![](https://i.imgur.com/LxUNrR3.jpg =300x) - **Name:** [Mateusz](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/File:Pl-Mateusz.ogg) - **Born:** 1998. - **Height:** 180 cm. - **Orientation:** Straight. - **Relationship style:** Mono/Poly (in the process of being determined). - **Location:** - Currently 🇵🇱 but probably Tallinn 🇪🇪 starting ~2024-10-28. I am mainly (and ultimately) interested in a primary long-term romantic relationship. I'm also open to short-to-mid-term dating in the meantime (including as a build-up to something longer). ## About me / personality I am somewhat agentic and more generally, I have a somewhat optimizer-y approach to life; aiming to figure out what I want and how to ensure what I want to happens. (Obvious reflective caveats that I'm not sure what I want, what I want changes, I have limited optimization power and so on.) I like this aspect of my personality and aspire to be even more agentic. If I were to point out the thing(s) that I like the *least* about myself, it would be (1) being too [compliant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreeableness#Compliance)/conflict-{aversive,avoidant}; (2) succumbing to the feeling of urgency that makes me try to move to fast with stuff, despite knowing that "slow is smooth is fast". I'm a LessWrong'er[^LW], Effective Altruist, and atheist/naturalist. I have a strong interest in religions and (for lack of a better word) spiritual traditions and what we might be able to learn from them for wise living and adapting culture. Other communities that I haven't explored much but would like to and am pulled toward include [RadicalxChange](https://www.radicalxchange.org/)/[⿻ Plurality](https://www.plurality.net/), [Game-B](https://www.game-b.org/), and [Evolving Ground](https://www.evolvingground.org/). It's probably fair to call me a transhumanist? Many people told me something like "are you Asperger's?" or "come to me today; you'll meet my other autistic friend". I don't have a diagnosis. I know some people who seemed to me to be less autistic than myself but got the diagnosis nevertheless. Do what you want wish with that information.[^TMI] **Personality:** I'm above 90th percentile on Openness and Conscientiousness, average-ish Agreeableness, Extraversion, Honesty-Humility, and Emotionality/Neuroticism. **Drug use:** I don't drink or smoke. I sporadically use nicotine gums/tablets for instrumental reasons (e.g. energy boost or enhance habit formation). I've had ~20 psychedelic trips (most of them either LSD or miprocin) but have had a 2 year break. Currently, I'm mostly interested in DMT and salvia. **Diet:** Mostly vegan (primarily for ethical reasons and due to habit). **Chronotype:** Morning lark. I typically go to sleep early and wake up around 06:00-07:00 and start the day with a workout and meditation. I let myself loose during social events/retreats/parties etc. **Communication style:** I mostly dislike smalltalk and prefer direct, tactful communication over indirect communication (ask/tell culture-ish over guess culture-ish). I sometimes ask weirdly specific questions just because I'm curious (a friend once commented on it: "you don't ask, you send requests"). ## Weird complements I've gotten - High signal-to-noise ratio. - Quick reaction time in communication. - Ontological vulnerability. ## Weird accomplishments - Halfway through high-school I switched schools without the knowledge of my parents in order to be able to homeschool myself. It required me to jump through a bunch of hoops, the parents reacted with horror (yes, I should have played it out differently), but in the end it all worked out well; it was definitely a better decision than staying in "normal high school" (which would have lead me to moderate depression). - A friend of mine offered 50€ to whoever shows them how they can be de-anonymized based on publicly available information. I won 50€. - [I made up the extension](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/r7nBaKy5Ry3JWhnJT/announcing-iliad-theoretical-ai-alignment-conference?commentId=8m4vK45NBmqPS7q8b) of the acronym ILIAD (the first theoretical AI alignment conference), which became the official one. ## What I like to do - Exercise, primarily calisthenics, and running, sometimes gym. Currently, I exercise somewhat intensely every morning. I like trying out new forms of physical activity/play. - Expand my understanding and skills: math, programming, biology, history, philosophy, doing-things-effectively. - I especially like a lot learning with somebody else, reading from a textbook aloud, staring together at the whiteboard, trying to understand the leaps of logic made by the author. - Working together on a creative/coding project. - Deep/abstract/nerdy/philosophical conversations. - [Is The United States conscious?](https://faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzAbs/USAconscious.htm) (*[Go](https://faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzAbs/Snails.htm)[ng](https://keithfrankish.github.io/articles/Frankish_Illusionism%20as%20a%20theory%20of%20consciousness_eprint.pdf)*?) - What is consciousness anyway and how much of a Thing is it? I was sympathetic to [illusionism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliminative_materialism#Illusionism) at some point. Then I read [Deacon's book](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incomplete_Nature)[^deacon-not-about-consciousness]. Now... it's complicated. - [What would have happened](https://historyonfirepodcast.com/episodes/2022/1/17/episode-85-the-siege-that-changed-all-of-history) if Assyrians succeeded in conquering [Jerusalem in 701 BCE](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assyrian_siege_of_Jerusalem)? - [Is the Solomonoff prior malign?](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Tr7tAyt5zZpdTwTQK/the-solomonoff-prior-is-malign) - [Should we maximize helium?](https://joecarlsmith.com/2020/12/20/alienation-and-meta-ethics-or-is-it-possible-you-should-maximize-helium) - Where does (the feeling of) effort come from?