PREFACE: "Those Guys Go Hard"

Hi, I'm Aaron. You might know me from Heist, "Utopia, LOL", and the Aaron Silverbook Memorial Library. I do ops for EA orgs, where ops is defined as "anything not alignment research".

In early 2022, the Machine Intelligence Research Institute and I broke up, so like any reasonable doomboy concerned about being paperclipped in an AI apocalypse before 2030, I wanted to find a job which could maybe—y'know, help with that?

But I had been warned about Lightcone. Even MIRI ops people (60-hour weeks) were leery about Lightcone's work hours and Extreme Hustle.

"Those guys go hard," they murmured, shaking their heads in hushed awe.

I was, in truth, still unprepared for How Hard These Guys Go.

⧖

(Me, in Messenger conversation)

I would say that Lightcone is absolutely insane in their Slack habits—

Every team member has a crosswise public slack channel with every other team member, every team member has a public channel for them to write their thoughts in, and they actually use these, and read each others' channels—

I would say this is insane, but actually,

Lightcone is sane; these are reasonable behaviors

Because Lightcone is literally a hivemind

⧖

I am no stranger to Hustle. In Ops, you do a lot of Hustle.

I'm defining "hustle" here as—instead of a task, you're given a goal. The task is up to you.

Your budget is "whatever it takes". Your deadline is "as fast as you can".

For motivation, I like to imagine, "what desperate, demented creativity would I bring to succeed at this problem if failure meant that I would actually, literally die?"

("That's unsustainable! You'll burn out!")

Look man, burnout is a neurotic Western phenomenon caused by people sitting alone in sterile white offices, being nagged by remote, quota-tracking middle managers, and feeling uncertain of what to do.

"Work" or "not work" is not the distinction that matters; it's whether or not you feel like you're affirming life. Are you doing something cool? Are you being challenged and doing something fun?

My previous hustle has included such tasks as:

Fly to Alaska and get vaccinated at a rural clinic in early 2021, to become a COVID-immune Hot Zone Delivery Boy
Scout for secluded research-bunkers that researchers can flee to, in case of riot or widespread societal violence
"Solve massage"

And, yes, fine, ops also involves some boring traditional soul-crushing Moloch-resistance-work, such as filing for zoning permits. It's not all hustle all the time. But in comparison to a 9-5 office job, in which one spends two hours working on an (unnecessary) spreadsheet and six hours refreshing reddit while feeling guilty and worthless…

We can do a lot better, via a rare and underappreciated Eliezer-technique we call actually trying.

⧖

A conversation in the team room:

Me: So, Jacob, how long's it been since you had a day off?

Jacob (thinking): Hm, I took the 4th of July off, so…about a week and a half?

Me: …

Oliver: Didn't I see you supervising a construction crew the 4th of July?

Jacob: No, I left at 5pm that day, not 11pm!

Me: …so you…worked an eight hour day?

Jacob: It's surprising how much energy I get from being surrounded by the relentless sounds of industrial progress.

Me: …

Jacob: Look, "work" isn't work if you're having a good time.

⧖

Bah. Let's get on with it.

The following are my travelogues, and my writeups, of shenanigans which happened at Lightcone and with the Lightcone team. They are the three I've written up so far, but there are many more where they came from. Some names and places have been elided for privacy, but to my knowledge, everything contained herein is a true story.

We're rationalists; it is beneath us to lie.

Aaron Silverbook
July 26, 2022

Next: The Logistical Tribulations of March 6th