• Since working on Manifold, I’ve met the coolest people on earth
• Would name them to make this concrete, BUT don’t want to appropriate status. So an analogy:
• Imagine you listen to Taylor Swift every day. Then Taylor Swift reaches out and says “hey I saw your music critique blog, super cool, wanna get lunch?” and then you have lunch and she basically presents as a normal human being, and sometimes trips over her own feet.
• This has happened to me 5-10 times in the last 6 months
• Saying: Never meet your heroes
• Thought it was because “they’ll disappoint you”
• So far, not very disappointed. But surprised - they’re not gods walking the earth
• Someone told me: this is good and normal; people who don’t present as normal, you should be extra skeptical of
• Worry: there are no gods walking the earth. No cabal of hypercompetent beings ready to take the helm when the going gets tough.
• Or at least it’s not clear there is a helm to take!
• Holy shit what are we going to do about XRisk
• Eliezer on hypercompetent elites: ... maybe I just haven’t met them yet...?
• Positive spin: You (and your friends) can be heroes too
• Turns out, my heroes aren’t everyone’s heroes
• Get home, meet my housemate who for context has donated a big chunk of their income to charity. Shyly tell them “I uh met X” and they were like “lol who is X” and I was sad
• Takeways
• Sometimes it’s worth just doing things you think are cool. Big motivating factor for building Manifold is because I thought one of my heroes would like it
• Worth cold-reaching out to your heroes, probably
• Email advice for busy people
• Sometimes people seem to want to talk to me because I am a “founder of Manifold” and this is honestly somewhat startling each time but also incredibly heartwarming
• I promise you I’m a regular person. And would love to chat.

• The coolest people in the world aren’t cool because they’re smarter than you. They just care about more important things.