I’m changing my mind and abstracting the process… connecting ideas and people.
I’m a total multipotentialite / jack-of-all-trades, but I’ve managed to actually find some focus recently:
I care about the future of humanity, and therefore about mitigating existential risks. As part of the effective altruism movement, I focus on the ‘maxipok rule’: to maximize the probability that things go okay: that in a thousand (or a hundred thousand) years, humanity is still around and at least as technologically advanced as we are right now. More on that in Nick Bostrom’s writing. This is my overarching purpose.
At some point I will explain this in depth, but at the moment I’ll just summarize this by saying that it seems apparent to anyone who looks that our current ability to collectively think and work together is not enough to have any hope of tackling the problems humanity is currently facing. So I’m working intently on a project that is very seriously aiming towards creating a new scaleable cultural platform based on post-judgment, that will allow us to effectively care for what we care about.
Probably more than half of what I blog about connects with this on some level, since I tend to blog about my own recent learnings, which largely come from this project. Some relevant posts:
I have sustainable passive income from my business, Complice. I wanted to create a passive income source so that I could focus on whatever feels most important to me without having to worry about funding—and it worked! This is what’s now allowing me to spend a substantial fraction of my time working on xRisk-oriented things and the Upstart Collaboratory project.
I chose to work on creating a goal-tracking system because I wanted to do something where I was deeply aligned with my customers’ purposes, inherently. The app helps people turn their big picture goals into day-to-day actions. Click the link below to try it out. I particularly recommend it if you have trouble keeping on top of your priorities, especially self-directed projects. But it’s valuable for lots of people who don’t meet that criterion, so give it a shot anyway! 🙂
I’ve done various deliberate habit-changing projects. Listed chronologically from oldest to newest, they are:
Over to the right is the album I recorded in 12012. My public GitHub has a few things on it. You can see a spreadsheet here of what I’m reading. I started this when I began a new style of reading where I don’t assume I’ll finish every book I start. There are too many books for me to do that.
If you’re new to my blog and trying to figure out what to read, I say start with my top posts.
I basically created this section to host this first remark, but I added a few things that I’d jotted into a list over the past few years. It’s intended as play, not to convince anyone of anything.
“This is why you’re my top 3 less hated rationalists.” – Silver V (context)
“I’m a long time admirer of your yearly review posts – thank you for making and sharing them! They inspire me to take on my own self-experiments and develop processes for self-improvement.”
“Malcolm, being friends with you means one is constantly examining their own thoughts and perceptions. How could I not evolve?”
“I really enjoyed talking with you, Malcolm. I feel like you opened up a new sense for me of my identity.”
“You and I share the humour of little children, but at the same time the scheming of super villains. Because of this we bond, finding the most simple thing hilarious, and we plot on how to expand it. You have wit and cunning beyond your years, and you are very selfless.”
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