I’m an Artist. How Can an Artist Help?
I get asked that a lot, and increasingly I wonder; does the person asking think I’m a non-profit president? Do they imagine that when I was a kid, people asked me “what do you want to be when I grew up” and I said “I want to help people, so I’d like to run the United Way” and that the Singularity Institute is a logical step on that career path? Do they think that when I was growing up people told me “You’re really good at business networking, so you should be part of the Bay Area tech scene” the way scientists get told “You’re really smart, so you should be a scientist”? I think they sort-of do.
So anyway, Eliezer, representing the Singularity Institute, has traditionally told such people, to a first approximation, “sorry, an artist can’t help us”, and I’m writing this to try to elaborate on that statement a little. I’d like to tell the artists out there that they aren’t alone. Here goes.
“sorry, an artist can’t help us”
“sorry, a scientist can’t help us”
“sorry, an business-person can’t help us”
“sorry, an politician can’t help us”
“sorry, a hacker can’t help us”
It turns out that only a human can help us, because only they have general intelligence, so they can do anything. When people identify with labels, they don’t primarily gain the ability to use the skills they have that they associate with those labels. Rather, they loose the ability to freely use other skills, or generally, to behave non-stereotypically, as doing so would move them away from the central tendency in thing-space identified by those labels and thus make them a less good member of their category.
If you’re looking for a cause to fill in on an identity check-list, one of a list of socially proscribed things that people should be able to say about themselves in order to be ‘balanced’ or ‘interesting’, well sorry, ‘effective’ just isn’t on that list. We’re happy to take your donations, because ‘big-picture futurist visionary’ is on the list and ‘caring’ about SIAI the way people ‘care’ about the poor when they donate to Unicef is the best available option for someone who wants to fill in that box with that answer. It just so happens that we would also be the best place to put that money, if you did want to bring about a big-picture vision for the future, but we would also be the best place to put money if you want to bring about a better life for the poor and neither of those considerations typically leads to someone writing us a check.
If you are looking to find meaning in life, we can help some. As an empirical matter though, people who need our help with this aren’t usually as energetic in pursuit of abstract meaning as people who would be having a fine time if the world wasn’t in danger but see this as an interesting and challenging adventure, so I’d really appreciate seeing more people who already have something to protect.
I guess I think this is, at best, only part of your true rejection. If there were some visionary artist who wanted to create art that would get thousands of people interested in the SIAI cause, such that donations poured in and some bright mathy kids decided to help solve FAI problems, I have a feeling you’d tell that artist “Go for it, with our gratitude.”
(Ahem.)
This would in no way entail converting that person into anything other than a “pure” artist. There would be no need for that person to become the kind of highly flexible SIAI researcher you’re suggesting here.
I think your true rejection is roughly as follows:
What you’re arguing here is that some kinds of things are just plain unuseful to the SIAI cause. You almost certainly don’t need the assistance of a musicologist, much as it may pain me to say. If I show up and say “I’m a musicologist, how can I help?”, you’re going to say “Well, either learn to do something useful for us or else donate some portion of your lavish musicologist salary to SIAI.” And then if I say, “No no, how can I use musicology to help?”, you’re going to think I’m an idiot. This is more or less what you’ve sketched above.
However, a whole bunch of other things, including all the activities you included above (artist, scientist, business person, politician, hacker) are indeed potentially useful to SIAI. What you actually don’t want—and quite reasonably so—is to be in the position of needing to manage those people’s efforts. This is for a variety of reasons: You don’t have enough people to manage them. You don’t have enough in-house expertise in those fields to manage them effectively. You don’t have jobs for them yet and don’t want them hanging around in the meantime. You don’t want the inertia that can come along with having a bunch of affiliated helpers act like they’re owed a role when they’ve outlived their usefulness. Or, as you hint at the end, you don’t think very highly of the quality of people who want to help but don’t want to learn a bunch of new skills and shed some of their old identity, which seems like a reasonable heuristic to me.
As I say, these are all perfectly good reasons to demur when asked “I’m a [whatever], how can I help?”. But I do not think that the answer is really “Sorry, an artist can’t help.” It’s more like “Sorry, we’re not interested in helping an artist figure out how to use art to help—if you can figure it out yourself, knock yourself out.”
