Basically my current plan is to learn how to build rationalist communities and optimize fun. Fun is instrumental in drawing people into rationalist communities.
I think outreach is helpful because it draws in other people, who can act autonomously, intelligently, and using their own skill sets. On my robotics team, I’ve found that most vaguely complex tasks are made easier (if not possible) when you work with other people.
My current strategy for doing that is making myself fun to be around, and finding people with goals that I want accomplished, and helping them with those. I’m less optimistic about the possibility of making people change goals, but it might actually be possible given enough time. Will investigate that further.
So then I start a community in DC and then college.
After college, I’ll try to do some mixture of consulting and engineering.
Consulting:
Basically, this might make it possible to spread rationality among business people in important fields. I’m not totally sure if there’s much marginal impact there, since they might already be rational enough. If that’s true, I probably won’t spend as much time on this. It also has the useful side effect of teaching me a variety of skills, and having a wider variety of contacts.
Engineering:
I think this is where my comparative advantage is, based on my experience in leading my robotics team, and becoming a Dean’s List Finalist. I would focus on creating technologies which improve the quality of life, which hopefully will be profitable. This gives me money for other projects, and donating to SIAI, and maybe SENS.
On top of that, lots and lots of good things seem to happen as people get richer, such as a lower birth rate (I consider this a good thing until we live in a post-scarcity environment), lower infant mortality rate, longer life expectancy, etc.
Basically, acquire skills, money, and influence in ways that generate lots of positive externalities.
Of course, this is all contingent on my continuing to think this would be effective. Should more effective instrumental goals come to my awareness, I would switch to them.
I think that rationality outreach is particularly useful in that it brings more people into helping. Those people can help increase and complement each other’s rationality and skills. More people can work on more things, and improve on instrumental goals in order to make things even more effective.
Also, I believe that it can be pursued in ways that exclude other goals.
I’d like to help!
Basically my current plan is to learn how to build rationalist communities and optimize fun. Fun is instrumental in drawing people into rationalist communities.
I think outreach is helpful because it draws in other people, who can act autonomously, intelligently, and using their own skill sets. On my robotics team, I’ve found that most vaguely complex tasks are made easier (if not possible) when you work with other people.
My current strategy for doing that is making myself fun to be around, and finding people with goals that I want accomplished, and helping them with those. I’m less optimistic about the possibility of making people change goals, but it might actually be possible given enough time. Will investigate that further.
So then I start a community in DC and then college.
After college, I’ll try to do some mixture of consulting and engineering.
Consulting: Basically, this might make it possible to spread rationality among business people in important fields. I’m not totally sure if there’s much marginal impact there, since they might already be rational enough. If that’s true, I probably won’t spend as much time on this. It also has the useful side effect of teaching me a variety of skills, and having a wider variety of contacts.
Engineering: I think this is where my comparative advantage is, based on my experience in leading my robotics team, and becoming a Dean’s List Finalist. I would focus on creating technologies which improve the quality of life, which hopefully will be profitable. This gives me money for other projects, and donating to SIAI, and maybe SENS. On top of that, lots and lots of good things seem to happen as people get richer, such as a lower birth rate (I consider this a good thing until we live in a post-scarcity environment), lower infant mortality rate, longer life expectancy, etc.
Basically, acquire skills, money, and influence in ways that generate lots of positive externalities.
Of course, this is all contingent on my continuing to think this would be effective. Should more effective instrumental goals come to my awareness, I would switch to them.
We should talk some time.
That’s a pretty well thought out set of medium-term goals! I’m impressed.
Thanks.
I think that rationality outreach is particularly useful in that it brings more people into helping. Those people can help increase and complement each other’s rationality and skills. More people can work on more things, and improve on instrumental goals in order to make things even more effective.
Also, I believe that it can be pursued in ways that exclude other goals.
Just to clarify: do you mean it can be pursued in ways that don’t exclude other goals?