I appreciate you being the voice of reason, but I’m actually with Eliezer on this one. (a) isn’t an immutable fact about you, it’s a matter of your policy—what things you allow yourself to get excited about. And if you end up doing nothing exciting for years on end, like most people, then your policy might be suboptimal.
Er, but… (a) is a stipulation that Eliezer himself specified. In his post. I was quoting him!
Eliezer was asking the question: how do you get people to keep working on something that they’re not “personally madly driven to accomplish”, etc. If you can make yourself (or someone else) “madly driven to accomplish” the thing, well, then… that answers that? I… don’t see how your comment isn’t a non sequitur :(
And if you end up doing nothing exciting for years on end, like most people, then your policy might be suboptimal.
True, of course, I agree with this! But… who on earth said anything about doing nothing exciting?
Suppose you are doing something exciting, but then there’s some other thing that you’re not excited about, but that you (allegedly) think that it’s important to keep working on, but that you don’t keep working on, due to lack of motivation. Your criticism doesn’t apply, but Eliezer’s question does.
I appreciate you being the voice of reason, but I’m actually with Eliezer on this one. (a) isn’t an immutable fact about you, it’s a matter of your policy—what things you allow yourself to get excited about. And if you end up doing nothing exciting for years on end, like most people, then your policy might be suboptimal.
Er, but… (a) is a stipulation that Eliezer himself specified. In his post. I was quoting him!
Eliezer was asking the question: how do you get people to keep working on something that they’re not “personally madly driven to accomplish”, etc. If you can make yourself (or someone else) “madly driven to accomplish” the thing, well, then… that answers that? I… don’t see how your comment isn’t a non sequitur :(
True, of course, I agree with this! But… who on earth said anything about doing nothing exciting?
Suppose you are doing something exciting, but then there’s some other thing that you’re not excited about, but that you (allegedly) think that it’s important to keep working on, but that you don’t keep working on, due to lack of motivation. Your criticism doesn’t apply, but Eliezer’s question does.