My rules for making great spreadsheets (in Google Sheets or Excel)

May 5, 2023
1) Round numbers: use "decrease decimal point" or "format" to automatically round numbers to the greatest number of decimal points that are truly useful (so 0.15, not 0.15121215 and 32%, not 32.42%). 2) Set units: use the "format" feature to make percentages into actual percentages (ending in %), to make dollar figures into actual dollar figures (starting with $), and so on. This makes...
More

Did That Treatment Actually Help You?

Did That Treatment Actually Help You?
April 15, 2023
A mistake we all make sometimes is attributing an improvement to whatever we've tried recently. For instance, we may get medicine from a doctor (or go to an acupuncturist) and feel better, so we conclude it worked. But did it actually work, or was it just chance? Here's a trick to help you decide: What matters (evidence-wise) is how likely that level of improvement would have been in that time...
More

13 metaphors to give the flavor of why sufficiently advanced A.I. could be extremely dangerous

13 metaphors to give the flavor of why sufficiently advanced A.I. could be extremely dangerous
April 2, 2023
1. Suppose a new species evolves on earth with the same intellectual, planning, and coordination abilities relative to us that we have relative to chimps. Chimps are faster and stronger than most humans - why don't they run the show? 2. Suppose aliens show up on earth that are far smarter than the smartest among us at all cognitive tasks. They have specific goals that aren't fully aligned with...
More

Problems with meta-analyses

Problems with meta-analyses
March 10, 2023
Meta-analyses are supposed to combine the evidence on a topic from many studies (e.g., does melatonin help sleep?) to produce an answer. Many people even consider them the gold standard for evidence about scientific questions. Unfortunately, taking a weighted average of many different studies sometimes doesn't work because averaging the studies can be meaningless. Suppose a meta-analysis on...
More

Should Effective Altruists be Valuists instead of utilitarians? – part 3 in the Valuism sequence

March 10, 2023
By Spencer Greenberg and Amber Dawn Ace  Image created using the A.I. DALL•E 2 This is the third of five posts in my sequence of essays about my life philosophy, Valuism - here are the first, second, fourth, and fifth parts (though the links won’t work until those other essays are released). Sometimes, people take an important value - maybe their most important value - and decide to...
More

You can’t buy back time once you’ve spent it

You can’t buy back time once you’ve spent it
February 24, 2023
There's a deep and surprising sense in which money can't be "wasted" from a bird's eye perspective - only resources and people's time can be wasted. If someone "wastes" $100, someone else now has $100 extra to spend. Even burning bills deflates the currency, making other bills more valuable. But people's time genuinely can be wasted. The tragedy of someone spending hundreds of millions of d...
More

What to do when your values conflict? – part 2 in the Valuism sequence

February 24, 2023
By Spencer Greenberg and Amber Dawn Ace  Image created using the A.I. DALL•E 2 This is the second of five posts in my sequence of essays about my life philosophy, Valuism - here are the first, third, fourth, and fifth parts. Pretty much all of us have multiple intrinsic values (things we value for their own sake, not merely as a means to an end). This means that sometimes our intri...
More

Doing what you value as a life philosophy – an introduction to Valuism – part 1 in the Valuism sequence – what are intrinsic values and why do they matter?

Doing what you value as a life philosophy – an introduction to Valuism – part 1 in the Valuism sequence – what are intrinsic values and why do they matter?
February 14, 2023
By Spencer Greenberg and Amber Dawn Ace  This is the first of five posts in my sequence of essays about my life philosophy, Valuism - here are the second, third, fourth, and fifth parts. Featured image created using the A.I. DALL•E 2 Many of us struggle at times to know what to do. We are surrounded by conflicting advice about how to live our lives - from our parents, peers, and c...
More

How can you help friends or family members who are struggling with a mental health challenge? 

How can you help friends or family members who are struggling with a mental health challenge? 
January 8, 2023
I've noticed that it's quite common for people to struggle to know what they should do to support friends or family members going through a mental health challenge, and it's also quite common to say counterproductive things in such situations. With the aim of helping you better help those people in your life who are struggling, here's a list of five things that are usually a *bad* idea to ...
More

Personality traits as continuous spectrums

Personality traits as continuous spectrums
January 7, 2023
Nearly all human traits lie on continuums. Even many multi-trait conditions can be viewed as having distinct traits that each lie at one end of a spectrum. There are a number of cases where we only have a word for one side of a psychological spectrum, and we lack a word for what you'd be like if you inverted all the most common traits of a condition. Here's an attempt to give names to these oppos...
More