How-tos How to not kill houseplants I'm a serial plant murderer. Well, I suppose it's actually plantslaughter, as they were all accidents. Regardless, despite my good intentions I never successfully kept a plant alive until 2020. Instructions on how to care for plants often seem similar to me to recipe instructions—they assume a whole bunch
Choosing a blogging platform As I mentioned in my recent newsletter, I've been spending a lot of time during lockdown trying out different web platforms to host my personal website and blog. The main factors I was interested in were: Ease of setup and maintenance: I find it very easy to procrastinate on writing
Reviews Stuff I Recommend You Buy and Use I used to rely a lot on star-ratings of products to help me decide what to buy, but I’ve found them to be increasingly unhelpful as an indicator of whether or not I’ll be happy with the purchase, presumably because there are now so many fake reviews and
90+ Useful Mental Models, Frameworks, and Concepts Mental models can help us understand the world and make better decisions. I’m collecting a list (in no particular order) of the ones I find most helpful and use most frequently. The ones in bold are ones I find particularly useful or impactful. This list is not exhaustive — it
Reviews Six Months With My Electric Scooter: A Review of the Xiaomi M365 (This article contains affiliate links) As I took a wobbly ride on a rented electric scooter earlier this year, my first thought was “this is not for me…” I couldn’t figure out where to comfortably put my feet, and I found myself gripping tightly onto the handlebars as the
How-tos Demystifying Deep Neural Networks Deep learning is a big topic and it can be pretty difficult to know where to start. When I first began learning about it, I found myself wading through very technical explanations with unfamiliar terminology and it was hard to abstract this away and develop an intuitive understanding of what
Should people pay to opt-out of vaccination? Herd immunity is a public good, but mandating vaccination could be seen as an infringement on liberties and autonomy. On the object-level, I think a lot of people support the idea of mandatory vaccinations, but the meta-level principle 'the government should be able to force me to undergo medical procedures
What I've learned from failing at my goal of publishing everyday Towards the end of December I set myself a challenge of publishing something everyday for 30 days - this was a big change from my previous habit of posting approximately never. I knew it was ambitious, but I really wanted to get out of a perfectionist mindset and put something
Can you trust productivity creators to try to give good advice? A lot of productivity creators tell people things like: Unsubscribe from newslettersConsume less contentGet off social mediaWhich is interesting, since many of these creators make money from their audiences through these very channels. A useful thing to do when someone gives you advice is to think: Why are they telling
Skeptics in the Pub: Too dangerous to publish? Navigating the high-stakes nature of AI researchThis Thursday I am giving a talk at Skeptics in the Pub Online! Skeptics in the Pub is high on the list of things I miss about the UK, so I'm very glad that I can still participate virtually. I'll be speaking about responsible
Win probability vs expected margin I really like how the New York Times had visualizations of not just the win probability but also the expected margin of the recent senate elections. I'm not sure if this is new or if I just haven't noticed it before, but it's so much more intuitive. When I looked
The most irritating thing about iOS A few months ago, I got my first ever iPhone. Until then, my smartphones were always Android. I don't think either is particularly better than the other, but since I use a Mac and an iPad it does make everything a little bit smoother, and I'm now so deep into
How surprised would you be if you failed? Ali Abdaal recently posted a video in which he shares his "anti-wasteman" system for making progress on his bucketlist. A key feature of the system is asking the question "How surprised would I be if I failed in this goal?" and then "What are the top 3 reasons for this
Andrew Critch on AI existential safety It can be very confusing to talk about issues in AI and ML since so many of the terms are overloaded, or have both technical and general meanings, or have shifted in meaning over time. Andrew Critch (with whom I used to work at CHAI) has written a comprehensive blog
Newsletter Rosie's newsletter #2 Hi friends, Happy new year 🥂 In my last newsletter I said I wanted to publish more: I’m pleased to say I’ve posted something everyday since then! It was hard at times, but I'm really trying not to let perfectionism get the better of me. Like this newsletter, it’
Interstitial journal: first day back at work Yesterday I wrote about how I'm attempting to start a whole load of new habits in one go, but that I was nervous about whether they would stick once I was back at work. I planned out a 'target day' to make sure I'd be able to fit in the
Self-improvement Complementary habits Conventional wisdom on building habits warns against making too many changes at once. Generally, the advice is to pick one small thing first, and really focus on nailing that one habit before adding another. This has generally been my approach in the past, but over the last few weeks I've
Self-improvement My 2020 annual review process In 2018, I did my first proper annual review. I followed the process outlined in this document, and it took absolutely ages. I followed the same process for 2019, and it was a little faster since I was mostly able to just describe what had changed since last year rather
Self-improvement Actualism: When it pays to accept second best If I am trying to eat healthily, I know I should try to cook more at home. I also know that brown rice is more nutritious than white rice. I don't like the taste of brown rice as much, but a lot of healthy-eating advice encourages me to choose whole
Cat poetry Loosely inspired by Senryū/Haiku Cat on my bed A furry boulder Where my feet should be Sitting like a loaf You eye up My sandwich Lounging on my keyboard The cat says prrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr,,,,,,,
Questions Is the placebo effect real? Epistemic status: Thinking out loud Mike Hall from the Merseyside Skeptics says of the placebo effect: “Confirmation bias means patients are more likely to notice and report changes that they are expecting and ignore changes they aren’t. The Hawthorne Effect means patients may alter their behaviour, simply because they
Newsletter Rosie's newsletter #1 Hi friends, I’m Rosie, you’re receiving this because you signed up to my newsletter - welcome to the first issue! I’d love to hear how you came across me - was it my Roam videos? My Obsidian Publish? Something else? Feel free to hit reply - since
Productivity Capturing everything with Drafts My first piece of advice to people who want to get more organized is: Write. It. Down. Everything. Your brain is a sieve; you think you'll remember, and then you won't. Sometimes you'll remember that there's something you're supposed to remember but you're not sure what it is, other times
Economics Positive-sum does not necessarily mean win-win Epistemic status: I think this is right but it's surprisingly hard to find clarification on this so I could be missing something Positive-sum interactions means the total gains outweigh the total losses - i.e., the pie gets bigger. A win-win situation means both parties come out better off -
Questions How come firms in market economies are centrally planned internally? Epistemic status: Thinking out loud In economics, the idealized 'free market' allows people to trade goods and services for money. The claim is that the laws of supply and demand determine prices in a decentralized way, leading to an efficient allocation of resources without the oversight of a central planner