I imagine the ideal diologue going something like this:
A: I’m a human, how can I help?
B: That depends, what can you do?
A: I have general intelligence.
B: I mean, what kind of specific talents would you bring that would make you qualified compared to everyone else with general intelligence?
A: Oh. I’m an artist. Er, sorry, I mean I’m a human with qualifications in art.
B: I don’t know how artists can help us, sorry.
The unnamed rationality group is hiring artists. The artists are required to be able to draw things on demand in exchange for money, which seems like a standard skillset for “an artist”. This is a silly post.
(Speaking of which, applicants: I am handling pre-processing of applicants. I am going slowly. If you have not gotten email from me or from Anna Salamon, and you have time constraints/want to be a squeaky wheel/just feel like jumping the queue, you can poke me; elcenia@gmail.com)
Why not interpret “I’m an artist, can I help” as “I have skills commonly classified as art-related, can those skills be of use?”
(And it seems like “sure, go make awesome art that reduces the number of inferential leaps we require to make our case, or at least that makes you rich so you can donate money” is a better answer than “no”. Not to mention the fact that this post kinda reads like “no, and fuck you for asking, we can’t fix your identity issues.” I’m sure you are sick of being asked “Can I help” by people who really can’t, but a polite form letter would be much better than this post.)
Please fix the numerous errors in the post’s language and formatting, so that I can feel more comfortable only having the ability to downvote it once.
I find it regrettable that this post was so harshly received, because it contains an excellent point that would be worth a post in itself:
Maybe in a crude, Fight Club-y you-are-not-your-job sense. But for the counter argument, consider peter_hurford’s hypothetical: the label “artist” is a useful communication tool whether or not its user is permitting it to restrict her thinking.
To the extent I understand peter_hurford’s comment, its exorbitantly positive reception disappoints me even more than the post’s negative reception. It seems to miss the point of the “general intelligence” remark, which was that sorting humans in the manner referred to is not helpful, at least in this context. The fact that a term like “artist” may indeed be efficient for describing the results of this unhelpful sorting process is beside the point.
[EDIT: paragraph removed]
Fair cop on ‘counterpoint’; Merriam-Webster suggests you’re losing that particular definitional battle, but I get annoyed when people refer to crackers as “hackers”, so I definitely sympathize. Edited.
To the broader point, if peter_hurford’s argument-by-dialogue doesn’t click for you, you might try grouchymusicologist’s more detailed explanation.
As it happens, I liked grouchymusicologist’s comment and thought it was a fair response.
The point of peter_hurford’s comment, as I understand it, is that knowing “X is a human” gives one less information than “X is an artist.” Of course Vassar isn’t looking for mere humans, but because he phrased it this way, the content of the article became “offensive” to several groups of people. So peter_hurford didn’t “miss the point of the ‘general intelligence’ remark.” He offered a somewhat amusing explanation of why “It turns out only a human can help us” was patently ridiculous.
(Also, how dangerous, how unsafe is the phrase, “it turns out”! I forget who first pointed this out to me, but oh, what horrible things can it conceal...!)
There’s a good chance you haven’t read, seen, or heard even 1% of the cultural output of the world. Being “offended” by unfamiliar references is not productive. This was even a nice reference in so far as the content of the reference was explained directly afterward.
That, believe it or not, was actually Vassar’s point: artists are, in particular, humans. Which means that they have general intelligence and are not necessarily confined to stereotypical “artist” tasks. Which I find to be a rather uplifting point, personally.
It is only ridiculous if you confuse a statement with its converse: “only a human” is not the same as “every human”. But the actual nature of the statement is of course rhetorical: “to help us, you should be thinking of yourself as a human—something with general intelligence, and not something terribly more specific”.
It wasn’t just the reference. It was the conjunction of the reference with the “counterpoint” thing, a combination that produced the effect of an aggressive (or at least ostentatious) “I AM IN A DIFFERENT TRIBE FROM YOU” signal.
Continue this thread with thomblake, who has identified the issue more precisely than I can.
“Those that can help us are humans” is logically equivalent to “Only a human can help us.” Both are effectively zero-information sentences. No converse fallacy here.
