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It’s worth remembering that we’re not the same person. Maybe his path wouldn’t suit me at all.
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It’s very humbling to learn more about him. Damn!
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Open questions:
- How did he make his jump from undergrad to GiveWell analyst and beyond?
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I had Claude Cowork and Google Gemini Deep Research make me reports on him. Creepy? Idk, kinda. Worth it? Ya
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It feels like the thing for me is:
- “Learn how to think”
- Get a “mostly thinking” role (e.g., at GiveWell or something. Something with “high epistemic standards”). Get paid to think, and think well, and get feedback on my thinking
- Use my new thinking powers to improve my life fractally
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Some copy-pastes from the reports:
- “If you want analytical depth, find an institution with extremely high epistemic standards and do real work there”
- “Milan Griffes is best understood not as someone who followed a career template but as someone who repeatedly went towards important, ignored problems and built real things there.”
- “The “how did he get smart” question probably bottoms out in a few things: early training in genuine rigour (GiveWell), consistent public intellectual output (blog, EA Forum), willingness to take personal and professional risks on neglected areas, and a personal practice that he treats as epistemically serious rather than merely recreational.”
- “The work is characterized by a commitment to extreme transparency and reasoning transparency, where every logical leap must be documented and defended”