Writing is like exercise. It’s just good on so many levels. 

• Writing can be high impact
• Writing can be inspiring
• Writing can help you learn and grow
• Writing can help your career
• Writing can be meaningful and deeply satisfying
• Writing can get you into flow
• And also, just like with exercise, almost nobody writes enough

Whenever I get back into the habit of writing, I always think I should write more. It’s one of my favorite things. 

Yet, much like exercise is for most people, I tend to have little flares of interest, where I get really into it for a week or two, then lose steam, and it just becomes a dormant blog again. You might have had a similar experience, and maybe even have a cobwebby blog or two out there. Perhaps you have some really cool half-finished google docs that you never quite got around to finishing and publishing. 
It’s a funny thing though, about writing being like exercise. Because do you remember what exercise used to be called when you were a child? 

Play.

And I remembered on a recent vacation I took, where I had the slack to remember, that writing is play. I fell back in love with writing then, typing away furiously on the beach. 

Not only was it intrinsically fun, but I also loved that it felt like I was making a difference, writing about important topics. That my recommendations were helping people, whether it be making them happier or making them higher impact, or sometimes, if I was lucky, both.

To help myself (and perhaps you) remember this and all the other reasons to write, I’ve decided to write about all the reasons I have to write. 

Reading the list will inspire me and hopefully others. Publishing it will publicly commit me to writing, which will make it more likely. Even better, it could potentially re-inspire some people, perhaps you, to start writing for the forums again. Or maybe even it’ll get you excited to try your hand at writing publicly, even though you’ve never done it before.

Epistemic status: motivational

Epistemic status: motivational. An explanation of my personal experience that doesn’t generalize to all people. This isn’t meant to be a nuanced look into the pros and cons of writing. 

It’s meant to inspire a subset of the population (and myself!) to write more. None of this applies to all writing or all people. It’s meant more as a manifesto rather than a research piece. 

Of course, this is the EA Forum, so feel free to debate the merits and demerits of writing in the comments.

Now, with all that hedging out of the way, here’s a giant list of reasons why you, the community, and myself should write. 

​Some reasons to write

The reasons to write fall broadly into three categories: enjoyment, capacity building, and impact. 
​
Enjoyment and other personal benefits

Writing can be personally gratifying in so many ways. 

1. Moments of inspiration. Sometimes you’re really excited about what you’re writing, and the words just pour out of you. It can be a really peak experience.
2. Art. If you have a part of you that craves the artist’s life, you can have some of that through writing, without having to quit your day job. It can sometimes feel like being an EA is antithetical to being artistic, but writing is a great way to combine a seeking of impact with a seeking of beauty.
3. The world is your material. It changes the way you interact with the world. You’re always on the lookout for little snippets of an idea really well put. You have great conversations and that’s grist for the mill. It’s like being on a lifelong treasure hunt, with little hits of dopamine splashed throughout the day.
4. Sweet sweet internet points. In George Orwell’s “Why I Write” essay, the first reason he lists is egoism. And he wrote that before the internet! You can only imagine how much George would have loved Twitter and the EA Forum.
5. Romantic. There’s something romantic about writing, be it in a cafe or in a park, or in your favorite writing nook. To be a writer feels like being an explorer or a gentleman scholar - a role straight out of a novel.
6. Coming up with little flourishes is fun. There’s a pleasure in finding exactly the right turn of phrase that makes the idea both beautiful and make sense.
7. Feelings of pride. Sometimes you write an article you’re really satisfied with, which feels outstanding.
8. Identity of a writer. Having the identity of a writer has a certain romantic appeal. You kind of feel like a writer in Paris. To be a writer for a cause is even better, like Tolstoy or the journalist in Blood Diamond.
9. Short self-contained projects. So often what you’re working on takes ages till it’s done, or it’s never really done. Endless to-do lists are the norm. But with writing posts, there’s a very clear start and finish, and it can take as little as a morning to finish. There is something deeply rewarding about this, where the finish line is always so close.
10. Writing in beautiful places. There's something meditative about taking your computer somewhere and working in a beautiful place, whether at a perfectly decorated cafe or out in nature.
11. Seeing people apply your ideas. It's so gratifying to see somebody actually implement one of your ideas.
12. More people agree with you. This is high impact if you happen to be less wrong than the average person you’re changing the mind of, but I’m listing it under personal enjoyment as a separate point from the impact. It’s nice when people agree with your (obviously correct and superior) views.
13. Getting thank you comments and DMs. I mean, this is the EA Forum, so there’s always going to be criticism and debate, but there are also often some really motivating comments saying thank you or complimenting your work. 

