My name is Paweł Sysiak, Pav for short. I try to distill the most impactful knowledge over a long time. I don’t normal write, but I care about being simple and precise. I am interested in almost anything but organically gravitate towards topics like cognitive biases, psychology, view quakes, well-being, epistemology, mental models, collective coordination and decision-making, rationality and effective altruism.
I also design products, wrote AI Revolution 101 and have a background in art. I am scheming how to improve epistemics and collective coordination using technology.
Values
Overcoming bias
One of the main efforts of my learning is to figure out how to overcome
Being precise and accurately uncertain
I will prioritize precision over persuasion. I think the form and the flow of writing is important but it should never compromise the precision of arguments. I aim to include
Least amount of words
“I am sorry that I didn’t have time to write a shorter letter” – Pascal. I try to distill knowledge into as few words as possible. I think this is one of the most important and neglected ideas about knowledge. The shorter the more valuable the message is (while simultaneously preserving its depth and quality).
Through a peasant's reasoning
This is a Polish expression meaning to communicate in the simplest possible terms. Knowledge is often a signaling tool – a vehicle for climbing a homo sapiens hierarchy ladder. "I am capable of using complex vocabulary", "I belong to this type of people", "I am smart". I feel this force is largely active in our culture and in my hunter-gatherer's brain. I try to recognize it and not engage in it. What parts of my thinking are there because it’s good to think this way? How to say things simpler? What is the dumbest and most revealing question here? On this website, I try to do as like
Rendering through a human
Least amount of words (See above) while rendering through a human. So side by side with maxing out on the words-per-meaning ratio I will be also injecting my personal, subjective, weird experiences, and including relationships to things, people and ideas. This way, you human, will remember things more clearly.
Dyslexia and weird language
I am softly dyslexic (I believe a feature not a bug). I am non native English speaker. That is, linguistically things may feel off.
Neurons in a non-dyslexic brain establish a different pattern of connections and circuitry, creating a different kind of problem-solving apparatus. The difference is global, not just in certain areas of the brain. Non-dyslexic people have tightly packed minicolumns (sort of highways of neurons), dyslexic people have them spaced widely apart. “This is significant because when the minicolumns are tightly packed, there is very little space between them to send projecting axons” to form a much broader connections.
“As a result, you get circuits that process very rapidly and perform very specialized fine-detail functions ... But people with this kind of brain tend not to make connections between distant areas of the brain that tend to support higher functions like context, analogy, and significance.” As a result dyslexic have the following skills: 1) Seeing the gist of it; being able to put together big pictures, or seeing larger context, or imagining how processes will play out over time 2) Ability to reason in dynamic settings when the facts are incomplete or changing. 3) Some dyslexics are good at spacial reasoning 4) Forming memories as experiences, examples or stories, rather than abstractions.
Read more in
I don’t know whether this research is replicable (if you have a hint see
Also, I believe an important function of creation is figuring out better interfaces of knowledge. Tinkering on this comes to me naturally and language is a system I am trying to improve. That said, I try to do it only when grammar rules are blocking precision, a proper weighing of arguments; or makes expressing ideas less-straight-forward, not direct or too long.
Long-term
New knowledge is both a blessing and a curse. It is a blessing when you compare medieval to contemporary findings in medicine, ethics, physics. It is also a curse because we have a
Centipede approach
I want to be a centipede shaped, to have ninty-nine short and one long leg. Which is to say I see a large potential in going broad but developing expertise in one area.
Why generalist? This may be especially productive in a time of specialization.
Perhaps if one goes broadly, thinks precisely, tries to out-maneuver
But learning can be also a form of procrastination. I think in order to find impact it makes sense to develop expertise in one or two narrower fields and then try to find some overlaps.
Mistakes
Validating is adding twice as much work. When I write about an idea I am spending disproportionate amount of time gathering evidence and phrasing examples to arrive at my thesis. It’s obvious that I must be subjected to
Support me
I would love to be able to make a living through learning and writing. Therefore every subscription, free or paid, to my Substack feels v meaningful. If you feel like XXL supporter you can choose any amount in the founding member section 🙈
Add
- I also believe that love may be one of the most important forces in the universe (to not be so rosy, on the other side there is also a and imminent existential risks). But more on that some other time.Hierarchy bias 🎨
- A lot of most useful knowledge is in the overlap of of areas e.g. Effective Altruism is a crossover between expertise in moral philosophy and economics.
- Add to the doing good: I want to keep evaluating if I am doing it effectively. I think we are living at the hinge of history and not unlikely in the most important century. I believe the positive impact in this world may be tricky and not linear. I feel one of the most impactful actions for me is to write, learn and improve my thinking.
- Ai alignment is not the default
- What we ought to do is mainly determined by how our actions might affect the long-run future
- The impact of various interventions follows a heavy-tailed distribution
- The question is not can they reason, nor can they talk, but can they suffer
- All possible views of humanity's future are wild
Overcoming bias
I make an effort to overcome
Least amount of words possible
“I am sorry that I didn’t have time to write a shorter letter” – Pascal. I try to distill knowledge into as little words as possible. I think this is one of the most important and neglected ideas about knowledge. The shorter the more valuable the message is (while simultaneously preserving its depth and quality).
Long-term view
New knowledge is both a blessing and a curse. It is a blessing when you compare medieval to contemporary findings in medicine, ethics, physics. It is also a curse because we have a
Through a peasant's reasoning
This is a Polish expression meaning to communicate without jargon, in the simplest possible terms. Knowledge is often a signaling tool – a vehicle for climbing a homo sapiens hierarchy ladder. "I am capable of using complex vocabulary", "I belong to this type of people", "I am smart". I feel this force is largely active in our culture and in my hunter gatherer brain. On this website, I attempt to drop sounding complex, sounding round, adding paragraphs to grip a reader with a better story. My north star is what
I feel the most meaning and fulfillment when I am in the process, however wiggly, being good, going after the most positive impact on the world. I feel I am creating a sense of this life when I am being a good agent. I don’t know why, but I then imagine myself as this handsome tree with a huge healthy trunk and the sun is penetrating leaves making thousands of little green glowy fires. I did some testing and doing good appeared to be my top intrinsic value. I also believe that love may be one of the most important forces in the universe (to not be so rosy, on the other side there is also a
Generalist upside
How to survive being interested in almost anything?
There is a tremendous upsides / insides at the intersection of knowledge. For example Effective Altruism is an intersection of moral philosophy and economics.
During the enlightenment there were a lot of amateur scientists that brought a lot of value to the world e.g. Darwin
Writing speculatively but with high Epistemic culture AKA communicating my levels unceirntity, potential biases, and counteracting them
Tackling
Attempting to be the dumbest person in the room
Art background
I think I have a few things that are valuable that I took from my art background. I still will
purpose of my blog - how through writing you can change mind at scale. All through ideas
being able to do suddenly this overview
sounding round, adding paragraphs to grip a reader with a better story
Max good
I feel the most meaning when I am in the process, however wiggly, of doing good, attempting to be a good agent, going after the most positive impact. This seems may be my top intrinsic value according to this test. I also wonder if love isn’t the most important force in the universe. Aghhh… I know that may seem a bit unconnected. I will try to make more sense on that soon. Also being brave… I may suck at it, k? But this is my value and I admire people who bravely reveal themselves in the world.