The last few workdays have been tricky because the working style that seemed to serve me well for doing new research (running across things that catch my eye and then leaning into my desire to understand it better) didn't work very well for writing. In addition, it seems that I have to repeatedly expend executive effort just to allocate large uninterrupted blocks of time for me to work, well-rested, on this project. This week I've put into place some accountability measures that should help, such as committing to examine my social engagements in advance and clarify whether I genuinely expect them to be as valuable as time spent on this project.
On the object level, while writing up my initial model of how AI takeoff might be affected by the existence of a broader economy, I realized that I was really trying to do two different things:
- Mathematize my intuitions about AI takeoff scenarios where each AI can either work on itself or participate in the economy.
- Lay out a higher-level argument about how the above fits into the bigger picture.
My plan is to finish writing these two things up, and then go back and review my research priorities, with an eye towards creating a single view where I can see the overall structure of my current model, and changes I've made to it. (Then I'll go back to doing more object level research.)