Pushing back on “most people“ - it’s “most people around these parts.” Most of humanity is doing low skill work.
As for the remaining elites—I don’t know, I think chasing legibility is likely the dominant strategy? People in these spaces like to think that it’s not that important for success, but having looked at the profiles of dozens of rats and EAs, I’m convinced it is. The mainstream list is “T1 grad or PhD”; but if you add:
-Started a post-grad education
-Started a highly successful/multi-employee business
-Skilled programmer
-Incredible, legible autodidacty (eg Yudkowsky)
you cover ~95% of them, and the remainder are mostly liberal arts college grads.
I think it’s likely that “Doesn’t Matter” is actually just “Doesn’t Matter Anymore.” Credentials seem to actually be a good signal of competency; they just don’t scale well to the furthest heights of human accomplishment, akin to how common IQ measurements break down around 130 or so.
Pushing back on “most people“ - it’s “most people around these parts.” Most of humanity is doing low skill work.
As for the remaining elites—I don’t know, I think chasing legibility is likely the dominant strategy? People in these spaces like to think that it’s not that important for success, but having looked at the profiles of dozens of rats and EAs, I’m convinced it is. The mainstream list is “T1 grad or PhD”; but if you add:
-Started a post-grad education
-Started a highly successful/multi-employee business
-Skilled programmer
-Incredible, legible autodidacty (eg Yudkowsky)
you cover ~95% of them, and the remainder are mostly liberal arts college grads.
I think it’s likely that “Doesn’t Matter” is actually just “Doesn’t Matter Anymore.” Credentials seem to actually be a good signal of competency; they just don’t scale well to the furthest heights of human accomplishment, akin to how common IQ measurements break down around 130 or so.