Juan Orbea

Sam Altman thinks we’ve been in the realm where you can do an incredible copywriting business or education service. He says he thinks people are doing amazing work with agents that can use computers to do things for you, use programs and use programs.

How can smart, ambitious people stay working in an area where they have no long term ambitions? I think a good analogy for the mistake they are making can be found in computer science.

You might agree that future people matter in the abstract. But it’s this point — that our actions today could meaningfully impact their lives — that might compel you to believe that positively influencing the long-term future should be a key moral priority of a time. This is the idea encapsulated by longtermism.

For the modern world, questions about the nature of humanity would be viewed on par with the struggle among the Lilliputians about the correct way to cut open an egg. Hobbes, the first truly modern philosopher, boasted of how he deserted and ran away from fighting in a religious war; a cowardly life had become preferable to a heroic but meaningless... See more

- The concept of ‘micromarriages’ and ‘microbestfriendships’.