the sort of person who this post is already aimed at (i.e. people who are excited to forge their own path in a technical field where everyone is fundamentally confused) is probably not the sort of person who is aiming for minor contributions anyway.
For me, there were two separate decisions. (1) Around March 2019, having just finished my previous intense long-term internet hobby, I figured my next intense long-term internet hobby was gonna be AI alignment; (2) later on, around June 2020, I started trying to get funding for full-time independent work. (I couldn’t work at an org because I didn’t want to move to a different city.)
I want to emphasize that at the earlier decision-point, I was absolutely “aiming for minor contributions”. I didn’t have great qualifications, or familiarity with the field, or a lot of time. But I figured that I could eventually get to a point where I could write helpful comments on other people’s blog posts. And that would be my contribution!
Well, I also figured I should be capable of pedagogy and outreach. And that was basically the first thing I did—I wrote a little talk summarizing the field for newbies, and gave it to one audience, and tried and failed to give it to a second audience.
(I find it a lot easier to “study topic X, in order to do Y with that knowledge”, compared to “study topic X” full stop. Just starting out on my new hobby, I had no Y yet, so “giving a pedagogical talk” was an obvious-to-me choice of Y.)
Then I had some original ideas! And blogged about them. But they turned out to be bad.
Then I had different original ideas! And blogged about them in my free time for like a year before I applied for LTFF.
…and they rejected me. On the plus side, their rejection came with advice about exactly what I was missing if I wanted to reapply. On the minus side, the advice was pretty hard to follow, given my time constraints. So I started gradually chipping away at the path towards getting those things done. But meanwhile, my rejected LTFF application got forwarded around, and I got a grant offer from a different source a few months later (yay).
With that background, a few comments on the post:
I wrote a fair bit on LessWrong, and researched some agency problems, even before quitting my job. I do expect it helps to “ease into it” this way, and if you’re coming in fresh you should probably give yourself extra time to start writing up ideas, following the field, and getting feedback.
I also went down the “ease into it” path. It’s especially (though not exclusively) suitable for people like me who are OK with long-term intense internet hobbies. (AI alignment was my 4th long-term intense internet hobby in my lifetime. Probably last. They are frankly pretty exhausting, especially with a full-time job and kids.)
Probably the most common mistake people make when first attempting to enter the alignment/agency research field is to not have any model at all of the main bottlenecks to alignment, or how their work will address those bottlenecks.
Just to clarify:
This quote makes sense to me if you read “when first attempting to enter the field” as meaning “when first attempting to enter the field as a grant-funded full-time independent researcher”.
On the other hand, when you’re first attempting to learn about and maybe dabble in the field, well obviously you won’t have a good model of the field yet.
One more thing:
the sort of person who this post is already aimed at (i.e. people who are excited to forge their own path in a technical field where everyone is fundamentally confused) is probably not the sort of person who is aiming for minor contributions anyway.
If you’re a kinda imposter-syndrome-y person who just constitutionally wouldn’t dream of looking themselves in the mirror and saying “I am aiming for a major contribution!”, well me too, and don’t let John scare you off. :-P
For me, there were two separate decisions. (1) Around March 2019, having just finished my previous intense long-term internet hobby, I figured my next intense long-term internet hobby was gonna be AI alignment; (2) later on, around June 2020, I started trying to get funding for full-time independent work. (I couldn’t work at an org because I didn’t want to move to a different city.)
I want to emphasize that at the earlier decision-point, I was absolutely “aiming for minor contributions”. I didn’t have great qualifications, or familiarity with the field, or a lot of time. But I figured that I could eventually get to a point where I could write helpful comments on other people’s blog posts. And that would be my contribution!
Well, I also figured I should be capable of pedagogy and outreach. And that was basically the first thing I did—I wrote a little talk summarizing the field for newbies, and gave it to one audience, and tried and failed to give it to a second audience.
(I find it a lot easier to “study topic X, in order to do Y with that knowledge”, compared to “study topic X” full stop. Just starting out on my new hobby, I had no Y yet, so “giving a pedagogical talk” was an obvious-to-me choice of Y.)
Then I had some original ideas! And blogged about them. But they turned out to be bad.
Then I had different original ideas! And blogged about them in my free time for like a year before I applied for LTFF.
…and they rejected me. On the plus side, their rejection came with advice about exactly what I was missing if I wanted to reapply. On the minus side, the advice was pretty hard to follow, given my time constraints. So I started gradually chipping away at the path towards getting those things done. But meanwhile, my rejected LTFF application got forwarded around, and I got a grant offer from a different source a few months later (yay).
With that background, a few comments on the post:
I also went down the “ease into it” path. It’s especially (though not exclusively) suitable for people like me who are OK with long-term intense internet hobbies. (AI alignment was my 4th long-term intense internet hobby in my lifetime. Probably last. They are frankly pretty exhausting, especially with a full-time job and kids.)
Just to clarify:
This quote makes sense to me if you read “when first attempting to enter the field” as meaning “when first attempting to enter the field as a grant-funded full-time independent researcher”.
On the other hand, when you’re first attempting to learn about and maybe dabble in the field, well obviously you won’t have a good model of the field yet.
One more thing:
If you’re a kinda imposter-syndrome-y person who just constitutionally wouldn’t dream of looking themselves in the mirror and saying “I am aiming for a major contribution!”, well me too, and don’t let John scare you off. :-P
I agree!