Pattern I’ve seen: “AI could kill us all! I should focus on this exclusively, including dropping my exercise routine.”

Don’t. 👏 Drop. 👏 Your. 👏 Exercise. 👏 Routine. 👏

You will help AI safety better if you exercise.

You will be happier, healthier, less anxious, more creative, more persuasive, more focused, less prone to burnout, and a myriad of other benefits.

All of these lead to increased productivity.

People often stop working on AI safety because it’s terrible for the mood (turns out staring imminent doom in the face is stressful! Who knew?). Don’t let a lack of exercise exacerbate the problem.

Health issues frequently take people out of commission. Exercise is an all purpose reducer of health issues.

Exercise makes you happier and thus more creative at problem-solving. One creative idea might be the difference between AI going well or killing everybody.

It makes you more focused, with obvious productivity benefits.

Overall it makes you less likely to burnout. You’re less likely to have to take a few months off to recover, or, potentially, never come back.

Yes, AI could kill us all.

All the more reason to exercise.

I used to be your textbook awkward nerd, and now I’m decently socially skilled (for a nerd, at least 😛).

Here’s how I got better at understanding and interacting with my fellow humans.

The idea is pretty simple, actually. It’s just the implementation that’s tricky.

The idea is making predictions, building models, and learning from the real world.

Basically once I became motivated to improve my social skills (I didn’t want to keep accidentally hurting people’s feelings! And I wanted more friends), I applied my nerd analysis to people.

Before I went to a hangout, I’d pick a topic and a person. I’d think about what I’d say about the topic and, very importantly, I’d make a prediction of how the person would react. 

I would do this based on a model I had of the person (informal model. No spreadsheets. Just general things like “Bob is primarily motivated by intellectual curiosity, truth, and humor. He finds drama and politics boring. It’s late and he’s a morning person, so he’ll probably be a bit grouchier tonight” etc.)

I’d then go out into the world, test the hypothesis, and then on the way back, I’d update my models based on the data. (“Oh interesting. I thought he’d be grouchy cause it’s late, but he wasn’t. Maybe alcohol reduces the grouchiness for him? And he actually was pretty interested in talking about the elections. Maybe he’s just not interested in European politics?”).

It was especially helpful when I was able to do this with a friend who was really interested in psychology and good at it, which sped up the process substantially. But the process works regardless. The main teacher is reality.

It also helps to pair this with “book” learning, so you don’t have to re-invent the wheel. Most books about “social skills” are incredibly remedial. Read those if that’s where you’re at. If you’re looking for something more advanced than “make eye contact” and “smile”, I recommend reading books about psychology, storytelling, persuasion, sales, management, conflict resolution, etc. They’re all indirectly about social skills and much more advanced.

I recommend:

• Difficult Conversations
• The Righteous Mind
• Made to Stick
• Crucial Conversations
• The Coddling of the American Mind
• Influence by Cialdini
• Charisma on Command, the Youtube channel
• The Charisma Myth

So there you go. Just apply your nerd powers to people. Go forth and make predictions and friends!

Anti-procrastination technique: name and shame

Step 1: Notice when you’re procrastinating.
Step 2: Say out loud
a) why you’re procrastinating (e.g. it’ll be boring, I find it unpleasant) and/or
b) what precisely it is you’re procrastinating (e.g. I’m putting off spending 2 minutes filling out a form).

Very often if you look directly at the thing, it'll be too embarrassing not to do. 

For example, a common one for me will be:

1) Notice that I'm procrastinating answering an email
2) Say in my head "I'm procrastinating writing a 5 minute email because it's ambiguous how I should respond, I'll have to spend a couple of minutes trying to figure out what to say. . . oh god, that's dumb. It's just a couple of minutes of ambiguity." 

And then I'll write the email. 

Note, you don't have to say it loud per se. Just say it "out loud" in your head and shine the light of consciousness on it. That's the key step.

​One of the nerdiest things I take creat pleasure in: filling a whole notebook

Here's a pic from me in 2020 celebrating my completed notebooks.

Before you ask, yes, most of my notes are digital. 

I also digitize all of my physical notes.

I only take physical notes when I'm conversations with people because taking notes on your phone or computer really changes the social dynamics. 

People think you're not paying attention and getting distracted by social media when you take notes digitally.

Tip for people who take a lot of notes: take photos/screenshots of them and set up the photos as rotating wallpaper on your computer.

That way whenever you see your desktop, you get a little reminder of what you wrote notes about. 

I actually use it a bit like Twitter. Whenever I feel the urge to be distracted/look at something else, I just quickly look at my desktop and get a little dopamine hit of random information I thought was important enough to write down.

For example, here's my desktop image right now. Random notes about English history, Byzantium history, and my visit to a temple in Malaysia. 

About 10 minutes ago, it was notes from something completely different.

​If you’re ever feeling sad, anxious, or overwhelmed, try what I call the “old wise woman exercise”. The way it works is to visualize an older, wiser version of yourself. The person you hope to become*. Then imagine she or he comes to you and gives you advice, informed by her years of experience and learning. You’ll find you often know what she would say. Then, as you hear her say these things you know to be true, like how you will hardly remember this situation a year from now, or that you’ll figure it out, switch to her perspective. Visualize that you are sitting or standing next to your current self and you are the wise woman. Feel how you would feel towards your younger self. Perhaps you’ll feel compassion, a little humor maybe, patience, or maybe just a feeling of love and warmth. 

This wise woman or man exercise can often help you snap out of a destructive spiral and make you enact the things you know to be true and helpful but have just forgotten in the moment. Let me know in the comments how you find it and why it worked or didn’t, so I can help modify it to make it more applicable to others. 

* I personally aspire to become a female, EA version of Dumbledore, but your tastes may vary.