I’ll assume this comment is tongue in cheeck, but respond by taking this (uncomfortably) seriously anyway: (Feel free to downvote or delete if this crosses some boundary.)
The AI alignment field has already been founded. The kinds of people we would want to clone are those who could solve it.
As for Eliezer specifically, from what I understand from his public writing, he’s a) obviously incredibly smart (though not at the ridiculous level of von Neumann), but also he’s b) particularly gifted in language (as can be seen in his prolific writing output), rather than e.g. math; c) he seems to have serious problems with fatigue, and he also d) mentioned somewhere that he’s not particularly happy, in general.
a) and b) are presumably genetic and would already not make him the best candidate (and when considering cloning, why settle for anything but the best?), but insofar as c) and d) have a genetic component, that only disqualifies him further. And our prior for problems like fatigue to have a genetic component should be higher for him than for a random member of the population: see here.
But (d) seems like a rounding error given what’s at stake,[1] and (b) doesn’t seem like a negative. The Van Neumann comparison only seems relevant if we can clone dead people (which I assume we can’t?). So on the whole, he still seems like a great choice to me. But by all means, clone both him and paul.
Isn’t the guy who founded the AI alignment field the obvious person to clone? Especially given that he’s still alive.
I’ll assume this comment is tongue in cheeck, but respond by taking this (uncomfortably) seriously anyway: (Feel free to downvote or delete if this crosses some boundary.)
The AI alignment field has already been founded. The kinds of people we would want to clone are those who could solve it.
As for Eliezer specifically, from what I understand from his public writing, he’s a) obviously incredibly smart (though not at the ridiculous level of von Neumann), but also he’s b) particularly gifted in language (as can be seen in his prolific writing output), rather than e.g. math; c) he seems to have serious problems with fatigue, and he also d) mentioned somewhere that he’s not particularly happy, in general.
a) and b) are presumably genetic and would already not make him the best candidate (and when considering cloning, why settle for anything but the best?), but insofar as c) and d) have a genetic component, that only disqualifies him further. And our prior for problems like fatigue to have a genetic component should be higher for him than for a random member of the population: see here.
I was actually being serious.
But (d) seems like a rounding error given what’s at stake,[1] and (b) doesn’t seem like a negative. The Van Neumann comparison only seems relevant if we can clone dead people (which I assume we can’t?). So on the whole, he still seems like a great choice to me. But by all means, clone both him and paul.
As far as political feasibility goes, the hedonic level seems less important to me than consent.