I guess the lesson here is that signal mismatches happen to everyone!
I have been working on a reply to thomblake for a while, but I do not really have much of a desire to continue this thread: it is causing me to get upset at LW, a state I do not wish to be in.
The converse fallacy occurred when you took “only a human can help us” to mean “every human can help us”—your “ridiculous” criticism, which is distinct from your “zero-information” criticism—here:
/
Are you implying that you didn’t comprehend the rhetorical meaning of Vassar’s statement? I find that implausible.
I don’t understand your confusion. I’m only making one criticism. The statement is ridiculous because it has no informational content. I stated that in the sentence prior to the quoted one. I never assumed “only a human can help us” meant “every human can help us”.
It was the second meaning I found, after I judged the first one to be improbable. I’m pointing out the irony of you being disappointed at others finding an offensive-but-probably-unintentional subtext in Vassar’s work, while also yourself finding an offensive-but-probably-unintentional subtext in the previous comment.
Could it have been this?
I don’t think so, but that explains the problem really well. I think it was a person who was complaining about a claim made using that phrase in an academic paper that later turned out to be false, hyuk hyuk...
As much as that point might have something article-worthy in it, I find it extremely dubious, especially when phrased like that. Some questions:
“Artists can’t help us … only a human can help us”—so artists aren’t humans?
Do humans really have general intelligence? (okay, I usually grant this one)
Does general intelligence allow you to do anything?
Do only humans have general intelligence?
Did anyone think that identifying with labels causes one to gain the ability to use the skills associated with the label?
Does associating oneself with a label cause one to lose the ability to freely use other skills?
Does associating oneself with a label cause one to lose the ability to behave non-stereotypically?
Does moving away from the label’s cluster in thing-space make one a less good member of one’s category? (Are penguins and ostriches bad birds?)
Is that really the reason why associating oneself with a label causes one to lose those abilities?
In general, I find that humans do use labels, and nonetheless retain the ability to behave non-stereotypically, and are thus helpful for many tasks. Furthermore, those labels are very useful for identifying humans with particular sorts of skills, for example Alicorn’s note about the “rationality org” looking for artists.
Many of those questions seem rather unreasonable replies to the context.
That would be an unreasonable (hostile) interpretation.
Well, at least you disclaimed.
Within limits. The post includes nothing that would necessitate that retort (or make it particularly relevant.)
Right now, yes. It would be reasonable to assume that the post allows for the possibility that things other than humans could possess general intelligence. It’s talking about what is useful building one.
The article doesn’t claim, imply or require that they do.
An actual relevant question. The post (and [the post that probably should have been included as a reference) certainly claim that they do, to a certain extent.
Another actual claim in the post.
More relevant is the belief of the person (not) moving about the likely perception of others when observing such a move.
Ok, so the last 4 questions were all decent. It was just the first five that made me suspect that if you made these challenges to a post that wasn’t already the subject of social abuse they would be declared disingenuous and you would be punished for being aggressive. As it happens you can probably get away with it (or just about anything that attacks Vassar’s post) since the impulse to not join the person being bullied is so strong.
Regarding the claims about general intelligence, I do indeed find them dubious. Especially that general intelligence allows you to do anything—a lot of the things you can do with general intelligence require something else (some skill, for example), and a lot of them can be done without general intelligence. So it’s really not helpful to claim that general intelligence allows you to do anything, and I especially don’t see its usefulness in this context.
Well, that was my actual interpretation, so there it is. And I could certainly see less charitable folks get mad and stop reading right there, especially artists to whom this post is presumably somewhat directed.
Yes it does:
This is kindly informing the reader that identifying with a label doesn’t grant you the ability to use the label’s skills. What other interpretation is there?
I usually don’t get ‘punished’ for apt criticism, and my criticism seems to usually be considered apt. I was not being disingenuous; I didn’t bother stating these specific objections to that passage when the article was posted because it didn’t seem high-quality enough to merit a response. But komponisto singled out that passage as containing something high-quality, so I felt the need to point out its obvious flaws. YMMV I guess.
