I’ve been asked to clarify a point of fact, so I’ll do so here:
My recollection is that he probed a little and was like “I’m not too worried about that” and didn’t probe further.
This does ring a bell, and my brain is weakly telling me it did happen on a walk with Nate, but it’s so fuzzy that I can’t tell if it’s a real memory or not. A confounder here is that I’ve probably also had the conversational route “MIRI burnout is a thing, yikes” → “I’m not too worried, I’m a robust and upbeat person” multiple times with people other than Nate.
In private correspondence, Nate seems to remember some actual details, and I trust that he is accurately reporting his beliefs. So I’d mostly defer to him on questions of fact here.
I’m pretty sure I’m the person mentioned in TurnTrout’s footnote. I confirm that, at the time he asked me, I had no recollection of being “warned” by Nate but thought it very plausible that I’d forgotten.
This is a slight positive update for me. I maintain my overall worry and critique: chats which are forgettable do not constitute sufficient warning.
Insofar as non-Nate MIRI personnel thoroughly warned Vivek, that is another slight positive update, since this warning should reliably be encountered by potential hires. If Vivek was independently warned via random social connections not possessed by everyone,[1] then that’s a slight negative update.
I’ve been asked to clarify a point of fact, so I’ll do so here:
This does ring a bell, and my brain is weakly telling me it did happen on a walk with Nate, but it’s so fuzzy that I can’t tell if it’s a real memory or not. A confounder here is that I’ve probably also had the conversational route “MIRI burnout is a thing, yikes” → “I’m not too worried, I’m a robust and upbeat person” multiple times with people other than Nate.
In private correspondence, Nate seems to remember some actual details, and I trust that he is accurately reporting his beliefs. So I’d mostly defer to him on questions of fact here.
I’m pretty sure I’m the person mentioned in TurnTrout’s footnote. I confirm that, at the time he asked me, I had no recollection of being “warned” by Nate but thought it very plausible that I’d forgotten.
This is a slight positive update for me. I maintain my overall worry and critique: chats which are forgettable do not constitute sufficient warning.
Insofar as non-Nate MIRI personnel thoroughly warned Vivek, that is another slight positive update, since this warning should reliably be encountered by potential hires. If Vivek was independently warned via random social connections not possessed by everyone,[1] then that’s a slight negative update.
For example, Thomas Kwa learned about Nate’s comm doc by randomly talking with a close friend of Nate’s, and mentioning comm difficulties.