Week(end)s where decades happen

Meet the people in your phone. Find your weirdos. Be ambitious. Fix the world. Being normal is lame.

[epistemic status: 50% shitpost, 50% reflections on the conference. I am typing and publishing this on the bus ride home. I noticed I wanted to say that I am slightly tipsy but this is cope. It’s fine. The truth is embarassing, whatever I am just, once again, being way too honest for honesty’s sake.¹]

This had not been a normal week.

• my poly friend, who is in a monogamous relationship, clearly wants to fuck me²

  • and then we cuddled, and she had to tell her girlfriend, and her girlfriend now acts differently towards me, and I don’t know what to make of this.

• had my first job interview

  • I left a good impression, not by talking about my education, but about my microsoldering side hustle and how I blogged every day for a month and where I somehow ended up mentioning 4chan

• My grandpa had a brain aneurysm. And his entire left side is paralyzed, if he even recovers.

• the stealth trans guy I outed to my closeted trans friend knows I did and vice versa. It’s a whole thing

• got hopelessly obsessed with pacman RL project for what felt like weeks but was actually like 3 days.

• Presentation deadline I misread so I now have to give a presentation on friday, at the moment I planned to be on a bus to EAG. I had like 2 hours to prep slides. It somehow went great.

• Benthams bulldog subscribed to my substack. This guy is kinda like jesus to me

Oh right: EAG. EAGx Amsterdam on friday. oh my god

just look at this little guy

Day 1

The story starts simple and predictable. I miss my bus and the person in my phone misses her flight.

I miss the talk called “how to make the most of your first eagx”. That can’t be good. I am anxious walking to the venue, a rare emotion for me.

The first thing I attend is a speed-friending. The people I talk to are not that that interesting. It’s fine. Then I notice someone at the front, she’s critiquing the way the event is run, she seems very opinionated. And I notice that I know this person, from substack. It’s her. I introduce myself as “celeste from celeste land”. A not so quick look at her eyes tells me what I already know: I am fucked.

I try not to think about those eyes for the rest of the conference. I fail miserably.

The opening talk is very good. The coffee machines say “only uses oat milk”. All the food is vegan. Very quickly, the anxiety completely fades, I feel home and I become solo-travel celeste.

A couple more talks, meetups and 1-1s later, I read: “The venue is now closed” in my notifications. Below that is a missed call and texts from my mom: my grandpa is not okay. She calls me to explain that he has been moved to DNR-1. DNR stands for what I think it does. I claude this, which is just what I do now, I guess. Some weird combination of emotional dependence, in-group signaling and models getting good justifies it in my mind. Claude tells me what I already know. It weighs on me. Death comes for us all.

We get to the hotel, and she shows me her 100 dollar shoggoth plushie. “for community building” she says. Of course, community building. She got it at the misalignment museum. A real place. It’s where you think it is.

And finally, this woman, (a different woman), that has been in my phone for the past 30 days is next to me. I am finally holding her. My fears melt away. She is cute, and so inexperienced, it is endearing. We exchange words you’re not “supposed to”, neither of us really care. We make out, etc… We are not dating, of course³

Day 2

And I see another person. And once again I get to use my funny words: “hi nice to meet you, you read my blog, I am celeste from celeste land”. (The looks you get when uttering this phrase are truly priceless.) We have a nice chat.

I took the 10% pledge. I think you should too!

Around 2 PM it hits me: I am exhausted. one on one on one on ones have drained me. 5 different but the same conversations on AI safety is about 3 too many for me personally. I don’t do much for the rest of the day, I am just kind of tired.

And the venue closes once more. The one with the pretty eyes wastes no time. Her no-bullshit ruthless efficiency clearly extending to flirtation. “now that the day at the conference is over, the ToS doesn’t apply anymore, I think you’re very cute by the way”. See, I think ambiguity is hot, But maybe it’s like an inverse bell curve. Maybe being very not-subtle is also hot.

First I have dinner with the other EA frenchies. I talk to the head of EA Belgium and discover that he is considering selling out his great nation and working for EA france. I am clearly not alone in the recognizing how lame Belgium is on the EA front. I ask him about the hamming event, apparently he organizes it. He organizes everything for EA Belgium. Right.⁴

The painting

The place where we eat is kind of cool. it’s all volunteers and operates on donations. When I’m queueing to get food I meet a guy I chatted with earlier at EAG. “This is my sister” he says. I off-handedly mention that “this painting looks very disco-elysium to me”. I don’t think he knows what that means, but his sister turns to me and says “yeah haha, totally”. Just like that my suspicion is confirmed: this is a fellow trans woman.

