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Interview with gwern

dwarkeshpatel.com

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Re: Interview with gwern

#61

Post by Tenoke »

Quinzel wrote: post #9

I don’t believe Gwern lives as frugally as he’s described in this (if this even actually is the real Gwern). I’m 100% sure that he has a persona he likes to portray and being perceived as frugal is a part of that persona. When it comes to answering the question “who is gwern?” I reckon Gwern’s a plant a seed in people’s mind type of guy, and let them come up with the rest of the story. Still, I like a lot of his writ…

I'm fairly sure it's relatively true (except for occasional extra purchases on top) unless he's been keeping it up in places I wouldn't expect him to.

I don't like that now people might pigeonhole him a bit by thinking about his effective frugality but I do hope he gets a ton of donations (either directly or via patreon.com/gwern ) to make up for it.

Re: Interview with gwern

#62

Post by dash2 »

Quinzel wrote: post #9

I don’t believe Gwern lives as frugally as he’s described in this (if this even actually is the real Gwern). I’m 100% sure that he has a persona he likes to portray and being perceived as frugal is a part of that persona. When it comes to answering the question “who is gwern?” I reckon Gwern’s a plant a seed in people’s mind type of guy, and let them come up with the rest of the story. Still, I like a lot of his writ…

Have you got any real evidence behind your first paragraph?

Re: Interview with gwern

#64

Post by xnorswap »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #10

www.gwern.net Something I've noticed in spending time online is that there's a "core group" of a few dozen people who seem to turn up everywhere there are interesting discussions. Gwern (who also posts here) is probably at the top of that list.

A hundred years ago you could say the same about the Bloomsbury Group.

I don't know what causes such intellectual cliques to form, perhaps it's a result of an intersection of raw intellectual power and social dynamics.

Re: Interview with gwern

#66

Post by nl »

jnsaff2 wrote: post #59
resiros wrote: post #12

>Wait if you’re doing $900-1000/month and you’re sustaining yourself on that, that must mean you’re sustaining yourself on less than $12,000 a year. What is your lifestyle like at $12K?" >I live in the middle of nowhere. I don't travel much, or eat out, or have health insurance, or anything like that. I cook my own food. I use a free gym. There was this time when the floor of my bedroom began collapsing. It was so ol…

> Dwarkesh Patel > How do you sustain yourself while writing full time? > Gwern > Patreon and savings. I have a Patreon which does around $900-$1000/month, and then I cover the rest with my savings. I got lucky with having some early Bitcoins and made enough to write for a long time, but not forever. So I try to spend as little as possible to make it last. Then Dwarkesh just gets stuck on this $1k/month thing when Gw…

Meh.

He's living in a place where the floor collapsed and eats (good) ramen. If it's 12k or 20k I'm not sure it makes a meaningful difference to the narrative.

Re: Interview with gwern

#67

Post by sourcepluck »

I clicked on the video asking myself, wait, how does the title make sense, how is he anonymous if he's doing videos?

Then when I saw the frankly very creepy and offputting image and voice, thinking he'd been anonymised through some AI software, thought, oh no, this kind of thing isn't going to become normal is it.

Then - plot twist - I scroll down to read the description and see that that voice is an actual human voiceover! I don't know if that makes it more or less creepy. Probably more. What a strange timeline.

Re: Interview with gwern

#68

Post by keiferski »

eru wrote: post #65

The headline contradicts itself. Gwern is pseudonymous, not anonymous.

You can see this with many words – the most commonly known word gradually encompasses all similar ones. I don't know if there is a formal linguistic term, but I call it "conceptual compression." It's when a concept used to have multiple levels, but now just has one. It seems like an inevitable outcome in a society that doesn't care about using language accurately.

Re: Interview with gwern

#69

Post by raverbashing »

resiros wrote: post #12

>Wait if you’re doing $900-1000/month and you’re sustaining yourself on that, that must mean you’re sustaining yourself on less than $12,000 a year. What is your lifestyle like at $12K?" >I live in the middle of nowhere. I don't travel much, or eat out, or have health insurance, or anything like that. I cook my own food. I use a free gym. There was this time when the floor of my bedroom began collapsing. It was so ol…

Honestly I've become skeptical of people who end up in high-intellectualized "pursuits" neglecting their own personal and social interactions and the larger societal reactions

Maybe it works for maths, physics and such, and of course it's ok to philosophize, but I think those "ivory tower" thinkers sometimes lack a certain connection to reality

Re: Interview with gwern

#70

Post by MichaelZuo »

keiferski wrote: post #56

By writing, you are voting on the future of the Shoggoth using one of the few currencies it acknowledges: tokens it has to predict. If you aren't writing, you are abdicating the future or your role in it. If you think it's enough to just be a good citizen, to vote for your favorite politician, to pick up litter and recycle, the future doesn't care about you. These AI predictions never, ever seem to factor in how actu…

O1-preview is already indistinguishable from the 50th percentile HN commentator with the right prompts… no editing at all needed of the output.
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