Your first point is true to some extent but I think one of the points of Tsvi’s first article commented below exposes a problem with it: ”Deferral-based opinions don’t contain the detailed content that generated the opinions, and therefore can’t direct action effectively or update on new evidence correctly.”
Another problem is that if people defer, they will never get to that expert level.
But yeah, overall, I agree with the sentiment of your comment and I notice similar patterns in myself.
Totally agree. It’s the same reason they say that the best way to learn something is to teach it: it forces you to understand something from the ground up. But if rederiving something from scratch takes a lot of time and energy, then there has to be a good incentive for doing it. I think that’s what’s missing: incentive. “People should do difficult thinking to produce more impact” is a fine value to have, but without being able to point to any specific problem being caused by its absence, there’s no motivation for anyone to enact that value. It’s hard to be motivated to solve an abstract problem that may not even exist when there are real ones sitting in front of us.
Yup that tracks. (Mainly thinking out loud to see what I can do with my org:) I wonder if some sort of proof-of-work / proof-of-understanding incentive structure might help. I think one reason people focus on more concrete things in their upskilling journey is that it’s more legible to outsiders / offers more rewards/prestige/status. E.g. if you do some fellowship, that’s good for your resume and good for concrete artefacts. Deep (abstract) thinking doesn’t have similar legibility (yet), i.e. “I thought hard for 100h” probably doesn’t do much on a resume.
For this reason, EA organizations seem to rely less on credentials and more on short answer questions, writing samples, structured interviews, and work tests.
Then again, there is a weakness to just relying on that information. A candidate might be very intelligent and have thought about a problem very deeply but then have no track record for doing the actual work: a “living in the clouds” intellectual. Credentials and achievements are usually used as proxies for past evidence of hard work and general career direction, even if they don’t necessarily filter for critical thinking.
Your first point is true to some extent but I think one of the points of Tsvi’s first article commented below exposes a problem with it:
”Deferral-based opinions don’t contain the detailed content that generated the opinions, and therefore can’t direct action effectively or update on new evidence correctly.”
Another problem is that if people defer, they will never get to that expert level.
But yeah, overall, I agree with the sentiment of your comment and I notice similar patterns in myself.
Totally agree. It’s the same reason they say that the best way to learn something is to teach it: it forces you to understand something from the ground up. But if rederiving something from scratch takes a lot of time and energy, then there has to be a good incentive for doing it. I think that’s what’s missing: incentive. “People should do difficult thinking to produce more impact” is a fine value to have, but without being able to point to any specific problem being caused by its absence, there’s no motivation for anyone to enact that value. It’s hard to be motivated to solve an abstract problem that may not even exist when there are real ones sitting in front of us.
Yup that tracks. (Mainly thinking out loud to see what I can do with my org:) I wonder if some sort of proof-of-work / proof-of-understanding incentive structure might help. I think one reason people focus on more concrete things in their upskilling journey is that it’s more legible to outsiders / offers more rewards/prestige/status. E.g. if you do some fellowship, that’s good for your resume and good for concrete artefacts. Deep (abstract) thinking doesn’t have similar legibility (yet), i.e. “I thought hard for 100h” probably doesn’t do much on a resume.
For this reason, EA organizations seem to rely less on credentials and more on short answer questions, writing samples, structured interviews, and work tests.
Then again, there is a weakness to just relying on that information. A candidate might be very intelligent and have thought about a problem very deeply but then have no track record for doing the actual work: a “living in the clouds” intellectual. Credentials and achievements are usually used as proxies for past evidence of hard work and general career direction, even if they don’t necessarily filter for critical thinking.