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Text of the page (random words):
neel nanda 0 skip to content neel nanda about blog top posts mechanistic interpretability merch open menu close menu neel nanda about blog top posts mechanistic interpretability merch open menu close menu about blog top posts mechanistic interpretability merch neel nanda 8 19 25 neel nanda 8 19 25 mats applications open due aug 29 i am looking for people who want to be supervised by me to write a mech interp paper apply here now due aug 29 read more neel nanda 5 26 25 neel nanda 5 26 25 post 51 socratic persuasion giving opinionated yet truth seeking advice i recommend giving advice by asking questions to walk someone through key steps in my argument often i m missing key info which comes up quickly as an unexpected answer while if i m right i m more persuasive read more neel nanda 3 22 25 neel nanda 3 22 25 post 50 good research takes are not sufficient for good strategic takes having a good research track record is some evidence of good big picture takes about agi but it s weak evidence strategic thinking is hard and requires different skills but people often conflate these skills leading to excessive deference to researchers in the field without evidence that that person is good at strategic thinking specifically read more neel nanda 8 18 22 neel nanda 8 18 22 interlude a mechanistic interpretability analysis of grokking link post for some independent interpretability research i did read more neel nanda 6 17 22 neel nanda 6 17 22 post 49 things that make me enjoy giving career advice thoughts on what makes giving career advice more fun for me read more neel nanda 6 15 22 neel nanda 6 15 22 post 48 prioritise tasks by rating not sorting a short note on priority ordering tasks by rating them out of 10 rather than explicitly sorting into a priority order read more neel nanda 2 27 22 neel nanda 2 27 22 post 47 how i formed my own views about ai safety how i formed my own views on the complex topic of will ai kill us all and should i work on stopping this and traps i fell into read more neel nanda 2 22 22 neel nanda 2 22 22 post 46 reward good bets that had bad outcomes in many important areas of life i want to persevere through many failures for a few big successes as a highly anxious person this is hard i instead focus on whether i made a good bet not whether it failed read more neel nanda 2 11 22 neel nanda 2 11 22 post 45 simplify ea pitches to holy shit x risk i defend the key claims of ai has a 1 chance and biorisk has a 0 1 chance of causing x risk within my lifetime and argue that these are sufficient for most effective altruism conclusions no need for moral philosophy read more neel nanda 10 19 21 neel nanda 10 19 21 post 44 what s stopping you on agency the mindset of being able to look past defaults and constraints and find ways to take action to achieve your goals examining what s holding you back understanding what agency feels like and concrete advice on how to cultivate it read more neel nanda 6 28 21 neel nanda 6 28 21 post 43 intentionally making close friends one of the most valuable experiments i ever ran was intentionally practicing the skill of making close friends and this directly led to most of my friends today this post is the story of that experiment and distills the lessons learned read more neel nanda 2 22 21 neel nanda 2 22 21 post 42 when you already know the answer one of my favourite mental tricks is reframing a question so that i pretend i already know the answer and letting my intuition fill in the blanks i find that this is useful nearly everywhere and outline what the insight is and a bunch of examples read more neel nanda 2 22 21 neel nanda 2 22 21 post 41 overcoming helplessness a common failure mode with problems in your life is to feel helplessness to feel stuck and overwhelmed to flinch away from the idea that you can do anything about it in this post i argue for why this is often wrong and what you can do about it read more neel nanda 1 15 21 neel nanda 1 15 21 interlude 2 podcast episode on effective altruism i was a guest on not overthinking and did a podcast episode introducing the ideas of effective altruism and how they connect with motivation and career plans read more neel nanda 1 4 21 neel nanda 1 4 21 interlude retrospective on teaching rationality workshops a writeup on a series of rationality workshops i organised based on a centre for applied rationality workshop covering having productive disagreements making effective plans building good habits and building useful systems aimed at anyone who wants to teach rationality to people and parts aimed at anyone who wants to learn the techniques linkpost hosted elsewhere read more neel nanda 12 27 20 neel nanda 12 27 20 post 40 asking for help i have a lot of anxiety around asking people for help and i think this is a major bottleneck i outline why this is a problem and how to channel this anxiety towards asking for help well rather than not at all read more neel nanda 12 14 20 neel nanda 12 14 20 post 39 on reflection there are many ways your life could be better many mistakes that feel obvious when pointed out but which you do nothing about by default my favourite tool for resolving this is having a routine to regularly review my life here i make the case for that and outline how to do it well read more neel nanda 11 13 20 neel nanda 11 13 20 psa light levels can matter a lot for mental health uk winters are cold and dark and this is pretty bad for my mental health my life gets much better when i fill it with bright artificial lights i think this is a super common problem so this post is a quick pitch on what you can do about it mostly aimed at people unfamiliar with the problem or who re procrastinating about solving it read more neel nanda 10 10 20 neel nanda 10 10 20 post 38 on slack having room to be excited on the importance of slack the freedom and spare capacity left on your life how to guard and protect your slack notice the bottlenecks which bleed away your slack notice the drive to optimise that pushes you beyond your limits and how to channel these insights having the freedom to be excited explore curiosity and seek intrinsic motivation read more neel nanda 10 3 20 neel nanda 10 3 20 post 37 on option paralysis the thing you actually do a common failure mode in my life is analysis paralysis i want to get something right so i obsess over the small details perfect it without noticing how much it costs me the insight of this post is that the best solution is the thing you actually do read more older posts neel nanda blog about subscribe to hear about new posts rss give feedback here