I think that by default, people should spend more time doing things, and less time worrying about if they’re smart enough to do things. Then, if they don’t enjoy working they should 100% feel free to do something else!
That is, try lots of things, fail fast, then try something else.
Here’s some reasons why:
As you say, people can improve at things. I think this is less of a factor than you do, but it’s probably still underrated on the margin. Taking time to study math or practice coding will make you better at coding; while effort is no guarantee of success, it’s still generally related.
People can be pretty bad at judging aptitude. I think this is the main factor. I’ve definitely misjudged people’s aptitude in the past, where people I’ve thought were pretty competent turned out to not so and vice versa. In general, the best predictor of whether someone can or cannot do a thing is seeing if they can do the thing.
Aptitude is often context-dependent. People are often more-or-less competent depending on the context. PhD programs and depressing jobs are two common factors that make people seem significantly less competent. Antidepressants also exist, and seem to be a contributing factor in helping people be more functional.
It’s healthier to try than to worry. I think people often end up sad and unmotivated because they feel incompetent before they’ve put in a solid effort to do good things. Empirically, focusing too much on feelings of inferiority is really bad for productivity and momentum; I’ve often found that people can do many more things when they put in some effort than when they’re beating themselves up.
Overall, I think people should lean more toward work trials/work trial tasks (and being more okay with not being hired after work trials). I also think we should have more just do the thing energy and more let’s move on to the next thing energy, and less being stuck worrying about if you can do the thing energy.
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I do think the AI alignment community should try to be slightly more careful when dismissing people, since it can be quite off-putting or discouraging to new people. It also causes people to worry more about “does someone high status think I can do it?” instead of “can I actually do it?”. This is the case especially when the judgments might be revised later.
For what it’s worth, “you’re not good enough” is sometimes stated outright, instead of implied. To share a concrete example: in my first CFAR workshop in 2015, I was told by a senior person in the community that I was probably not smart enough to work on AI Alignment (in particular, it was suggested that I was not good enough at math, as I avoided math in high school and never did any contest math). This was despite me having studied math and CS for ~2 hours a day for almost 7 months at that point, and was incredibly disheartening.Thankfully, other senior people in the community encouraged me to keep trying, which is why I stuck around at all. (In 2017, said senior person told me that they were wrong. Though, like, I haven’t actually done that much impressive alignment research yet, so we’ll see!)
Insofar as we should be cautious about implying that people are not good enough, we should be even more cautious about directly stating this to people.
(Disclaimer: The Law of Equal and Opposite Advice probably applies to some people here.)
I think that by default, people should spend more time doing things, and less time worrying about if they’re smart enough to do things. Then, if they don’t enjoy working they should 100% feel free to do something else!
That is, try lots of things, fail fast, then try something else.
Here’s some reasons why:
As you say, people can improve at things. I think this is less of a factor than you do, but it’s probably still underrated on the margin. Taking time to study math or practice coding will make you better at coding; while effort is no guarantee of success, it’s still generally related.
People can be pretty bad at judging aptitude. I think this is the main factor. I’ve definitely misjudged people’s aptitude in the past, where people I’ve thought were pretty competent turned out to not so and vice versa. In general, the best predictor of whether someone can or cannot do a thing is seeing if they can do the thing.
Aptitude is often context-dependent. People are often more-or-less competent depending on the context. PhD programs and depressing jobs are two common factors that make people seem significantly less competent. Antidepressants also exist, and seem to be a contributing factor in helping people be more functional.
It’s healthier to try than to worry. I think people often end up sad and unmotivated because they feel incompetent before they’ve put in a solid effort to do good things. Empirically, focusing too much on feelings of inferiority is really bad for productivity and momentum; I’ve often found that people can do many more things when they put in some effort than when they’re beating themselves up.
Overall, I think people should lean more toward work trials/work trial tasks (and being more okay with not being hired after work trials). I also think we should have more just do the thing energy and more let’s move on to the next thing energy, and less being stuck worrying about if you can do the thing energy.
==========
I do think the AI alignment community should try to be slightly more careful when dismissing people, since it can be quite off-putting or discouraging to new people. It also causes people to worry more about “does someone high status think I can do it?” instead of “can I actually do it?”. This is the case especially when the judgments might be revised later.
For what it’s worth, “you’re not good enough” is sometimes stated outright, instead of implied. To share a concrete example: in my first CFAR workshop in 2015, I was told by a senior person in the community that I was probably not smart enough to work on AI Alignment (in particular, it was suggested that I was not good enough at math, as I avoided math in high school and never did any contest math). This was despite me having studied math and CS for ~2 hours a day for almost 7 months at that point, and was incredibly disheartening.Thankfully, other senior people in the community encouraged me to keep trying, which is why I stuck around at all. (In 2017, said senior person told me that they were wrong. Though, like, I haven’t actually done that much impressive alignment research yet, so we’ll see!)
Insofar as we should be cautious about implying that people are not good enough, we should be even more cautious about directly stating this to people.