Capacity building

1. Learning and other ways it helps you come to the truth:
   1. Remembering, via two mechanisms:
      1. Like taking notes. Writing things down helps you remember them, like taking notes in class. The act of writing them down helps solidify them in your brain.
      2. Reference. You can use your old writing for reference.   
   2. Understanding. One of the best ways to truly understand something is to teach it to somebody else, and that’s exactly what the best writing is: teaching.
   3. Uncovering blind spots. Trying to write about a topic is one of the best ways to reveal the areas you don’t actually understand.
   4. Thinking more clearly. Putting your thoughts on paper forces you to make things explicit. I do some of my best thinking in a google document.
   5. New ideas. Often writing leads to you having new ideas. Steelman solitaire is also really good for that.
   6. Finding relevant information. A common response to posts will be for people to share relevant articles, which will help you have a better view of things.
   7. Getting feedback from the world. What’s the best way to get people to give you feedback? Post something wrong on the internet and wait for the comments. (Tip: see the comment section as the "debate section". This re-frame can turn you from feeling defensive to feeling interested.)
2. ↑Reputation. People will know about you and like some of your work. This leads to all sorts of things, like increasing your ability to:
   1. Get a job. If you have an online presence, people are more likely to hire you. You get to showcase your talents and knowledge at scale.
   2. Fundraise. The key to fundraising is credibly signaling that you can be trusted to turn money into impact. Making good content can be a hard-to-fake indicator of competence and show that you have aligned values and epistemics.
   3. Hire people. I don’t know about you, but I'm much more likely to want to work for someone whose work I've already read and enjoyed.
   4. Get people’s time to discuss an idea. If you’d like to discuss an idea with somebody in the community, they’re far more likely to say yes if they already “know” you a little from your writing. Public writing is like scaled-up, passive networking. 

Impact and other benefits to the world

​Improve the conclusions of the community. This then improves their actions, leading to impact.

1. Improve conclusions at scale. Most of the time if you have a good idea, you only maybe persuade a few of your friends. If you write, dozens or hundreds of people will read it.
2. Motivate action. Very often reading a well-reasoned blog post is what spurs people to action. Write about potentially high-impact activities and it might mobilize a lot of people.
3. Improve your own conclusions→ impact (see Learning section)
4. Help others directly. A lot of writing helps the reader directly. For example, this post on self-love contributed to my overcoming impostor syndrome and increased my self-acceptance a ton. 

I could go on, but after reading all of these reasons, I’m excited to finish an essay I’ve had in a Google Doc draft for forever.
I hope this also inspires you to dust off an old blog or start a new one. To experience writing as dancing. Where it counts as exercise and is good for you, but you don’t even care about that, because it’s just so damn fun. 

It's like this expression, but applied to food: don't marry rich.

Hangout with rich people, then marry for love.

So often when people try to lose weight or be healthier, they try to eat only The Healthiest Thing, regardless of flavor.

The thing is - "diets" only work if you can be on them for the rest of your life.

Can you eat only things you don't really like for the rest of your life?

I know I certainly can't!

The fortunate thing though is that there are a bajillion healthy foods that you actually like.

Explore. Find those. Don't stop till you have a wide variety of meals and snacks that are healthy and delicious to you.

If they're healthy but not delicious, screw 'em. If they're delicious but not healthy, save them for special occasions.

If they're healthy and delicious to you? Perfection.

I was feeling anxious about short AI timelines, and this is how I fixed it

1. Replace anxiety with solemn duty + determination + hope
2. Practice the new emotional connection until it's automatic

Replace Anxiety With Your Target Emotion

You can replace anxiety with whatever emotions resonate with you.

I chose my particular combination because I cannot choose an emotional reaction that tries to trivialize the problem or make me look away.

Atrocities happen because good people look away.

I needed a set of emotions where I could continue looking at the problem and stay sane and happy without it distorting my views.

