tl;dr: Welcome to my first post! I'm writing this blog mainly to have my thoughts publicly available, but also for other reasons. I also give a preview on some topics I'm currently preparing.
Epistemic state: This is a meta post. I'm pretty confident about the truth of what I'm writing in this post.
Do you find yourself repeatedly introducing people to the same thoughts and concepts that your brain can't stop thinking about recently? Well, at least I do. So, the main purpose of this blog is to have them available online, such that I can just link them if necessary. Also, I'll use the blog to gather feedback on the ideas. Apart from that, writing posts here will probably also increase my writing skills and serve as a portfolio for anyone interested in getting to know me.
So, this is the very first entry of my blog. Finally. I prepared this website already quite a while ago, but never found the necessary mindset to write something up. In my personal notes, I'm usually writing my thoughts in a quite compressed form, assuming my own background knowledge. When I write for others I have to write differently, of course. More explanations, and more digestible.
I love consistency, so here are some commitments to my writing style:
- I'll always include a tl;dr, summarizing the post.
- I'll always include a note on my epistemic state on the content matter.
- I'll make only minimal assumptions on my readers' knowledge, link to explanations of every non-trivial concept, or at least explicitly state if I assume some knowledge.
- I'll document any larger edits (using "Edit:").
So, what will I write about? My mind is rooted in artificial intelligence, psychology, and quantum physics. This will definitely show up here. I suspect that the posts will mostly be opinion pieces and ideas on topics related to intelligence, mental health, and morality.
As a short outlook, here is a selection of topics I'm planning to cover next (though not exclusively and not necessarily in this order):
- The alignment problem
- "Weird-world" arguments
- Common doubly-unrealistically optimistic beliefs
- On the (a)morality of flying with planes
- On AI safety
- A framework of needs and fears
- The meaning of life
- Some bold predictions
- On longtermism
- Series: 4 mindsets for life
- My "intellectual crisis"
- On the interpretation of quantum mechanics
- The (ir)rationality of human thought
- On determinism and free will
- What is real
Stay tuned!