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”.)
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”).