Table of Contents 1 Static pressure gradients?? 2 Spouts and acceleration 3 Height paradox thingy 4 Deducing the equivelocity curve? 5 Sideways pressure? 6 Generalizing I’ve been reading various things about fluid mechanics so that I can think about microfluidics. But I haven’t really been studying it like I used to study a math area (instead just kinda getting various impressions). I’d like to think it through a bit “from scratch”, though it’s very much not actually from scratch of course. This is written as close to real-time thinking as possible (though of course much slower than without writing), over a few hours, with the intent of getting a “thinking trace” because that seems interesting. [In all diagrams, pretend the top is open to the air, and ignore differences in air pressure.] 1 Static pressure gradients?? If I ask myself what I’m intuitively confused about, I’m like, hold on—it makes intuitive sense that pressure gradient would cause the fluid to ...

Table of Contents 1 Arguments for fast AGI progress 2 Intuition pumps for being close to AGI 3 Synthetic life as an intuition pump 4 Some things I like about this analogy [Previously: “ Views on when AGI comes and on strategy to reduce existential risk ”, “ Do confident short timelines make sense? ”] [Whenever discussing when AGI will come, it bears repeating: If anyone builds AGI, everyone dies; no one knows when AGI will be made, whether soon or late; a bunch of people and orgs are trying to make it; and they should stop and be stopped.] 1 Arguments for fast AGI progress Many arguments about “when will AGI come” focus on reasons to think progress will continue quickly, such as: Line go up. Researchers can pivot to address new obstacles and ditch dead ends. AI can be used to accelerate AI research. We’re over a threshold of economic returns, such that AI research will permanently see much more investment than before. 2 Intuition pumps for being close to ...