That whole point seemed especially wrong for the reasons I stated at the end of that comment. Particularly, I know lots of people who call themselves “artists” or other such labels (I don’t think I know anyone who doesn’t associate with any labels at all, ever) and they all seem perfectly capable of “doing stuff”, even non-stereotypical stuff. The passage struck me as the assertion of a string of dubious statements mixed with obvious falsehoods, and I could not find a charitable way out; at best, it was terrible communication.
And, as I explained originally (and maintain), the early questions were not apt and would not be accepted at all if it not for the fact that they constitute soldiers for the winning army.
It was terrible communication. And, as is often the case with social dynamics, the part of the communication that allowed you to get away with this response to this particular paragraph is not the paragraph itself but rather the surrounding context which sets the bounds around how it is appropriate to interact with M.Vassar.
Maybe that’s the source of the confusion. I was responding to komponisto.
Maybe that’s the source of the confusion. I was responding to komponisto.
There isn’t confusion, there is disagreement and social objection. Yes, your text written to komponisto. The conversation about Vassar’s communication and how it changes the bounds of how much leeway must be granted to those acting against Vassar in the discussion thread remains the same.
Aha. Yes, I think there was confusion. I wasn’t focused on the “people stuff” parts of your comment, and I wasn’t thinking of it as something adversarial. Entirely my mistake—there were enough markers in your comment to see that’s what you were getting at.
I was mostly trying to disabuse komponisto (and future readers) of a falsehood.
Ok, I’m not entirely sure I understand (since I already unchached the conversation—ie. I remember what was said but not what I believe is believed about belief) but I’ll take your word for it!
I almost rather you would have left the statement unelaborated. This article is going to sound horrendously awful to anyone coming from outside the SI. (Not to imply that it may not sound awful to people on the inside, as well.)
Nitpicky, but I think that’s a bit of a stretch.
Wow! Such a negative reception. I wonder how much of that is due to a complete failure of comprehension on the part of the disapproving voters and how much is due to the same not reaching the punchline which completely changes the meaning of all previous text:
There were some good points in there, making the post reasonably good as it stands with a lot of potential to be better with a little more editing.
Would you be willing to expand? Every meaning I’ve been able to extract from that paragraph is either trivial (“identifying with a label does not imbue you with the qualities associated with that label”) or untrue (“people who identify with labels lose the ability to behave non-stereotypically”).
I’ve had no better luck with the article as a whole. The most charitable interpretation I’ve come up with for the whole piece is “if you identify yourself to us with a label of any sort, you have identity issues and must fix them before you can help us”, which...isn’t very charitable at all, actually. But how else can one explain, say, the first paragraph? Or the one that starts “If you’re looking for a cause...”? The article isn’t just dismissive of our hypothetical volunteer, it’s abusive toward him, and from very little evidence. I think that by itself explains a lot of the backlash.
One suspects that there’s a lot of missing context, that these prototypical volunteers are saying a bunch of other things that make the conclusions in the article less egregious (e.g. “I think they sort-of do [believe these stupid straw-man beliefs]”). One fix would be to rewrite the piece in positive terms, disposing very briefly of the bad framing in “how can an artist help?” and suggesting a replacement. The last paragraph is a fairly good prototype for the sort of piece I’m imagining.
I recommend the background reading for the kind of thing that Vassar was talking about in the paragraph in question.
So, let me get this straight: someone who works for SIAI made a frankly awful post which demonstrates quite clearly that they are terrible at dealing with people (not that that’s necessarily a requirement of their job, whatever that is), gets a deservedly negative response, and then deletes their account? What’s that supposed to solve? It just removes the ability to either defend themselves or concede apologetically.
They didn’t delete their account, it’s just what happens when you hit “delete” on one of your posts—it’s removed from the recent posts list, and your user name is disassociated from it and replaced with [deleted].
You’re looking for Michael Vassar. The account is not deleted, just the post.
Oh, ok. That makes much more sense.
It’s easy enough to make this point without the undue confusion and misdirection. If we are talking about researchers, the requirements seem to be (1) high intelligence, e.g. sufficient to (hypothetically) do work in pure math or theoretical physics and (2) willingness to work towards clear understanding of some currently very poorly-understood questions (i.e. hard to make any useful/visible progress).