questions

2023

1. what are you thinking about these days?
2. what happens to your consciousness when you walk into a teleporter?
3. what’s the most embarrassing cold email you’ve sent?
4. what does good future look like?
5. what are you absolutely certain in?
6. does time exist?
7. what’s one actionable from last meeting?
8. how did the romanovs manage to rule russia for 300 years?
9. why do you live where you live?
10. what are the key questions?
11. why not take a pen and a piece of paper, go offline for 1 hour and resolve one of them?
12. why is the market capitalization of facebook, founded 15 months prior to yc by a 19 year old, larger than that of all yc companies combined?
13. what do you want?
14. is self eternal?
15. what’s slowing you down the most?
16. why is democracy the best form of government?
17. when was the last time you took 3 months completely off?
18. how do we understand paul christiano’s prophecies before they come to pass?
19. what’s your destiny?
20. is 1 week 2% of the year?
21. how can you do better?
22. how to solve prompt injections?
23. when was the last time you asked for help?
24. how to go to the center of the universe?
25. what inspires you?
26. why did the founding fathers decide that the president must be at least 35 year old?
27. what would make your colleagues happy?
28. what are you devoted to?
29. why did the anarchists murder the single most progressive russian emperor (alexander ii) but not his extremely conservative successor?
30. what are you confused about?
31. how does the history judge your work?
32. why will you fail?
33. why is it easier to do something for the other person than to do the exact same thing for yourself?
34. what are you flinching from?
35. why not just stare at it for 10 minutes?
36. does god know the future?
37. what would you die for?
38. did the person actually tell you no or did you just assume they would?
39. why do holden karnofsky and sam altman write so differently?
40. who do you want to be more like?
41. who do you want to be less like?
42. what would you do if you were alone in the universe?
43. would you walk into a teleporter?
44. how to measure ai risk?
45. what makes you do the right thing?
46. how do we know if an llm is telling us what it actually thinks?
47. who are you afraid of?
48. when was the last time you prayed?
49. what are you proud of?
50. why did krishna reveal himself only to arjuna?
51. when was the last time you did something you’ve never done before?
52. what’s the right way to regulate ai? other new technologies?
53. do you feel better or worse after spending time with the person you spend most of your time with?
54. was alexander worse than hitler?
55. what are you afraid to tell to your best friend?
56. when should one give up?
57. what’s the ground-truth measure?
58. why did you do something you regret?
59. how to upload brains w/o discontinuity of consciousness?
60. what are you afraid to tell to your partner?
61. why did scott alexander shut down his blog and mobilize the entire sv intelligentsia against an NYT reporter who was writing an extremely balanced and charitable profile of his blog?
62. why not travel to your favorite city as often as you can?
63. do the fundamental laws of physics exist?
64. am i wasting my time writing these questions?
65. what have you promised to do and not done yet?
66. is consciousness continuous?
67. when was the last time you took a year off?
68. why did the japanese keep debating whether to surrender even after two nuclear bombings?
69. whose advice has been so correct in the past that you now just go and act on it?
70. why not ask them for a piece of advice?
71. why do children who grow up without a real authority become spoiled?
72. what’s the top 1 work goal today?
73. what’s the top 1 personal goal today?
74. is the failure condition clear?
75. why are so many actors and actresses political activists?
76. what are you flinching from thinking about?
77. why do people sign false confessions?
78. when was the last time you talked to someone you really admire?
79. is solving alignment different from building agi?
80. what have you learned about yourself in the last year?
81. what would you do in utopia?
82. are ai capabilities more like those of bombs or of computers?
83. what are you going to regret in a year?
84. how does the brain generate consciousness?
85. have you spent 1 minute today on your biggest goal?
86. have you spent 1 hour today on your biggest goal?
87. have you spent 10 hours today on your biggest goal?
88. how to prepare for the times of change?
89. can you be more specific?
90. what’s the most common advice you give to people?
91. do you follow it yourself?
92. does the world need to be saved?
93. what can you do in the next 60 seconds that will make you feel proud of yourself?
94. what are you wrong about?
95. what’s agi?
96. why not invite someone you like talking to for a dinner?
97. why do people disagree on p doom?
98. what’s p doom?
99. what’s doom?
100. who’s consistently ahead of you?
101. why don’t you catch up?
102. how to overcome the second law of thermodynamics?
103. who should you report to?
104. how did zuck make a comeback?
105. what do you wish you could do but you’re absolutely confident you can’t?
106. how do you know?
107. what’s the humanity’s frontier?
108. should you do lasik?
109. what exists?
110. what doesn’t exist?
111. when was the last time you closed your eyes for a minute and asked yourself if you’re doing the right thing?
112. what can you do all day long and feel great going to bed?
113. what is the shape of the solution to ai alignment?
114. where in the world is your tribe?
115. what are the key factors of pluralist future?
116. do you like yourself when you look in the mirror?
117. what’s the strongest case for technological accelerationism?
118. what’s the strongest case against technological accelerationism?
119. does anyone believe they’re evil?
120. what’s the eta to the dyson sphere around the sun?
121. what do other people tell you about you that you are always surprised to hear?
122. why?
123. why does the universe exist? why does anything exist at all?
124. what’s your plan?
125. what is the level of resolution you’d need to replicate your brain in to create someone you’d consider to be you?
126. what would you do if you couldn’t make the world better?
127. how do the experiences of sleep, general anesthesia, and death differ?
128. do you believe in yourself more than you believed 5 years ago?
129. have you updated all the way?
130. why is maintaining eye contact sometimes easy and sometimes difficult?
131. is your laptop a superintelligence?
132. have you read a good history book today?
133. what’s the rubric for the role you’re hiring for?
134. what are you trying to do?
135. how did the humanity manage to never deploy a hydrogen bomb?
136. what’s the next step?
137. what are the key factors of good future?
138. what do you have no competitors in?
139. how do you know what someone will do when the push comes to shove?
140. what’s the right thing to do?
141. what’s humanity’s destiny?
142. what do you feel behind on?
143. what’s the silver bullet?
144. how do you know?
145. why not?

let me know if you have answers

2024

1. will we, humans, fly to the stars? or will we just send probes? or will we not even send probes? what, if anything, will we send to the stars?
2. will humanity give up its future and/or destroy itself without the physical frontier is economic growth a sufficient substitute for physical frontier?
3. how to make the world perfectly just?
4. will humanity be superceded? should it?
5. what are the scientific rules for life?