the poem transubstantiation is once again living rent-free in my head. it feels more relevant than ever, working in ai right now, my ears full of dull visions for the future, my eyes full of product demos that are only technically impressive, my heart full of unrequited love:
it’s strange to think that at this time last year i was an accelerationist. i remember being irrationally excited for the release of gpt4 and the wave of apps it would enable. looking back i don’t think any of that came from a place of genuinely caring about technology; instead i think i was so fed up with the world i was living in that i wanted to do whatever i could to smash it to pieces - to end the inequalities of capitalism and american “democracy” and so on - and agi was the most convenient hammer to smash everything with. it wasn’t a very thoughtful position, but i don’t apologize for having taken it. A child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth. and so i can’t help but wonder - to what extent is accelerationism today fueled by that same angst, by feeling unloved, by resentment towards the present? do all these people on tech twitter really wish to be god, formless light fed through wire, or do they just hate themselves?
sometimes people ask why i am not at openai or some other more impressive company. to which there are many answers - i like my coworkers, i am being given free reign to work on every part of llm training that i want to, people here teach me lots of nontechnical skills, and so on - but maybe another answer is that i no longer care as much about being god as i used to? i am not sure about this yet. it is awfully unambitious to admit that while living in a city whose main message is that you should be more powerful, it almost feels as if i am letting someone down (though of course i know that is not actually the case)
the truth is that i have been feeling very replaceable lately. i know what exceptional researchers look like and what exceptional engineers look like because i have been friends with both kinds of people my whole life, and i know that currently i am neither. i can probably become an exceptional engineer if i dedicate all my attention to it for a few years (this might be true of research as well, though that is less clear to me) but i spend most of my free time working on Feelings&Friendship and i do not know if i am willing to give that up. perhaps when i have gotten good enough at Feelings&Friendship i will feel the urge to focus on research and engineering again, in the same way that after getting good enough at math contests in high school i felt the urge to focus on Feelings&Friendship? but in the meantime - all i pray for in the next world is that you are beside me when i wake, to have tea to brew even if i forgot to prepare for the apocalypse properly - is that okay? or is it privileged and selfish? most likely it is both, and i am not sure what to choose
"Kafka, what can you see outside?"
I look out the window behind her. "I see trees, the sky, and some clouds. Some birds on tree branches."
"Nothing out of the ordinary. Right?"
"That's right."
"But if you knew you might not be able to see it again tomorrow, everything would suddenly become special and precious, wouldn't it?"
"I suppose so."
"Have you ever thought about that?"
"I have."
A surprised look comes over her. "When?"
"When I'm in love," I tell her.
She smiles faintly, and it continues to hover around her lips…
"Are you in love?" she asks.
"Yes."
"And her face and whole being are special and precious to you, each time you see her?"
"That's right."
The feelings you’re having are very similar to where I was at in ~March of 2022. While I was a teen I felt like I was a startup wiz kid destined for TAM and greatness, but after two years of working in SF I had this deep hollow feeling — that I didn’t personally care about what any of what *this* was about.
:s/vincent/liam
:s/accelerationism/startups
:s/becoming_god/being_rich
At Numerai I became a good full-stack and code monkey. I liked my coworkers and the day to day flow of work, but I didn’t care for what we were building, knew that I’d never become a great researcher, and didn’t care enough anymore to become an amazing engineer.
Around the start of 2022, I decided I wanted my life to be oriented around something that I cared about, even if I’m not sure it matters as much, or that I’d be as successful in it. I ended up studying art for films because I listened to the delusion god child that still lived in me, the one that saw every success I had in life as a sign that I could do anything, and it ended up pointing me towards storymaking.
I think this had a noticable effect on me internally (things feel *right*) and externally (girls were more interested in me lol).
I hope none of this comes across as me trying to give advice. We were in SF at different times, with different people, and quite honestly in terms of raw intelligence you’re likely much smarter than me. I don’t know you personally very well.
But I wish you the best. I think the tunnel ends somewhere and there will be light, and that you’ll find it eventually for yourself.
i think my life has been dominated by turning towards and away from feelings and friendship again and again, and at the end of the day for me even though i say research is my life's aspiration (it is) it's really the feelings i've experienced and the friends i made and lost and the smiles and tears that made and makes life worth living (also nice read i rly enjoyed it hehe)