphasis mine)
Regardless of whether our lives as a whole are finite or infinite, every single beautiful thing in our lives is finite.
— Vitalik Buterin, The end of my childhood
You live in a world choked with ideas, where anything that rises to your consideration has necessarily won a Darwinian battle among hyper-specialized memetic replicators competing for your attention. By definition most of what you come across through semi-formal channels will be preachy, pushy, and associated with the kind of people who are obsessed with talking about themselves. If you learn about some lifestyles through informal channels (eg your family and friends), and others through semiformal channels (eg media and books), the latter will look obviously inferior.
— Scott Alexander, You Don't Hate Polyamory, You Hate People Who Write Books
[T]he things we use and consume, the institutions and systems that structure our lives, the resources we trade and inherit, the causal sequences we casually initiate — all are tangled in intricate webs of harm; and everyday, always, there are things we leave undone; things that we let die, or let suffer, because we are prioritizing something else.”
— Joe Carlsmith, Killing the ants
Sincerity has a non-hollow-ness. It has a core, and not just a surface — a core that explains and predicts the surface, in some straightforward and "honest" way. And this holds not just for outer surfaces — speech, action — but for inner ones as well — identities, narratives, mental postures, feelings. In this sense, sincerity makes it possible to look oneself in the eye; see clearly why you are doing what you are doing, without ruining some pretty story you were trying to tell.
— Joe Carlsmith, On sincerity
To see fog is not to see through it.
— Joe Carlsmith, On sincerity
Utilitarianism offers an intellectual North Star, but deontological duties necessarily shape how we walk the path.
— Dustin Moscowitz, Works in Progress: The Long Journey to Doing Good Better
What if the great apes had asked whether they should evolve into Homo sapiens — pros and cons — and they had listed, on the pro side, 'Oh, we could have a lot of bananas if we became human'? Well, we can have unlimited bananas now, but there is more to the human condition than that.
— Nick Bostrom, from The Philosopher of Doomsday; h/t Joe Carlsmith, Actually possible: thoughts on Utopia
In the extreme, sublime Utopias are pure light, with nothing to see.
— Joe Carlsmith, Actually possible: thoughts on Utopia
Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all their completeness, definite types of mentality which probably somewhere have their field of application and adaptation. No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded. How to regard them is the question — for they are so discontinuous with ordinary consciousness. Yet they may determine attitudes though they cannot furnish formulas, and open a region though they fail to give a map. At any rate, they forbid a premature closing of our accounts with reality.
— William James, here); h/t Joe Carlsmith, Actually possible: thoughts on Utopia
[A] shift from clinging to non-clinging involves a feeling of relief. Something unhooks, releases, expands.”
— Joe Carlsmith, On clinging
[W]hen you operate under many constraints: you neuter your ability to shape the world.
— Nuno Sempere, Why are we not harder, better, faster, stronger?
Interest will drive you to work harder than mere diligence ever could.
— Paul Graham, How to Do Great Work
The way to figure out what to work on is by working.
— Paul Graham, How to Do Great Work
You'll learn more shipping a failure than you'll learn from reading about a thousand successes.
— Patrick McKenzie, Don't End The Week With Nothing; h/t Alexey Guzey, What Should You Do with Your Life? Directions and Advice
This is a common thing I’ve seen among high-agency young people: they get to meet the people who are supposed to be in charge, early on in their lives, and realize ‘Oh they’re just regular people. They seem competent but it doesn’t seem self-evident that they’ve got it handled.’ And sometimes it’s not fully handled.
— Dwarkesh Patel, The future belongs to those who prepare like Dwarkesh Patel
There is no hidden reserve of smart people who know what they're doing, anywhere. Not in government, not in science, not in tech, not at AppAmaGooBookSoft, nowhere. The world exists in the same glorious imperfection that it presents with.
— Patrick McKenzie, tweet
There's a marked difference between someone sharing something of emotional importance in a resonant way, and someone talking at you. The difference is attention: whether they're weighing your reactions and modulating (consciously or subconsciously) their pace and tone to match where you're at, whether they're noticing if you'd like to interrupt with a question or comment, etcetera.
— Sasha Chapin, Making Normal Conversations Better
People will tell you that humans always and only ever do what brings them pleasure. People will tell you that there is no such thing as altruism, that people only ever do what they want to.
People will tell you that, because we're trapped inside our heads, we only ever get to care about things inside our heads, such as our own wants and desires.
But I have a message for you: You can, in fact, care about the outer world.
And you can steer it, too. If you want to.
— Nate Soares, The Stamp Collector
Imagine a world with all the music dried up: what impoverishment, what loss! But give your thanks not to the lyre but to your ears for the music. And then ask yourself, what other harmonies are there in the air, that you lack the ears to hear? What vaults of value are you witlessly debarred from, because you lack the key sensibility?
— Nick Bostrom, Letter from Utopia (emphasis mine)
Agency is the skill that built the world around you, an all-purpose life intensifier that lets you make your corner of it more like what you want it to be, whether that's professional, relational, aesthetic, whatever. Build a better mousetrap. Have an enviable marriage. Start a country. No one is born with it, everyone can learn it, and it's never too late.”
— Cate Hall, How to be More Agentic
If you want to prompt someone to be authentic and playful and generative, you usually just need to ask them something where they have a rich experience to pull from but have never pulled an answer from that experience before.
— Henrik Karlsson, Looking for Alice
It's useful to focus on adding another zero to whatever you define as your success metric-money, status, impact on the world, or whatever.
