I am a busy man and will die knowing I have not said all I wanted to say. But maybe I can at least leave some IOUs behind.

1) Blatant conflicts are the best kind

Ben Hoffman's "Blatant Lies are the Best Kind!" is maybe the best post title followed by the least clarifying post I have ever encountered. The title is honestly amazing, but the text of the post, instead of a straightforward argument that the title promises, is an extremely dense and almost meta-fictional dialogue about the title:

I think we probably should prosecute good lying more than bad lying, though of course that's tricky. I'd argue the same is true for other forms of conflict: passive aggression is worse than overt aggression, maybe, probably. I haven't written the post yet to figure it out, but it seems important to know.

2) Fire codes are the root of all evil

Fire accidents seem to have the unique combination of producing extremely strong emotional responses by people in a local community, while also often being traceable to an o-ring like failure that you can over-index on. Also, fire marshals are the closest [...]

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Outline:

(00:18) 1) Blatant conflicts are the best kind

(01:11) 2) Fire codes are the root of all evil

(02:14) 3) It is extremely easy to get people to vouch for you, this makes public character references not very helpful

(02:54) 4) Public criticism need not pass the ITT of the people critiqued

(03:41) 5) Courts are amazing

(04:25) 6) If your room still sucks after fixing your lights, put some plants in it

(05:12) 7) Is Switzerland the perfection of American Freedom?

(05:44) 8) Most arguments are not in good faith, of course

(06:44) 9) Please, for the love of god, optimize the title and first paragraph of your post

(07:23) 10) A story of my involvement in EA and AI Safety

The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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