[^effort-paper] - [List of my favorite stuff](https://matthewbaggins.github.io/fav) and [favorite metal playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6hSja6hnYTMhppzZh7o3tl?si=35bde32f8c664b40). - Mindwork - Meditation (regularly; want to get seriously better at it), psychedelics (currently preference for short-but-intense trips over long trips). - Reading fiction. - Stuff that you could call therapy but I like a broader term like "mindwork" (working with the mind so that it functions better). I'm currently most interested in [IFS](https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/internal-family-systems) and [CBT](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_behavioral_therapy). - Being around people who largely share my interests, attitudes, and values. ![](https://media3.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExZnBwcjJoOHl3bnV2bm1zZjlrYjd2Mzg2bTNjYzZ4aXZ6eXN4NDY2MiZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/dGkXEyvVMZBZLsNSRj/source.gif) ## Things I want to give a good try (This list is to be expanded.) - Participate in social experiments, e.g. new ways of organizing society, coliving/group houses? - Finally learn to play an instrument well (keyboard?), maybe understand music theory. - Scuba diving in a coral reef. - Learning a new language (especially one with a very different grammar from Polish/English, ~i.e. non-Indo-European). ## What I value Have you seen *[The Goddess of Everything Else](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bbwp4PbWYzw)*? *[Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gurren_Lagann)*? I think these are the two works of art that shaped [the way I orient emotionally toward the possibility of brighter future] the most. (I haven't read *Progress and Poverty* yet but I have some suspicion it may have a similar effect on me once I read it (hopefully/probably soon-ish).) I don't quite know [what I'm fighting for](https://mindingourway.com/you-dont-get-t/). I know I want a world without disease and unnecessary suffering. I know I want Civilization/Humanity to wisen, improve, mature, become [more of what we want to be] and expand into the stars. I want us to decode the mysteries of the universe and mathematics, decode the hidden structure, create works of art and ingenuity beyond any description. I want to contribute whatever optimization power I can squeeze out to contribute to that project. --- Unsurprisingly, I [identify with]/[am a member of] LessWrong and Effective Altruism. I dedicated my career to ensuring that arrival of non-human powerful minds will have good effects. For the last ~year, I've been focusing on what one might call "solving the alignment problem"[^ai-alignment-label]. Although I'm still [thinking about]/[working on] it in some capacity, I recently concluded that it's currently better for me to work in AI safety strategy and that's what I'm shifting the bulk of time toward. I sympathize with consequentialist/utilitarian-ish vibes but I don't consider myself a consequentialist/utilitarian. Certainly, I am not a negative utilitarian, or antinatalist. I don't buy into The Repugnant Conclusion. I care about wild animal suffering but I also care about [Green](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/gvNnE6Th594kfdB3z/on-green). I want to eliminate unnecessary suffering, but also view happiness as something between a proxy and only one component of The Good.[^good] ## Important in a partner My ultimate romantic goal is to find a long-term partner who shares my values, and with whom I will build a co-constructive relationship, where both sides aid each other in becoming more of what they want to be and figuring out what they want to be. In the meantime (and for the purpose of finding such), I'm open to short-term and mid-term dating. (I'm currently open to both monogamy and polyamory but in the end I certainly want to settle on one of them, rather than anything in-between-ish, based on which one turns out to be more compatible with me (though leaning towards poly).) - I probably don't want to have children. - Open/transparent/direct communication, ask/tell culture, more so than guess culture. - Large overlap in core values. - Intelligence, creativity, curiosity, cultivation of intellectual activity. - Different from me in interesting ways. - Openness, conscientiousness, honesty and love of argument. - Love for physical displays of affection. **RELATIONSHIP DEALBREAKERS:** - Demand to cease/[unnaturally downplay] close relationships with other women. - Doxastic violence (i.e. pressuring me or others to adopt or articulate views against one's best judgment/conscience). ## How I want to live - Over the next two years, I'd like to finally settle somewhere somewhat permanently, most likely in (or nearby) a big city where a lot of AI alignment/LW/EA stuff is happening, so that I can do my work effectively. - Likely with a/the partner, or at least with a/the partner relatively nearby. - With strong community, including a substantial number of strong ties, nearby. ## Contact - Email: [Last name of the famous Hobbit] + [My first name in English] + [at]gmail.com - Discord: `matthewbaggins` [^LW]:I prefer "LessWrong'er" to the overloaded "rationalist". [^TMI]:If that's already TMI for you, you probably don't want to date me or befriend me very closely. [^ai-alignment-label]:I don't like the phrasing "alignment problem" though, for slightly complicated reasons which this margin is, sadly, too narrow to contain. [^deacon-not-about-consciousness]:Which is not primarily about consciousness. [^good]:I'm also not certain whether Good is actually good as a concept. [^effort-paper]:Yeah, there are papers on this kind of stuff, like [this one](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-024-04572-5), although I don't think it's particularly good.