“Probably most ambitious people are starved for the sort of encouragement they’d get from ambitious peers”
This, I think, is one of the roots of smart people getting into weird stuff. Contrarians, contra-cultural types, conspiracy theorists (the inventors, not the believers) and the like are usually very smart, they just don’t optimize their smarts in a good direction, so a newly minted smart person will feel attracted to them. The end result are very suboptimal communities of smart individuals going in all kinds of weird directions.
That’s my case, mind. Finding the rationalist community has helped me put breaks on some of my weirdest aspects, but by no means on all of them. Which might or not be smart of me, no idea yet at this point.
To clarify, does this differ from saying that this community-at-large believes things you don’t believe?
Like, I could imagine someone saying this community “lacks brakes” on the subject of AI risk, because we take it seriously and encourage other people to take it seriously and sometimes to significantly change their life in response to taking it seriously. And how someone feels about that probably depends on whether they think AI risk actually is that big a deal or not. (I guess someone could say, like, “yes, that’s the community lacking brakes, and in this case that’s a good thing”.)
Signaling. Any idiot can believe things that are obviously true, or mainstream truths that are already in the textbooks. And it takes time for a smart person to become an expert at something actually useful.
Doing difficult weird stuff is the obvious shortcut. The problem is, if you take this shortcut, you quite often get lost in the woods.
“Probably most ambitious people are starved for the sort of encouragement they’d get from ambitious peers”
If you were to substitute “intelligent” for “ambitious”, I would agree. Some kind of dialog is needed to flourish, and a dialog between equals is strongly preferred. Or said another way, when training, it makes no sense to train with to little weight.
The smartest people tend to be ambitious.
I strongly disagree. Assuming a certain bias regarding the selection of examples, this is just a tautology: Highly visible people are highly visible. Successful people are visible. Stupid people are on average less successful. Non-ambitious people are less visible. Some counterexamples would be Grigorij Perelman, or Steve Wozniak (I know basically nothing of these people, and am willing to be proven wrong)
This, I think, is one of the roots of smart people getting into weird stuff. Contrarians, contra-cultural types, conspiracy theorists (the inventors, not the believers) and the like are usually very smart, they just don’t optimize their smarts in a good direction, so a newly minted smart person will feel attracted to them. The end result are very suboptimal communities of smart individuals going in all kinds of weird directions.
That’s my case, mind. Finding the rationalist community has helped me put breaks on some of my weirdest aspects, but by no means on all of them. Which might or not be smart of me, no idea yet at this point.
I would VERY strongly argue this place also lacks brakes.
To clarify, does this differ from saying that this community-at-large believes things you don’t believe?
Like, I could imagine someone saying this community “lacks brakes” on the subject of AI risk, because we take it seriously and encourage other people to take it seriously and sometimes to significantly change their life in response to taking it seriously. And how someone feels about that probably depends on whether they think AI risk actually is that big a deal or not. (I guess someone could say, like, “yes, that’s the community lacking brakes, and in this case that’s a good thing”.)
Is that the sort of thing you mean, or?
What kind of brakes would you want?
I can easily picture how this community could put brakes on one person and, at the same time, totally remove them for someone else.
It can even do both in different areas for the same person! (N-not that I would know...)
Signaling. Any idiot can believe things that are obviously true, or mainstream truths that are already in the textbooks. And it takes time for a smart person to become an expert at something actually useful.
Doing difficult weird stuff is the obvious shortcut. The problem is, if you take this shortcut, you quite often get lost in the woods.
Ouch. Your comment hits close to home.
If you were to substitute “intelligent” for “ambitious”, I would agree. Some kind of dialog is needed to flourish, and a dialog between equals is strongly preferred. Or said another way, when training, it makes no sense to train with to little weight.
I strongly disagree. Assuming a certain bias regarding the selection of examples, this is just a tautology: Highly visible people are highly visible. Successful people are visible. Stupid people are on average less successful. Non-ambitious people are less visible. Some counterexamples would be Grigorij Perelman, or Steve Wozniak (I know basically nothing of these people, and am willing to be proven wrong)