Lance Yan
35,685 views
I live in California and work on Traverse, which is on a mission to keep the future in human hands by minimizing existential risk from AI. I grew up in Canada and briefly studied CS at UWaterloo.
Email:
Some things I believe:
- Life is a long journey of learning from others
- Surround yourself with great people and keep your ego low
- Being an idiot is great! It's hard to absorb anything while you're acting smart
- Don't borrow your worldview from others
- Too many people are ok with just "going with the flow"
- Your constraints are mostly self-imposed
- Other people's opinions are usually a bad reason to (not) do something
- Most people ask for far less advice than they should
- People are much more willing to help than you'd expect
- Nobody is above the act of seeking advice
- And it's a disease to get married to your ideas; let the best idea win
- Great work can make you forget to eat
- Speed matters a lot! But not all work is good work
- Skipping meals, sleep, and friends catches up with you
- Most importantly, the kid in you still needs to play
- Unfinished things keep living in your head
- Viciously prioritize, be intentional, and fully commit
- Knowing when to pivot and pivoting fast is a great skill
- Humans are just animals that have abstract wants
- Your identity is just a history of what you've wanted so far
- And people usually want what they were told to want
- But what do you actually want?
- We are nothing without each other
- Being transactional is a short-term strategy
- Your reputation compounds; being kind is really easy
- Intelligence is the rate at which a mind can find the truth
- But people care less about the truth than you'd think
- The world runs on abstractions and biases, not on what's right
- Truth is still worth putting above all else
Elsewhere: lance116 on github; lanceyyan on x; lance-yan on linkedin.
