Now that I’m Executive Director I don’t have much time to bang my head on hard (research) problems, though I did start doing that a while back.
This is a “merely” inspirational post, but I think there’s room for that on LW. There isn’t much new insight in A sense that more is possible, either, but I found it valuable.
Luke, I thought this was a good post for the following reasons.
(1) Not everything needs to be an argument to persuade. Sometimes it’s useful to invest your limited resources in better illuminating your position instead of illuminating how we ought to arrive at your position. Many LWers already respect your opinions, and it’s sometimes useful to simply know what they are.
The charitable reading of this post is not that it’s an attempted argument via cherry-picked examples that support your feeling of hopefulness. Instead I read it as an attempt to communicate your level of hopefulness accurately to people who you largely expect to be less hopeful. This is an imprecise business that necessarily involves some emotional language, but ultimately I think you are just saying: do not privilege induction with such confidence, we live in a time of change.
It might quell a whole class of complaints if you said something like that in the post. Perhaps you feel you’ve noticed a lot of things that made you question and revise your prior confidence about the unchangingness of the world...if so, why not tell us explicitly?
(2) I also see this post as a step in the direction of your stated goal to spend time writing well. It seems like something you spent time writing (at least relative to the amount of content it contains). Quite apart from the content it contains, it is a big step in the direction of eloquence. LWers are programmed to notice/become alarmed when eloquence is being used to build up a shallow argument, but it’s the same sort of writing whether your argument is shallow or deep. This style of writing will do you a great service when it is attached to a much deeper argument. So at the least it’s good practice, and evidence that you should stick with your goal.
I wouldn’t say I’m a good FAI researcher. I’m just very quick at writing up the kind of “platform papers” that summarize the problem space, connect things to the existing literature, show other researchers what they can work on, explain the basic arguments. For example.
But wouldn’t you prefer to have an executive director of foos with the technical expertise to be a foo himself, so he has a better understanding of the foos that he’s executively directing?
Yes, but ceteris ain’t paribus. If foo=software engineer, sure, make one of yours executive director, then throw a brick in the Bay Area and hire the one you knocked out.
Some of the sequence re-writes (I’m thinking specifically of the ones on facingsingularity web site) are better written than the originals, and there is some value in that.
Some of the sequence re-writes (I’m thinking specifically of the ones on facingsingularity web site) are better written than the originals
Well, they’re more compressed, anyway. But they only accomplish that by having the luxury of linking to dozens of Eliezer’s original, more detailed and persuasive articles.
Now that I’m Executive Director I don’t have much time to bang my head on hard (research) problems, though I did start doing that a while back.
This is a “merely” inspirational post, but I think there’s room for that on LW. There isn’t much new insight in A sense that more is possible, either, but I found it valuable.
Luke, I thought this was a good post for the following reasons.
(1) Not everything needs to be an argument to persuade. Sometimes it’s useful to invest your limited resources in better illuminating your position instead of illuminating how we ought to arrive at your position. Many LWers already respect your opinions, and it’s sometimes useful to simply know what they are.
The charitable reading of this post is not that it’s an attempted argument via cherry-picked examples that support your feeling of hopefulness. Instead I read it as an attempt to communicate your level of hopefulness accurately to people who you largely expect to be less hopeful. This is an imprecise business that necessarily involves some emotional language, but ultimately I think you are just saying: do not privilege induction with such confidence, we live in a time of change.
It might quell a whole class of complaints if you said something like that in the post. Perhaps you feel you’ve noticed a lot of things that made you question and revise your prior confidence about the unchangingness of the world...if so, why not tell us explicitly?
(2) I also see this post as a step in the direction of your stated goal to spend time writing well. It seems like something you spent time writing (at least relative to the amount of content it contains). Quite apart from the content it contains, it is a big step in the direction of eloquence. LWers are programmed to notice/become alarmed when eloquence is being used to build up a shallow argument, but it’s the same sort of writing whether your argument is shallow or deep. This style of writing will do you a great service when it is attached to a much deeper argument. So at the least it’s good practice, and evidence that you should stick with your goal.
I agree so much I’m commenting.
That strikes me as an extremely wrong way to allocate human resources. Good executive directors can’t be rarer than good FAI researchers.
I wouldn’t say I’m a good FAI researcher. I’m just very quick at writing up the kind of “platform papers” that summarize the problem space, connect things to the existing literature, show other researchers what they can work on, explain the basic arguments. For example.
I imagine it is easier to motivate people to be FAI researchers than executive directors.
But wouldn’t you prefer to have an executive director of foos with the technical expertise to be a foo himself, so he has a better understanding of the foos that he’s executively directing?
Yes, but ceteris ain’t paribus. If foo=software engineer, sure, make one of yours executive director, then throw a brick in the Bay Area and hire the one you knocked out.
I think inspiration is important
Some of the sequence re-writes (I’m thinking specifically of the ones on facingsingularity web site) are better written than the originals, and there is some value in that.
Well, they’re more compressed, anyway. But they only accomplish that by having the luxury of linking to dozens of Eliezer’s original, more detailed and persuasive articles.