aug-oct update

so much good content!

things read

• better living through algorithms, the first depiction of agi i’ve encountered that feels both plausible and optimistic. it was such a breath of fresh air from all the superintelligence / transhumanist / existential risk / disempowerment / automation narratives of the current moment, i read it and then just sobbed for thirty minutes straight

• all the wrong moves, a chess memoir by sasha chapin (better known for his substack). very short and pleasant read about addiction and confronting the fact that you’ll never be great at an activity you love. some allegories about chess and life

  • “Badly played chess is kind of like badly played life. Real problems are dealt with poorly or not at all, while much effort is expended on avoiding imaginary danger. Rather than dealing with the reality of the situation, you act as if you were playing the game you wish you were”

  • “In life, and in chess, people make terrible decisions just because they’re impatient. They want things to end, right now, on their terms. They just want a reckoning, whether or not it’s actually good. So they play f4, or they play bishop takes h7, and they just tear everything apart. How beautiful it would be, I realized, to be playing a game without ever wanting it to be over”

• east of eden, an american retelling of the biblical cain/abel story. when i first read the bible as a kid i thought “these characters seem pretty unmotivated, feels like whoever wrote the book of genesis just needed an origin story for murder and made one up arbitrarily”. steinbeck does a good job of crafting deep characters to answer questions like: what does rejection feel like? what are its effects? what would actually cause cain to murder abel in real life? where does sin come from and how much control do we have over it? also steinbeck is good at writing female antagonists and asian people. very pleasantly surprised

• learning to work, a short text about someone going from only being capable of working for 5-15 minute intervals at a time to being satisfied with their work output. from 1977 surprisingly, probably a lot more relevant to people today. many reflections on anxiety / delusion / attitude towards work

• twilight | contrapoints - a 3-hour video essay nominally about twilight but mostly about female desire / how depictions of female desire have changed over time / where limerence and submissiveness come from. really interesting, and i don’t even know anything about the twilight series

• the hardest problem evolution ever solved - explaining various features that we had to evolve to transition from living in the ocean to living on land

• jasmine sun had an incredible content streak. reflections on chinese attitudes towards tech and competition, what the ai art debate gets wrong (ugh it’s paywalled now), how democrats lost the support of tech

• read moby dick and did not like it unfortunately, far too many whaling expositions for my taste

things watched

• look back, one of my new favorite films, less than 1 hour long, about 2 kids who grow up drawing manga together. really beautiful depiction of friendship, and made me deeply envious of people with longtime creative collaborators. i only had competitors growing up and would’ve done anything to have that not be the case :’)

• the room, also one of my new favorite films, probably made me laugh more than any other content i’ve consumed in the last few years. the script, acting, delivery are all absurd

• nausicaa of the valley of the wind felt like the anime version of dune in many ways (giant desert creatures that seem harmful but aren’t, tribes with drastically different levels of technology, etc) and clearly inspired attack on titan. lots of discussion of environmentalism and arms races. surprisingly good for being miyazaki’s second movie

• finally saw les mis live! stage limitations made me appreciate the visuals in the (2012) movie more, they actually did a great job with setting even if the singing was bad. i think the songs which benefited most from being onstage were drink with me, dog eats dog, empty chairs at empty tables

• loved fleabag but to be honest i cannot articulate what was good about it. sharp character writing? the lead actress also being the writer and producer? discussion of celibacy and repentance? all of the above but i feel like there was something else as well that i can’t articulate

• saw two polar opposite movies about kpop in the same weekend, kpop demon hunters (mid) and time to be strong (great). the former had good songs but did not utilize them properly and butchered the climax in my opinion. the latter is about three unsuccessful kpop stars confronting debt, trauma, and the dark side of the industry. first time seeing these topics explored in film

other

• for each of the last eight weeks i thought at the beginning of the week i was going to make significant progress on interpretability and then proceeded not to 🙁 in a big time crunch to get results out before thanksgiving, quite stressful

• went to my first wedding! very inspiring. first time in my life where i didn’t feel awkward while dancing, it turns out a year of practice helped or something. also realized toronto is nyc except canada

• visited boston and saw lots of friends. i really miss cambridge, especially the foot traffic. gave an interpretability talk, my first one in 2 years, turns out i miss giving talks too

• got some very lightweight pants from my korean friend which helped me discover that i can run way faster than i previously believed (more on this in a later post)

• (also more on this in a later post) realized i need to be happier. far too much of my happiness is tied to high-variance things outside my control, like other people and research results. i can’t always be waiting for good fortune to save me!! some new hobbies: piano (need more non-writing art in my life; it’s also way more enjoyable that i’m allowing myself to diverge from sheet music), e-biking (love getting slammed by 15mph winds), pinterest (what a great app! scrolling actually inspires me so much)