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Advice I Commonly Give People New To Alignment
| 506 wordsEpistemic status: I am very junior and have very little idea of what I’m talking about, which still might be enough to make this worth reading. I often find myself talking to people who want to get more surface area on what it’s like to be an alignment researcher, how...
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Facts from ECB CH3, Energy, Catalysis, and Biosynthesis
| 876 wordsHere are some facts I found interesting from the third chapter of Essential Cell Biology. The Use of Energy by Cells Metabolism might be defined as the sum total of all the chemical reactions an organism needs to carry out to survive and reproduce. Catabolic pathway breaks down food into...
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Facts from ECB CH2, Chemical Components of Cells
| 240 wordsHere are facts I found interesting from the second chapter of Essential Cell Biology. Chemical Bonds C, H, N, and O constitute 96% of any organism’s weight. Typical covalent bonds are stronger than thermal energies by a factor of 100. In living organisms, covalent bonds are only broken when in...
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Transitioning Away From Veganism
| 1034 wordsAbout 6 months ago, I decided that in 2022 I would transition away from being strictly vegan into a flexible form of vegetarianism (where I put reasonable effort towards avoiding eggs and purchasing ethical egg offsets.) The reason there is a 6 month gap in the decision is because I...
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Facts from Essential Cell Biology Chapter 1, Cells: The Fundamental Units of Life
| 717 wordsHere are facts that I found interesting from the first chapter of Essential Cell Biology. Unity and Diversity of Cells Cells sizes vary from a few micrometers (Lactobacillus) to 1 millimeter (frog egg). Human brain nerve cells are 10,000x longer than they are thick. Evolution offers a compelling explanation for...
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Insights from Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance
| 919 wordsGawande’s Better is a well-written reflection on his career as a surgeon. Here are some things I learned (comments/caveats in brackets): Hospitals do a lot of work to try to make sure people don’t get infected while at the hospital. Despite this, hospital infection rates are very high [internet says...
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Notes On SMILE Eye Surgery
| 610 wordsYesterday, I got SMILE corrective vision surgery. I found the experience interesting for a variety of ways. Here are some notes: You can see immediately after surgery. It looks like you’re looking through a grey film. I was able to order an Uber immediately after surgery with little problem (I...
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Things That Should Be Destroyed
| 137 wordsAn incomplete list: The programming in my water boiler that sings a song when the water is done boiling. The LED in my usb charger (I did actually destroy this one personally). Space heaters that have LED panels that can’t be turned off. Whiteboard markers that don’t have any ink...
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How To Be (Semi)-Fashionable
| 798 words“It is not a complex problem to appear nice to people! You identify the most popular targets in each of your classes, learn what they value about themselves, and give them a minimum of three relevant compliments each week. So long as they think you are agreeable, others will follow...
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Retrospective On My 2020 FHI Research Scholar Application
| 1997 wordsThis is a research statement I wrote when applying to be a research scholar at the Future of Humanity Institute in September of 2020. My opinions about which research questions/projects are promising has shifted a lot since then. I thought it might be interesting to people to see what I...