2026-07-29
Think about the next week or the next century. Don't think of anything in between
Disclaimer
- personal
- target audience - strictly myself
Main
- Think about the next week or the next century. Don't think of anything in between.
- If I look at all my past notes since 2026-02, it seems like most of the notes that are actually productive fall into one of these two buckets.
- Examples of thinking about next week:
- Are you asking for feedback on your hinge profile this very week? If yes, then do it ASAP, if no, then shut the fuck up.
- Are you purchasing that perfume literally today? If yes, then do it ASAP, otherwise forget about it completely.
- Are you cold emailing all these people next week? If yes, then do it now, otherwise it is never happening.
- Are you applying for a visa next week? Are you applying for a job next week? If yes, then do it with full commitment. Otherwise, forget about it, you have no idea what you'll be doing or where you will be living six months later.
- Examples of thinking about a century later:
- Which value transitions tend to break marriages apart, assuming technology will alter sex, death, resource scarcity, biological kids, etc? The fully general version of this problem might very well take a century to solve. Multiple generations of people need to divorce in order for the next generation to get more data and do slightly better.
- Which political institutions can safely handle the intelligence explosion without causing human extinction, permanent dictatorship, value drift due to arms race, etc.? This is again one of these wicked problems where people have been failing to build good political institutions for 300 years.
- What are the stable equilibria for information offence versus defence? Will a small group of people stay private themselves but surveill the whole world forever? Will everyone's information including elites be public instead? Will everyone's information including elites be private? Right now we are nowhere close to any of the platonic equilibria, we are in some messy in-between situation and have been so for 30 years atleast. We will know the stable equilibria with certainty only many years later.
- Examples of thinking about stuff in between, such as few months or a year later:
- Commitments already violated
- I told myself I would get a job by 2026-04, and apply for visa. Lol lmao I have not done any of those things, and have even more doubled down on "fuck that, not doing anything besides direct work or fundraising for direct work"
- I told myself I would keep my hinge profile for another 1.5 months. I soon realised this is just a giant waste of time and I have no reason to do this, so I violated this commitment.
- I told myself I would not talk to my friends for 3 months. I realised that was not optimal, and hence I violated that commitment.
- I told myself back in 2026-02 that I would get a roommate in order to force myself to sober. I managed to get sober yes, but I did not in fact find a roommate, I realised I didn't need one.
- Commitments made for future I might end up violating
- I told myself I will learn to shoot by end of 2026. I have no idea where I will be end of 2026 or what I will be motivated to do. Maybe this will also end up a dumb commitment.
- I told myself I would run some surveys by 2026-08-31. Maybe I will still do this, but my heart is not really into it, and I feel like I will half-ass it even if I do it.
- Commitments I might be following
- I told myself "there is no time to invent new ideology for anti-ASI movement". But guess what, somewhere at the back of my mind I am still curious about it and I still believe I have novel insights about it. I just suppress my curiosity. Maybe this is fine? I told myself that I hate talking to people hence don't go the persuasion route. I still think this might have been the correct decision, weak opinion though.
- (Holy shit I am impressed by how long this list is.)
- Importantly, I have rarely regretted when I did things immediately.
- I have made a ton of small bets here and there that did not pay off, but also I don't regret most of them. Especially if they're low cost and can be done in a day or two itself.
- I have regretted when it become a compulsive pattern that I wanted to stop. For instance, when I told myself "dont keep writing on your blog about anti-ASI persuasion, you are not working on persuasion anymore" and then I wrote more anyway, I regretted. Or when I told myself "dont browse nitter during nighttime" and then I browsed it anyway, then I regretted.
- Making a wishlist is good, attaching deadlines to items on your wishlist is bad. Either do it immediately or let it sit on your wishlist without a fixed deadline.
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