I wanted to be more like Eliezer Yudkowsky and Buck Shlegeris and Paul Christiano. They know lots of facts and laws about lots of areas (e.g. general relativity and thermodynamics and information theory). I focused on building up dependencies (like analysis and geometry and topology) not only because I wanted to know the answers, but because I felt I owed a debt, that I was in the red until I could at least meet other thinkers at their level of knowledge.
I feel kind of bad about some actions of mine related to this. (This has been on my list to write about for a while, but this post seemed like a reasonable prompt to actually write it.)
I personally love studying science, and I get a lot of mileage out of making science analogies when I’m doing research (even though the research is basically just CS and applied math), and I find it incredibly satisfying to find a connection between my current research and some science topic I studied once. (I think there are also some other reasons why studying science feels healthy and good to me.)
But my guess is that studying applied math and CS would have been better for me per hour than studying science, and the reason I spent that time learning science was largely because I think it’s exciting and cool rather than because I endorse it as a direct path to knowing things that are useful for doing alignment research (or understanding other important topics).
If some young person asked me what to study, I’d say something like: “You should probably err on the side of learning things that seem relevant to your long term goals, but it’s way more efficient to study things you feel really excited about, and so if you (like me) find science more fun than studying applied math, then you should study it with some of your time.”
But I definitely don’t want to pressure indifferent people into studying random science because they think that people will judge them for not knowing it—people who happen to be passionate about math and CS directly should mostly just study that rather than intentionally diversifying.
I know more science than Paul, and he knows way more CS than me, and basically every time I tell him about a science analogy, he says something like “I know this fact via learning applied math/CS directly, but don’t know that science fact”.
Nate Soares is a smart guy who’s learned a lot of physics, and he told me once that he didn’t think it had been that helpful for his research.
(Maybe another reason why I like studying science is that I have a different source of analogies than my computer scientist colleagues, and this diversity of perspectives is sometimes helpful.)
But my guess is that studying applied math and CS would have been better for me per hour than studying science, and the reason I spent that time learning science was largely because I think it’s exciting and cool rather than because I endorse it as a direct path to knowing things that are useful for doing alignment research
Strong upvote for this.
Doing things you find fun is extremely efficient. Studying things you don’t like is inefficient, no matter how useful these things may turn out to be for alignment or x-risk.
I feel kind of bad about some actions of mine related to this. (This has been on my list to write about for a while, but this post seemed like a reasonable prompt to actually write it.)
I personally love studying science, and I get a lot of mileage out of making science analogies when I’m doing research (even though the research is basically just CS and applied math), and I find it incredibly satisfying to find a connection between my current research and some science topic I studied once. (I think there are also some other reasons why studying science feels healthy and good to me.)
But my guess is that studying applied math and CS would have been better for me per hour than studying science, and the reason I spent that time learning science was largely because I think it’s exciting and cool rather than because I endorse it as a direct path to knowing things that are useful for doing alignment research (or understanding other important topics).
If some young person asked me what to study, I’d say something like: “You should probably err on the side of learning things that seem relevant to your long term goals, but it’s way more efficient to study things you feel really excited about, and so if you (like me) find science more fun than studying applied math, then you should study it with some of your time.”
But I definitely don’t want to pressure indifferent people into studying random science because they think that people will judge them for not knowing it—people who happen to be passionate about math and CS directly should mostly just study that rather than intentionally diversifying.
I know more science than Paul, and he knows way more CS than me, and basically every time I tell him about a science analogy, he says something like “I know this fact via learning applied math/CS directly, but don’t know that science fact”.
Nate Soares is a smart guy who’s learned a lot of physics, and he told me once that he didn’t think it had been that helpful for his research.
(Maybe another reason why I like studying science is that I have a different source of analogies than my computer scientist colleagues, and this diversity of perspectives is sometimes helpful.)
Strong upvote for this.
Doing things you find fun is extremely efficient. Studying things you don’t like is inefficient, no matter how useful these things may turn out to be for alignment or x-risk.