Lincoln PeacockAbout Me
What drives me
But because just being here matters, because the things of this world, these passing things, seem to need us, to put themselves in our care somehow. Us, the most passing of all. Once for each, just once. Once and no more. And for us too, once. Never again. And yet it seems that this—to have once existed, even if only once, to have been a part of this earth—can never be taken back.
The above quote hits at the kind of thing that drives me to do good. This sense of “passing,” and the fragility of life seems to confer upon us some sort of duty of care, heroic responsibility, you might call it.
There are many such things that need us: children dying of malaria, chickens locked in cages for their lifetimes, and untold future generations contingent on our survival as a species. It feels like some sort of moral failure to confront this fact, yet do nothing; to avert your gaze to more cheerful things.
My goal is not to spend my time pleading ignorance, but to find what I believe to be the most important problem, look it in its eyes, and go to war.
Writing that shaped how I think
Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I've ever known.
- AI 2040: Plan AAI Futures Project
Gave me a concrete positive vision of what can go right.
- Q3.5 Timelines UpdateAI Futures Project
Short timelines, ahhhhhh.
- In Favor of Niceness, Community, and CivilizationScott Alexander
Helped me grapple with why consequentialists should still be nice. I especially love the Cthulhu quote from Curtis Yarvin.
- Can you control the past?Joe Carlsmith
Helped me understand EDT and some of the crazy implications.
- Meditations on MolochScott Alexander
Made me much more worried about the future of liberalism.
- The SIA > SSA seriesJoe Carlsmith
SIA is simply correct. (or at least simply more correct than SSA)
- The Sigmoids Won't Save YouScott Alexander
Good argument for why we should expect the AI progress lines to continue.
How I got into EA
Any decent realtor, walking you through a real shithole, chirps on about good bones: This place could be beautiful, right? You could make this place beautiful.
I came across the 80,000 Hours career guide during high school, and it basically lined up with what I'd been thinking about my career for a couple of years. Then, I found the EA group at Princeton, completed the intro fellowship, went to a retreat, and have been getting more and more involved ever since. I now lead Princeton Effective Altruism.
Favorite things
Quotes
I didn’t include any of the ones I already have on this website, but they would probably make this list.
- “I consider’d long and seriously of you before you were born.” — Walt Whitman
- “Tell me, what is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?” — Mary Oliver
- “For me, I am driven by two main philosophies: know more today about the world than I knew yesterday and lessen the suffering of others. You’d be surprised how far that gets you.” — Neil deGrasse Tyson (My senior quote!)
- “Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.” — Martin Luther King Jr.
- “Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “Two things fill the heart with ever renewed and increasing awe and reverence, the more often and more steadily we meditate upon them: the starry firmament above and the moral law within.” — Immanuel Kant
- “The unexamined life is not worth living” — Socrates
Reading
Books
- Inferno by Dante
- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins
- The Life as We Knew It series by Susan Beth Pfeffer
Blog posts
- On future people, looking back at 21st century longtermism by Joe Carlsmith
- Actually possible: thoughts on Utopia by Joe Carlsmith
- Incriminating misaligned AI models via distillation by Alek Westover, Sebastian Prasanna, Alex Mallen, and Alexa Pan
- Half-assing it with everything you've got by Nate Soares
- Beware surprising and suspicious convergence by Gregory Lewis
- animal welfare has an evidence problem by matthes
- Born sick by Ajeya Cotra
- I keep thinking about that attempt I made to characterize people I get along with by nostalgebraist
- How to Feel About EA by Chana Messinger
- The Ultimate Guide To The Anthropic Argument by Bentham's Bulldog
Poems
- Ninth Elegy by Rainer Maria Rilke
- Wild Geese by Mary Oliver
- Good Bones by Maggie Smith
- Go to the Limits of Your Longing by Rainer Maria Rilke
- The Journey by Mary Oliver
- Do Stones Feel? by Mary Oliver
- All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace by Richard Brautigan
- The Way It Is by William Stafford
- The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus
- The Newer Colossus by Eric Neyman
Music
Taylor Swift
Album Ranking:
- Folklore
- Evermore
- Red
- Lover
- Speak Now
- 1989
- Fearless
- The Tortured Poets Department
- Reputation
- The Life of a Showgirl
- Midnights
- Taylor Swift
Songs:
Everyone else
Songs:
- by Kendrick Lamar
- by John Legend
- by Estelle, Kanye West
- by beabadoobee
- by Chappell Roan
- by Elastic Bond
- by Eminem
- by Egg
- by Edison Lighthouse
- by Olivia Rodrigo
Artists:
Musicals:
Movies/TV
Movies
- 12 Angry Men
- The Shawshank Redemption
- Wicked
- Avengers: Infinity War
- Catch Me If You Can
- The Princess Bride
See my full list of rankings on Letterboxd
Games
Board/Card Games
- Poker
- Chess
- The Resistance: Avalon
- Red King / Cambio
- Ticket to Ride
- Codenames
- The Settlers of Catan
- Monopoly
- Antematter
Video games
- Minecraft (especially Hypixel Skyblock)
- Valorant
- Hearts of Iron IV
- Super Mario Odyssey
- Pokémon White
- Tetris
- Roblox
- Fortnite
Places I've been
Tell me, O Muse, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy. Many cities did he visit, and many were the nations with whose manners and customs he was acquainted…