The key though is to pick something that resonates with you in particular

Practice The New Emotional Connection - Reps Reps Reps

In terms of getting reps on the emotion, you need to figure out your triggers, and then actually practice.

It's just like lifting weights at the gym. The number and intensity matters.

Intensity in this case is about how intense the emotions are. You can do a small number of very emotionally intense reps and that will be about as good as doing many more reps that have less emotional intensity.

The way to practice is to:

1. Think of a thing that usually makes you feel anxious.

Such as recent capability developments or thinking about timelines or whatever things usually trigger the feelings of panic or anxiety.

It's really important that you initially actually feel that fear again. You need to activate the neural wiring so that you can then re-wire it.

And then you replace it.

2. Feel the target emotion

In my case, that’s solemn duty + hope + determination, but use whichever you originally identified in step 1.

Trigger this emotion using:
a) posture (e.g. shoulders back)
b) music
c) dancing
d) thoughts (e.g. “my plan can work”)
e) visualizations (e.g. imagine your plan working, imagine what victory would look like)

Play around with it till you find something that works for you.

Then. Get. The. Reps. In.

This is not a theoretical practice.

It’s just a practice.

You cannot simply read this then feel better.

You have to put in the reps to get the results.

For me, it took about 5 hours of practice before it stuck.

Your mileage may vary. I’d say if you put 10 hours into it and it hasn’t worked yet, it probably just won’t work for you or you’re somehow doing it wrong, but either way, you should probably try something different instead.

And regardless: don’t take anxiety around AI safety as a given.

You can better help the world if you’re at your best.

Life is problem-solving. And anxiety is just another problem to solve.

You just need to keep trying things till you find the thing that sticks.

You can do it.

There are two types of tired.

When you need
1) Rest
2) Energizing 

Sometimes the way to feel better is to veg and sleep.

Sometimes the way to feel better is to move your body or do something you feel passionate about. 

If you're tired due to lack of energizing activities, rest will not help you. 

You'll veg all weekend then you'll come back to work and be just as exhausted as before. It won't help if you go on a long vacation 

Your fatigue is not from overwork. 

You're fatigue is from not doing enough energizing stuff. 

For everybody that includes moving your body 

For the rest of it, it depends on the person. 

Some people find talking to people energizing, some people find solitude energizing. 

Some people find certain tasks energizing, others find them draining. 

The point is to figure out which of those apply to you, then do more of those things. Either at work or at home.

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!

1. Have a social life.

Humans are social monkeys. Have fun with friends and family socially at least once a day.

If you are socially deprived, you will have emotional issues, guaranteed.

The 80/20 of having a social life is making it the default.

Set 👏 up 👏regular 👏 repeating 👏calls/hangouts 👏with👏loved👏ones.

Go ahead. Do it now.

You probably already have friends and family who you know would love to have a regular hangout with you who also have unmet social needs.

If you don’t already have a regular call or dinner with your family, set one up.

Set up a family group chat too while you’re at it. It’s a great way to maintain a soft sense of connection throughout the week.

Do the same with old friends who you love. Remember, you can have calls with them if you’re not in the same town. Regular voice calls and video calls can be a lifesaver nowadays when everybody’s so inclined to move.

2. Get your blood tested for common deficiencies (iron, b12, vitamin D, etc).

Deficiencies usually affect mood and they’re super common.

And so easy to fix!

If you turn out to be deficient, it’s literally a pill that costs pennies a day and you’re fixed. And in most countries, it’s free or incredibly cheap to get your blood tested.

Why wait?

3. Actually do the things you know you should be doing. Get a coach to help you if you can't do it yourself.

Fix your sleep if it’s broken.

Exercise enough (30 minutes of moderate exercise per day).

Eat healthy (find healthy food you actually like and will actually eat. Consider eating the Actually Complete Breakfast (link below)).

If you can't fix these things on your own, get a coach to help. Coaches basically specialize in getting you to do the things you want to be doing but can't for whatever reason.

4. Stop watching the news

If you want to be informed, read books. 

They're much better quality information and they're not solely focused on making you stressed out or angry. 

Consistently consuming information literally designed to make you scared and/or angry is a recipe for poor mental health. 

In conclusion, you're an adult. Actually do the basics. 

If you're reading this, you're probably sad and/or anxious, so I don't want to be mean. But I think part of the reason so many people are sad is because people are not pushing people to do the basics.

