Cormac’s “Why You Should Let Me Pay You Money To Live In Your House” Doc
Looking for some subset of April – June, ideally more April less June. East Bay > SF > rest. 28. Former proprietary trader who (approximately) left because it was ~impactless. No car[1] Very happy to bike, but this means I can’t be somewhere where a car is mostly required.. Minimal stuff.
Who Am I?
I love being with people, I love thinking about things, I love bringing joy, I love being tactical, I love accomplishing things, I love making positive sum trades with others, I love striving towards something great, I love being efficient, I love iterating, I love being in my body, I love conspiring, I love giggling, I love seeing, I love being seen, I love comfy vibes, I love play, I love cultivating and being part of a culture that does slightly inconvenient things that will have large payoffs for others.
What Am I Like as a Housemate?
The homies
I currently live in a 5 person communal home. I (with help) built it from the ground up. Living communally is so wonderful. We have a weekly house meeting that averages probably 1.5 hours. I actively enjoy house meetings - it’s solving problems and being present with my friends. We have 3-4 communal meals cooked each week, we don’t have to show up to all of them but the expectation is that each person tries to show up to at least a majority of them. I personally cook one of these 16-20 serving dinners, which is enough for everyone plus another 2 meals or so per person worth of leftovers. We have lots of natural easeful time spent together. That’s not to say it’s always tranquil! We are currently working through a relatively substantial conflict, but we are actively working on it. Staying in communication with each other, listening and paying attention to both solutions and how we feel about it![2] Not claiming we are handling it perfectly, I can certainly attest that I have made mistakes in this process!
What should you take away from this? My ideal equilibrium involves us actually caring about each other (of course for a short sublet that’s less top of mind). Being part of a community[3] And of course trust takes time to build, there are certainly dangers in speedrunning connection/community is important to me, from doing things that are positive sum for everyone (ie cooking at a larger scale) to being accountable for our commitments and actions towards each other. I guess the shorthand is that I think houses run better the more the people living there see themselves and each other as on a team - instead of individuals engaging in tragedy of the commons type behavior. I am generally okay with a medium amount of general built up clutter, not okay with gross - I think paying for a cleaner every N weeks is basically always the correct way to solve the issue of various people having different cleanliness equilibriums. High openness. Extremely competent at banging out large quantities[4] sladebyrd.com/me/cooking of good food. I am generally quite direct.
Why Am I Moving?
I am trying my best to do meaningful, purposeful work with real impact. If I want to continue to do my absolute best towards impact in AI Safety[5] What I’ve done so far: red teaming kimi k2.5 with both white and black box methods, AI Safety literature DB, learning the technicals, RSP comparison. Currently working on door to door surveying a representative 100 person sample on AI safety opinions, and really researching and summarizing the theories of change for existing AI safety orgs.. Right now that means figuring out the theories of change, ways to accomplish them, and deciding the one that has the best combination of impact and how good I would be at it. Being in the bay feels like the best way to continue to make real progress on figuring that out. There is a slew of other reasons[6] takeoff.sladebyrd.com/p/moving, but this is by far the largest.