_This is my qualitative review of a 4 week period from 24 January until 18 February._ See also [[02021 Amble 4 – Written review]], [[_02022 Amble 1 - Plan]]. Thinking about this period, the first word that comes to mind is "disaster". The second is "catastrophe!". I've done enough mindfulness-based cognitive therapy to notice that such words are suggestive of unhelpfully negative self-talk. But still. The lowlights are impressive: - I hit 0/4 of the most important targets I set (writing input and output goals). - Weeks 2 & 3 were the least productive "work weeks" I can remember, going back years. - At times my mind felt so blank that I found myself looking up symptoms and statistics about early-onset cognitive decline. On the positive side: - I showed up every day at 9am or earlier. - I did lots of physical exercise. - My relationship with CK is going well. - I had some hours of frustration and unhappiness, but for the most part mindfulness and reframing and exercise kept me in reasonable spirits. I celebrated showing up, made my goals less ambitious, and reflected with gratitude on the many wonderful not-work features of my life and the world. - I continued my advisory role at 80,000 Hours for a couple of hours per week, giving some useful input. - I had a couple of flashes of "normal / good", a couple of work sessions that felt like that. So I've not forgotten what it's like. ## Debug In what nearby worlds would I have achieved a lot more during this period? 1. No headwind of low mood / low energy. 2. CK didn't move in with me. 3. (maybe) My work was structured differently, or I was trying to do a different kind of work. I approached Amble 1 in much the same way as I approached the succesful 2021 Ambles. So I think it's likely that the conjunction of (1) and (2) explain most of the effect. What do I learn from this? What might make the next amble go better? - This period of relatively low energy and low mood has lasted longer than usual (November - present). It has not been acute, but I guess it's reduced my productivity by an average of 50% over 3 months compared to normal. So that means it's reduced my output for the year by 10-15%. If I add on compounding effects, and the way these periods make me hesititate about attempting certain kinds of roles and lifestyles, it's clear these ~annual periods of low mood are one of the most significant headwinds I face. If there *were* a medication, a change in diet or routine that would fix this, it'd be worth spending at least 1 year of my income to get it. I hestitate to explore further because I think the odds of a major win are less than 20%, and there are >5% odds of making things worse. But still, I now think I'm willing to spend at least $1K and 1-5 days FTE looking into this. I will start before end Feb. - Short-term, I will think more about how to make my relationship and living setup with CK be less of a headwind. We're currently isolated in the middle of nowhere—quite socially dependent on each other; she relies on me to drive her places. We've begun speaking about this, which has started to help. What other quick wins or "big changes" might help here? What might be missing from the picture of (1) & (2) being the main drivers? 4. I feel more socially distant from EA/80K now than I did in October. I thought this period would be quite solitary, but actually I've spent a lot of time with non-EA friends. I originally booked a flat in Oxford for January-March. But it fell through in early November, when I learnt that the landlady was not comfortable with me hosting guests. I decided to delay my next Oxford visit to March or April, and shorten it to 2 weeks. 5. Some other "resource" gradually ran down during 2021, such that I'm now missing a critical input? ## OK, so you didn't do anything like as much as you hoped. But you read and wrote a bit, right? What was most interesting? - [[=Holden Karnofsky]] blog posts - [Future-proof ethics](https://www.cold-takes.com/future-proof-ethics/) - [Defending One Dimensional Ethics](https://www.cold-takes.com/defending-one-dimensional-ethics/) - Reflections on pragmatism and evolutionary perspectives on things - Reflection on [[Transhumanism]], and [[List of arguments against transhumanism]] - Some notes on [[Moral philosophy]], [[Two-thirds utilitarianism]] and [[Common sense morality]] - Sent Joe Walker some thoughts towards his David Deustch interview - Continued Penne d'Agenais film club, finished rewatching The New Pope - A bit more background rumination on intellectual virtues, cluelessness. - I decided to resume posting quotes to my study journal at https://sun.pjh.is/. Unlike in previous bouts, I did not do this with an "every day no matter what" intention. - I started writing a review of the last 10 months, which I will publish in March. Holden Karnofsky published two good blog posts on the topic I've been thinking of as "relating to moral theory" or "relating to utilitarianism". He's sketching a position I am drawn to, where you take utilitarian reasoning seriously while keeping it at arms length. Not The One True Theory we must selflessly serve, but rather one particularly insightful way of looking at things, that will often inform our all things considered judgement, but which need not determine it. The question of how to balance reflective intuitions, common sense heuristics and our existing identity against revisionary utilitarian thoughts is—and should be—vexed. Because we are not straightforwardly trusting our own reasoning, we are taking the froth of uncertainty seriously, we are respecting the difficulty and the mystery of things. And we are holding onto the identity we happen to have, at some level. I would love to be more concrete about this. For now, that's all I've got. ## Appendix 1. What I was reading An automatically generated list of the PDF files I annotated during this period. **John Vervaeke** - Relevance Realization and the Emerging Framework in Cognitive Science **Bernard Williams** - (Princeton paperbacks ) Williams, Bernard Arthur Owen - Truth et truthfulness an essay in genealogy (2004, Princeton Univ. Press) - Richard Rorty · To the Sunlit Uplands a reply to Bernard Williams · LRB 31 October 2002 - Making Sense of Humanity And Other Philosophical Papers (1995, Cambridge University Press) - Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (2006, Routledge) - Integration and Authority- Rescuing the “One Thought Too Many” Problem **Textbooks** - ( ) Steve Clarke (editor), Hazem Zohny (editor), Julian Savulescu (editor) - Rethinking Moral Status (2021, Oxford University Press) **Joseph Heinrich** - Joseph Henrich - The WEIRDest People in the World How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous (2020, Farrar, Straus and Giroux) **Robert Wright** - ( ) Robert Wright - Nonzero The Logic of Human Destiny (2001, Vintage) **Nick Bostrom** - Evolution **Cass Sunstein** - (Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement vol. 59) Sunstein, Cass - Preferences, Paternalism, and Liberty (2006) (10.1017s135824610605911x) **Uncategorised** - ( ) David Edmonds (editor) - Future Morality (2021, Oxford University Press) **Francis Fukuyama** - Our Posthuman Future Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution (2003, Picador) - Fukuyama, Francis - The End of History and the Last Man (19922012, Penguin Books Ltd) **Robin Hanson** - Aliens – from Minds Almost Meeting by Robin Hanson and Agnes Callard - Purposes – from Minds Almost Meeting by Robin Hanson and Agnes Callard - rapacious-hardscrapple-frontier **Tyler Cowen** - Cowen, Tyler - Stubborn attachments a vision for a society of free, prosperous, and responsible individuals (2018, Stripe Press) **Ken Binmore** - Rational decisions (2011, Princeton University Press) - Rational Decisions by Ken Binmore, Review by- Reviewed by Giacomo Sillari - Rational Decisions by Ken Binmore, Review by- Reviewed by Bryan Skyrms **History** - (Dover Books on History, Political and Social Science) Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges, Willard Small - The Ancient City A Study of the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome -Dover Publi **Peter Singer** - Lazari-Radek, Katarzyna de Singer, Peter - The point of view of the universe Sidgwick and contemporary ethics (2016, Oxford University Press) **Aesthetics** - Eaton (1997) Aesthetics - The Mother of Ethics? **Intros to Philosophy** - Russ Shafer-Landau - Fundamentals of Ethics-Oxford University Press (2012)