Nick Bostrom’s involvement is one of my greatest causes for hope for the department. If someone like him isn’t involved, I expect the department to do almost no genuinely useful work, because it will be another standard department whose output can be predicted by, as Eliezer puts it, the simple model of a dumb amoeba attracted toward status and funding and no other considerations.
There’s no question that people are attracted by status and funding. But status and funding are really good incentives for people to actually get work done. In math for example, status is tied pretty closely to mathematical output, so trying to go for status helps. Similarly, in biomedical engineering, funding is tied pretty closely to the production of functioning medical devices. Just because people have status and funding as goals rather than pure productivity doesn’t mean they won’t be very productive.
It seems a little ironic that you cite the support of a very high status person (who, being high status, likely has status-seeking tendencies to some degree or another) as evidence that an organization will not be corrupted by status-seeking. If you’re a supporter of Bostrom’s work, it seems worth noting that he’s managed to become pretty high-status in the process of doing it.
Also, what evidence is there for Eliezer’s “dumb amoeba” model of academia? My impression is also that many people go in to academia precisely because they are interested in doing research that interests them for its own sake rather than seeking status and compensation in the for-profit sector. For example, this programmer writes about various paths to a “unicorn job”, where you get paid to work on things you’re curious about, and why he estimated that academia was the best path to such a job. Regardless of whether the “dumb amoeba” model is correct, it seems like academia has produced a lot of valuable stuff in other domains, and I’m curious if you think that x-risk is going to be an unusual domain for some reason or another.
Nick Bostrom’s involvement is one of my greatest causes for hope for the department. If someone like him isn’t involved, I expect the department to do almost no genuinely useful work, because it will be another standard department whose output can be predicted by, as Eliezer puts it, the simple model of a dumb amoeba attracted toward status and funding and no other considerations.
Not only can your comment be perceived to state that the other people involved in the project are mainly interested in status but also that they are selfish and incompetent. One reason for that impression are the connotations of a “dumb amoeba” that you mention. Your remark that without Nick Bostrom you expect them to do almost no genuinely useful work further adds to the overall negative perception.
You further miss the importance of status and public relations when it comes to raising awareness of existential risks and in arguing with policy makers.
Luke’s comment talks about “someone like [Bostrom]”, not “Bostrom”.
Right. That allows the comment to be technically superfluous, given a charitable interpretation. Otherwise it still implies that he either deems the rest of the current staff to be not like Bostrom or that most academics are not like him and instead only care for status while getting nothing useful done. Especially since he could have instead stated that he is happy to see people being involved in the project that are probably going to do useful work.
By “like Bostrom” I mean: consistently outputs work useful for making decisions affecting global risk.
Most plausible hires are, indeed, not like Bostrom in this respect. My statement does not imply, however, that most academics “care only for status.” I only said that their output could be predicted by a simple model of an amoeba seeking status and funding. (One of the major results of the heuristics & biases tradition, and also neuroeconomics, is that we are not Homo Economicus, and thus we cannot infer desires cleanly from behavior or “output”.)
Nick Bostrom’s involvement is one of my greatest causes for hope for the department. If someone like him isn’t involved, I expect the department to do almost no genuinely useful work, because it will be another standard department whose output can be predicted by, as Eliezer puts it, the simple model of a dumb amoeba attracted toward status and funding and no other considerations.
There’s no question that people are attracted by status and funding. But status and funding are really good incentives for people to actually get work done. In math for example, status is tied pretty closely to mathematical output, so trying to go for status helps. Similarly, in biomedical engineering, funding is tied pretty closely to the production of functioning medical devices. Just because people have status and funding as goals rather than pure productivity doesn’t mean they won’t be very productive.
It seems a little ironic that you cite the support of a very high status person (who, being high status, likely has status-seeking tendencies to some degree or another) as evidence that an organization will not be corrupted by status-seeking. If you’re a supporter of Bostrom’s work, it seems worth noting that he’s managed to become pretty high-status in the process of doing it.
Also, what evidence is there for Eliezer’s “dumb amoeba” model of academia? My impression is also that many people go in to academia precisely because they are interested in doing research that interests them for its own sake rather than seeking status and compensation in the for-profit sector. For example, this programmer writes about various paths to a “unicorn job”, where you get paid to work on things you’re curious about, and why he estimated that academia was the best path to such a job. Regardless of whether the “dumb amoeba” model is correct, it seems like academia has produced a lot of valuable stuff in other domains, and I’m curious if you think that x-risk is going to be an unusual domain for some reason or another.
Not only can your comment be perceived to state that the other people involved in the project are mainly interested in status but also that they are selfish and incompetent. One reason for that impression are the connotations of a “dumb amoeba” that you mention. Your remark that without Nick Bostrom you expect them to do almost no genuinely useful work further adds to the overall negative perception.
You further miss the importance of status and public relations when it comes to raising awareness of existential risks and in arguing with policy makers.
Luke’s comment talks about “someone like [Bostrom]”, not “Bostrom”.
Right. That allows the comment to be technically superfluous, given a charitable interpretation. Otherwise it still implies that he either deems the rest of the current staff to be not like Bostrom or that most academics are not like him and instead only care for status while getting nothing useful done. Especially since he could have instead stated that he is happy to see people being involved in the project that are probably going to do useful work.
By “like Bostrom” I mean: consistently outputs work useful for making decisions affecting global risk.
Most plausible hires are, indeed, not like Bostrom in this respect. My statement does not imply, however, that most academics “care only for status.” I only said that their output could be predicted by a simple model of an amoeba seeking status and funding. (One of the major results of the heuristics & biases tradition, and also neuroeconomics, is that we are not Homo Economicus, and thus we cannot infer desires cleanly from behavior or “output”.)
This seems to be the assumption (modulo the equivocation of “care”).