Values

• Life is about progression. Click below to see how I think about spending time to optimize progress.

  Dune Board Game

• Never satisfied. I can and will be proud of what I/we have accomplished, but I’m always looking forward. Continual learning is a big piece of this.

• I’m not afraid of risk if it comes with the right possibility of rewards.

  • I try to base all of my decisions based on the expected value of progress.
  • Don’t forget the Kelly Criterion - almost all risks I take cost time, or some other finite resource.

Progress

My definition:

Progress = pushing the boundaries of what we can know while min-maxing individual suffering and happiness.

This is the current north star that I am orienting my work around. This is the “north” direction in the Dune Board Game!

Direct Progress

Here are some things I can do to directly impact these metrics:

• Research into new areas, directly contributing to the library of human knowledge.
• Volunteer or donate to causes that reduce human suffering.
• Make people happy.

Higher Order Functions for Progress

However, the largest long-term impact for progress are found in higher-order functions.

• Technology: I’m bullish. In almost every case where tech gets better, we see a dramatic decrease in the sum of human suffering. Better tech can help build better tech, or better infrastructure, etc. Progress compounds fast.
• Education: Teaching people the skills that they need to be their own individual drivers of progress is massive. With education, my impact compounds one level higher than whatever they end up doing. All of the sudden I become an DnD Bard for humanity 🥁.
• Connection: Similar to education, connecting people and ideas together is also a great higher order function. People can only get so much done alone. Good friends compound.
• Governance: Ensuring a proper governance that doesn’t easily fall into Moloch traps, remains nimble, and represents the best humanity has to offer. Right now a problem I’d love to help work on is “why do young people (me included) not view politics as a career for the smart and high-achieving anymore”? We’re not incentivizing our best people to go into government.

There’s more examples to be found here, but these are some of the big examples.