If you are sleeping poorly, not exercising, eating shit, deficient, endlessly doomscrolling, and/or have no social life, of course you're gonna be emotionally messed up. 

Fix it. 

You can. You are not helpless. You can do things to make your life better and you should, and somebody telling you it's alright to suck at any of those things is not helping you. They're keeping you where you're at, and you don't like where you're at! 

It's not OK to be bad at those things. You're suffering the consequences of those things and you know it's not OK.

Use that discomfort as fuel. 

People only change when the discomfort of change is smaller than the discomfort of staying the same.

Pathological forgiveness is a key component of many abusive relationships.

Obviously all of the moral blame should fall on the abusers. 

But much of the causal explanation for ongoing abusive relationships is the abused saying stuff like: 

• "I just want to give them one more chance"
• "They didn't mean it! They're not like that"
• "They just had a bad childhood."
• "We've been through too much for me to leave them now"

​
And so many other mechanisms of forgiving somebody too much.

Of course, the Law of Equal and Opposite Advice applies. Many people in society (most, I dare say) should increase their forgiveness levels. 

But some people, and disproportionately people who stay in abusive relationships, need to forgive less. They need to see that their forgiveness is leading to ongoing suffering and that you should turn the other cheek once, but if they keep kicking you in the teeth, you need to get out of there. 

It reminds of a time I was in a really bad situation but I felt a lot of compassion to the person hurting me because I knew they'd had a really troubled upbringing. 

I described it as being in a room with an aggressive dog who was biting me. I knew the dog was only aggressive because they'd been abused as a puppy. 

I knew I could fight back and stop the dog, but I didn't want to hurt it. I wanted to help the dog. 

But I was being hurt. A lot.

It took talking to external people about the problem to realize that I just had to get out of the room. 

I didn't have to fight the dog. I would hurt the dog, and I still didn't want to do that. But I didn't have to stay around the dog. 

And while I do want to prevent suffering in the world, there's a lot of suffering. I don't have to help whoever is closest by and most emotionally salient. I can convert my desire to help that particular person into a desire to help others where the situation is more tractable and causes me less extreme damage. 

Which is all to say - forgiveness is a virtue, but as with all virtues, it comes with a ton of caveats and nuance. 

Don't hold onto anger, because that just hurts you. 

Convert that anger into the action of setting up systems to avoid being continuously hurt by others. 

And sometimes, that just means leaving.

Compassion feels terrible. 

Compassion doesn't feel warm and soft to me.

It feels like a need.

How would you feel if a loved one was drowning in front of you?

A sibling. A romantic partner. A child. A pet.

About to die.

Do you feel warm and soft?

No. You feel a need to help.

It’s not pleasant.

It’s desperate.

You might feel a rush of relief when you see there’s a lifesaver nearby, and you quickly throw it to them.

But how do you feel when you see that the loved can’t reach the lifesaver?

Do you dive into the waters to try to save them? Or will that just mean the both of you will perish?

And wait, what the fuck? It’s not just one loved one in the raging river. There’s another one!

And another one!

. . . and another one?!

Where the fuck are they coming from? Why are all of your loved ones drowning?

Should you go upstream to figure out where they’re coming from and what’s happening to prevent more? But then all of the loved ones you can see will die right away.

This is awful.

You decide to go upstream - and discover that other loved ones are pushing more loved ones into the stream.

“What the fuck are you doing?” you politely say to the loved ones.

“What do you mean,” they say. “We aren’t doing anything” says this woman while she throws your cat into the river.

How do you feel when they’re drowning and you don’t know what to do to help?

That's what compassion feels like to me. 

It kinda sucks, to be honest. 

And yet, if somebody figured out a "cure" to compassion and tried to give me a pill to "fix" it, I'd fight them tooth and nail. 

Because not all good things in the world feel good. 

Compassion is like so many other sources of meaning. If you care about something, it means it can make you suffer. 

And I choose to care.

​I wish it was socially acceptable to cancel work meetings, not because you're sick or there's a family emergency, but because you're in a total fucking mood and want to emotionally quarantine yourself.

Like, not even from a selfish perspective. 

It's for the greater good. 

Just like you shouldn't bring a contagious disease to work, you shouldn't bring a mood that will cause damage wherever you go.