— Sam Altman, How To Be Successful
[W]hen you are around experiences that start to feel consistently more attractive than alone time, be cognisant of how easy it is to loosen your grip on protecting your solitude.
— Isabel, on being selective
I stand in front of the machine, and look into the life that could be. I see a child facedown in the grass, feeling the wet dirt against his face. I see a teenager sitting on top of a water-tower. I see a man walking, dream-like, through a city alive with lights and people, on the way to see a woman he loves. I see a fight with that same woman, a sense of betrayal, months of regret. I see him holding a child in his arms, marveling, dumbfounded. I see a garden, an office, pride in some work well done, a retirement party filled with colleagues and friends. I see him on his deathbed, surrounded by children now grown, his hands gnarled with age, cancer blooming in his stomach, weeping with gratitude for everything he has had, and seen, and been given. I see a man who loves life deeply; who wants to live.
— Joe Carlsmith, Against neutrality about creating happy lives
Trusting yourself is both the hardest and most rewarding thing in the world because it's the only relationship you can't walk away from.
— Nix, keeping promises to myself
I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
I think the [ethical] things that aren’t straightforward are often matters of execution. The hard part of doing good is almost always noticing when you have an opportunity and figuring out how to capitalize on the opportunity, more than, like, ‘right or wrong.’
— Kelsey Piper on the Complex Systems Podcast, at ~1:02:55
Investment in you is not an indication of what you have achieved, it’s an advance on your future accomplishments.
— Patrick McKenzie (patio11) on the Dwarkesh Podcast, at ~1:55:45
Any general-purpose strategy you have which will cause you to pay attention to the world is incredibly valuable.
— Michael Nielsen on the Conversations with Tyler Podcast, at ~51:14. i find "keeping track of quotes i like" to be one such strategy.
Don't forget about the gap between how little a life costs and how much a life is worth. For that gap is an account of the darkness in this universe, it is a measure of how very far we have left to go.
Nate Soares, The value of a life
Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.
— Antonio Gramsci
But the soul is still oracular; amid the market’s din,
List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave within,—
"They enslave their children’s children who make compromise with sin."
— Lowell, The Present Crisis; h/t Scott Alexander, UNSONG.
[W]ho you are is not the point. Being a good person is not the point. The point is the thing that a good person is looking at: the friend in need, the child dying, the beauty and the pain, the great song of the world.
— Joe Carlsmith, On sincerity
I believe the vast majority of positive outcomes are created by extraordinary folks freed to do the work that comes naturally to them.
— roon, twitter
If atheism is a religion then not collecting stamps is a hobby.
– general/nobody in particular, see e.g. American Atheists; h/t Neil Hacker, Quotes (Neil attributes this to Eliezer Yudkowsky, but it seems that Eliezer was quoting others, and I've found that quote in various places across the internet)
If you aren’t in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?
– T.S. Eliot; h/t Neil Hacker, Quotes
Most secrets about how the world works aren’t secrets, they’re just knowledge unevenly distributed.
– Patrick McKenzie, couldn't find the original source 😔; h/t Neil Hacker, Quotes
It’s the greatest gig in the world, being alive. You get to eat at Denny’s, wear a hat, whatever you wanna do.
— Norm Macdonald, on Last Call with Carson Daly
Why am I judging myself by the standards of those I hate?
— Unnamed girl, Jujutsu Kaisen, Season 2, Episode 4
Long substance, short status.
— Peter Thiel on Conversations with Tyler 001 at ~47:30
[H]umans as a class don't seem to me to really get that children are (or at least have the capacity to be) capable, relatively autonomous, sovereign people, often by the age of eight or nine and overwhelmingly by the age of fourteen or fifteen. And there's this deeply messed-up self-fulfilling prophecy that our culture has installed, by which children are cut off from opportunities to practice their independence and responsibility, and then blamed for the atrophied state of those muscles.
— Duncan Sabien, P-Cultures, Median Worlds
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is.
— various, but probably Benjamin Brewster; see here for more info
Notice the small problems, and fix them. Notice when everyone isn’t enjoying what they’re doing, and be the first person to voice this. Notice when the jug of water is empty, and be the one to fill it. Notice when you say “oh, I can do this tomorrow” and do it today. Notice when you think “I should get round to this some time” or “I’ve always wanted to learn juggling” and actually do it. Notice when something is inefficient, notice the thing nobody is doing, and be the person who does it!
— Neel Nanda, Become a person who actually does things
[R]espectful action does not require capitulation of belief.
— Duncan Sabien, Invalidating Imaginary Injury
If you find yourself unable to think about a certain outcome, it can be very useful to think all the way through the painful outcome — not to convince yourself that everything would actually be fine, but just so that you can actually think about it. It's the thoughts you can't think that really screw you.
— Nate Soares, “Should” considered harmful
prediction markets converging on probabilistic forecasts through price discovery driven by traders acting on strong financial incentives to be right >>> media outlets churning out clickbait infotainment optimized for getting as many views as possible
— Naman Mehndiratta, twitter
The usual touchstone of whether what someone asserts is mere persuasion or at least a subjective conviction, ie. firm belief, is betting. Often someone pronounces his propositions with such confident and inflexible defiance that he seems to have entirely laid aside all concern for error. A bet disconcerts him. Sometimes he reveals that he is persuaded enough for one ducat but not for ten. For he would happily bet one, but at 10 he suddenly becomes aware of what he had not previously noticed, namely that it is quite possible that he has erred.
— Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason