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0 Skip to Content Neel Nanda About Blog Top Posts Mechanistic Interpretability Open Menu Close Menu Neel Nanda About Blog Top Posts Mechanistic Interpretability Open Menu Close Menu About Blog Top Posts Mechanistic Interpretability Neel Nanda 8/18/22 Neel Nanda 8/18/22 INTERLUDE: A MECHANISTIC INTERPRETABILITY ANALYSIS OF GROKKING Link post for some independent interpretability research I did Read More Neel Nanda 6/17/22 Neel Nanda 6/17/22 POST 49: THINGS THAT MAKE ME ENJOY GIVING CAREER ADVICE Thoughts on what makes giving career advice more fun for me Read More Neel Nanda 6/15/22 Neel Nanda 6/15/22 POST 48: PRIORITISE TASKS BY RATING NOT SORTING A short note on priority ordering tasks by rating them out of 10, rather than explicitly sorting into a priority order Read More Neel Nanda 2/27/22 Neel Nanda 2/27/22 POST 47: HOW I FORMED MY OWN VIEWS ABOUT AI SAFETY How I formed my own views on the complex topic of ‘will AI kill us all, and should I work on stopping this’, and traps I fell into Read More Neel Nanda 2/22/22 Neel Nanda 2/22/22 POST 46: REWARD GOOD BETS THAT HAD BAD OUTCOMES In many important areas of life, I want to persevere through many failures for a few big successes. As a highly anxious person, this is hard! I instead focus on whether I made a good bet, not whether it failed. Read More Neel Nanda 2/11/22 Neel Nanda 2/11/22 POST 45: SIMPLIFY EA PITCHES TO “HOLY SHIT, X-RISK” I defend the key claims of “AI has a >=1% chance and biorisk has a 0.1% chance of causing x-risk within my lifetime”, and argue that these are sufficient for most Effective Altruism conclusions, no need for moral philosophy Read More Neel Nanda 10/19/21 Neel Nanda 10/19/21 POST 44: WHAT’S STOPPING YOU? On agency - the mindset of being able to look past defaults and constraints, and find ways to take action to achieve your goals. Examining what’s holding you back, understanding what agency feels like, and concrete advice on how to cultivate it. Read More Neel Nanda 6/28/21 Neel Nanda 6/28/21 POST 43: INTENTIONALLY MAKING CLOSE FRIENDS One of the most valuable experiments I ever ran was intentionally practicing the skill of making close friends, and this directly led to most of my friends today. This post is the story of that experiment, and distills the lessons learned Read More Neel Nanda 2/22/21 Neel Nanda 2/22/21 POST 42: WHEN YOU ALREADY KNOW THE ANSWER One of my favourite mental tricks is reframing a question so that I pretend I already know the answer, and letting my intuition fill in the blanks. I find that this is useful nearly everywhere, and outline what the insight is and a bunch of examples Read More Neel Nanda 2/22/21 Neel Nanda 2/22/21 POST 41: OVERCOMING HELPLESSNESS A common failure mode with problems in your life is to feel helplessness. To feel stuck, and overwhelmed, to flinch away from the idea that you can do anything about it. In this post I argue for why this is often wrong, and what you can do about it. Read More Neel Nanda 1/15/21 Neel Nanda 1/15/21 INTERLUDE 2: PODCAST EPISODE ON EFFECTIVE ALTRUISM I was a guest on Not Overthinking, and did a podcast episode introducing the ideas of Effective Altruism, and how they connect with motivation and career plans Read More Neel Nanda 1/4/21 Neel Nanda 1/4/21 INTERLUDE: RETROSPECTIVE ON TEACHING RATIONALITY WORKSHOPS A writeup on a series of rationality workshops I organised, based on a Centre for Applied Rationality workshop, covering: having productive disagreements, making effective plans, building good habits and building useful systems. Aimed at anyone who wants to teach rationality to people, and parts aimed at anyone who wants to learn the techniques. (Linkpost, hosted elsewhere) Read More Neel Nanda 12/27/20 Neel Nanda 12/27/20 POST 40: ASKING FOR HELP I have a lot of anxiety around asking people for help, and I think this is a major bottleneck. I outline why this is a problem, and how to channel this anxiety towards asking for help well, rather than not at all. Read More Neel Nanda 12/14/20 Neel Nanda 12/14/20 POST 39: ON REFLECTION There are many ways your life could be better, many mistakes that feel obvious when pointed out, but which you do nothing about by default. My favourite tool for resolving this is having a routine to regularly review my life - here I make the case for that, and outline how to do it well Read More Neel Nanda 11/13/20 Neel Nanda 11/13/20 PSA: LIGHT LEVELS CAN MATTER A LOT FOR MENTAL HEALTH UK winters are cold and dark, and this is pretty bad for my mental health. My life gets MUCH better when I fill it with bright, artificial lights. I think this is a super common problem, so this post is a quick pitch on what you can DO about it - mostly aimed at people unfamiliar with the problem, or who’re procrastinating about solving it Read More Neel Nanda 10/10/20 Neel Nanda 10/10/20 POST 38: ON SLACK - HAVING ROOM TO BE EXCITED On the importance of Slack - the freedom and spare capacity left on your life. How to guard and protect your Slack, notice the bottlenecks which bleed away your Slack, notice the drive to optimise that pushes you beyond your limits, and how to channel these insights having the freedom to be excited, explore curiosity and seek intrinsic motivation Read More Neel Nanda 10/3/20 Neel Nanda 10/3/20 POST 37: ON OPTION PARALYSIS - THE THING YOU ACTUALLY DO A common failure mode in my life is analysis paralysis. I want to get something right, so I obsess over the small details, perfect it, without noticing how much it costs me. The insight of this post is that the best solution is the thing you actually do. Read More Neel Nanda 10/2/20 Neel Nanda 10/2/20 POST 36: MY SENSE OF AESTHETICS An experimental post, where I try to dig into the parts of life that most spark fulfilment and joy for me, finding examples, ways of maximising for this, and trying to analyse way. Warning: Far more narcissistic and introspective than a normal post! Read More Neel Nanda 10/1/20 Neel Nanda 10/1/20 POST 35: YOUR STANDARDS ARE TOO HIGH A common failure mode is to consistently set your standards for yourself too high, and to always feel guilty for falling short. I diagnose why I think this is a major problem, and outline some of my tools for overcoming this Read More Neel Nanda 9/30/20 Neel Nanda 9/30/20 POST 34: LEARNING HOW TO LEARN Learning fast and well is one of the most valuable skills you can cultivate, and a force multiplier on everything else you’ll ever do. I outline my philosophy of learning, and my favourite tactics for doing this well Read More Older Posts NEEL NANDA Blog About Subscribe to hear about new posts (RSS)! Give feedback here!