After food, me and the girl go grab drinks. I think in about 5 minutes she labels “the hard problem of consciousness”, “the hedonic treadmill” and “having a sexuality” as “skill issues”. I don’t know why that makes my stomach feel like that. I think thoughts I have to self censor. I ask her what she thinks I sound like, accent wise. “internet” she responds. She’s absolutely right.

Footsies turn to stares, which turn to very long stares which eventually turn to kisses⁵. After cuddling for a while, she reveals that she has an obsidian doc with every single crush she has ever had. I am honored to be number 55. Apparently drunk her had even written about me. And I had read it, not connecting the dots. Much like in the venue, we struggled to find a place for a proper one on one.

I end day 2 with not one, but 2 women I met on substack in my bed. I struggle to handle multivariate cuddling, but it’s nice. And like learning to differentiate, doing it with 2 variables is confusing at first but eventually, you learn to appreciate the beauty of it.

Day 3

Let’s go have some impact! Woo!!!

I attend a talk on insect sentience. Which was a great talk with a great speaker. “the flies are killing it compared to the lobsters”. And this guy just starts laughing so hard, and so loud and so particularly. And I don’t know why but the entire venue starts laughing. And it’s just great. I’ve simply found my people.

He shows me slides proving that flies like diazepam and mating after rejection. We are not so different after all!

I end up chatting with another internet friend for a long time. You know who you are. You are awesome. Thank you for that. And I agree: men should be little bitches.

More 1-1s too. A talk here and there and very quickly the time is almost up again.

I attend a talk called the “student sendoff”. I plop myself down next to the most neurotic student I have ever seen. (like, he must be on stimulants or something), he is holding up his laptop in ways I cannot even draw they are so ridiculous. Fine, I’ll try

“I loved bugwoman week by the way”

He quickly glances at me, then rambles at the speed of eminem “oh I loved your blogpost, X told me about you”. he is talking about bugwoman week. I have no fucking clue who this person is, but thanks!

At the closing conference, I was asked, “what is the one thing you will do when you get home, it doesn’t have to be something big”. The answer is obvious: more posting.⁶

Reflections

I mean, I want to tell you that the greatest thing about eag was the 1-1s and it’s true. The one on ones are nice. But I would be lying to you. To me, the greatest thing about EAG was meeting the women in my phone. I’m not trying to make this a smut post. I did not go to eag sex, so back to impact.

My real conclusions are ordinary: some talks are good others less so, one on ones were obviously the best use of my time. Everyone said this but like yeah, you have to see it to believe it. Even random people where you would think “what the fuck am I gonna talk to this person about for 30 minutes” don’t disappoint. It was basically always lovely. Genuine advice: schedule 1-1s with people you normally wouldn’t talk to. Be the computer scientist that talks to the animal welfare person. It’s what EAG is for. You will be surprised what you learn

I had some frustration about the fact that it feels like a lot of the EAs I saw don’t seem to be doing work that to me feels like it would actually make the world better. A lot of “meta” work. And thus it didn’t really feel like we were achieving much at the conference. Somehow I only realize at the very end that this is not the point. This is just a way to bring people together and counter value drift⁷. Because of attending EAG, I am way more likely to remain engaged with EA ideas in the future.⁸ In expected value this is probably worth the subsidized ticket cost.

In short, I am quadrupling down on my vision of life: Meet the people in your phone. Find your weirdos. Be ambitious. Fix the world. Being normal is lame.

With love, Celeste

1. This post is slightly horny. But it’s important to note: please don’t go to EAGx for dating. The conference is stricly no sexual advances, please respect that. These rules are here for a reason

2. oh hi if ur reading this by the way. Sorry if this is how you had to find out that I’m on to you. I think you are smart enough to know that I know anyway. It’s okay, I kinda want to too. Oh and sorry if I’m just wrong, that would be extremely awkward. But I’m not :)

3. another word I will never ever read again without reading it internally in a french accent

4. Seriously: what will we do when this guy is gone lol

5. which eventually turn to meows, apparently

6. I missed blogging so much this weekend. I want to get back to writing :)

7. like bring people who were intellectually convinced but not in the network in to the movement. Like me!

8. and even then, most of the impact will be done by very little people