Selfishness: A rational agent will not post information that reduces his utility by enabling others to compete better and, more importantly, by causing him any effort unless some gain (status, monetary, happiness,…) offsets the former effect. Example: Dating advice. Better example: Have you seen articles by Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk?
Do you honestly think that Musk who gives his competitors his patents for free holds something back in the way of writing articles because he fears people will compete with him?
Musk doesn’t advice other people to copy him because he lives a life that includes 80 hours of work per week that he isn’t really enjoying. It also doesn’t leave him with time to write articles.
I was going to say, I have seen articles by Elon Musk and we have been discussing them recently, it’s just that for some reason he’s written them under a silly pseudonym like ‘Wait But Why’...
Fair Enough. Maybe I should take Elon Musk out, he has in WBW found a way to push the value of advertising beyond his the cost of his time spent. If Zuckerberg posts to, I will be fully falsified. To compensate, I introduce typical person X whose personal cost-benefit analysis from posting an article is negative. I still argue that this is the standard.
I think you’re missing the broader point I was making: writing your own articles is like changing the oil in your own car. It’s what you do when you are poor, unimportant, have low value of time, or it’s your hobby.
Once you become important, you start outsourcing work to research assistants, personal assistants, secretaries, PR employees, vice presidents, grad students, etc. Musk is a billionaire and a very busy one at that and doesn’t write his own books because it makes more sense for him to bring in someone like WBW to talk to for a few hours and have his staff show them around and brief them, and then they go off and a while later ghostwrite what Musk wanted to say. Zuckerberg is a billionaire and busy and he doesn’t write all his own stuff either, he tells his PR people ‘I want to predictably waste $100m on a splashy donation; write up the press release and a package for the press etc and send me a final draft’. Jobs didn’t write his own autobiography, that’s what Isaacson was for. Memoirs or books by famous politicians or pundits—well, if they’re retired they may have written most or all of it themselves, but if they’re active...? Less famously, superstar academics will often have written little or none of the papers or books published under their names; examples here would be invidious, but I will say I’ve sometimes looked at acknowledgements sections and wondered how much of the book the author could have written themselves. (If you wonder how it’s possible for a single person to write scores of high-quality papers and books and opeds, sometimes the answer is that they are a freak of nature blessed with shortsleeping genes & endless willpower; and sometimes the answer is simply that it’s not a single person.) And this is just the written channels; if you have access to the corridors of power, your time may well better be spent networking and having in-person meetings and dinners. (See the Clinton Foundation for an example of the rhizomatic nature of power.)
I’m not trying to pass judgment on whether these are appropriate ways for the rich and powerful to express their views and influence society, but it is very naive to say that just because you cannot go to the bookstore and buy a book with Musk’s name on it as author, that he must not be actively spreading his views and trying to influence people.
Yeah, this highlights my overall issue with the OP.
Elon Musk’s path to success is well-known and not replicable. His story relies too much on (1) luck and (2) high-IQ-plus-ultra-high-conscientiousness, in that order of importance. Elon Musk is a red herring in these discussions.
More to the point, there is already an absurd overabundance of available information about how to be quite successful in business. It is not to the comparative advantage of LW to try to replicate this type of content. Likewise, the Internet hosts an absurd overabundance of practical, useful advice on
how to exercise, with the aim of producing any given physical result
how to succeed at dating, to whatever end desired
how to manage one’s personal finances
etc.
It is not the role of LW to comprehensively answer all these questions. LW has always leaned more toward rationality qua rationality. More strategy, less tactics.
Also, I think the OP is attacking a straw man to a large degree. Nobody here thinks that LW has already emmanetized the eschaton. Nobody here thinks the LW has already solved rationality. We’re just a group of people interested in thinking about and discussing these types of considerations.
All that said, when I first discovered LW (and particularly the Sequences), it was such a cognitive bombshell that I did genuinely expect that my life and mind would be completely changed. And that expectation was sort of borne out, but in ways that only make sense in a sort of post hoc fashion. As in, I used LW-inspired-cognition for a lot of major life choices, but it’s impossible to do A/B testing and determine if those were the right choices, because I don’t have access to the world where I made the opposite choice. (People elsewhere in this very comment thread repeat the meme that “LWers are not more rational than average.” Well, how would you know if they were? What does that even mean?)
I do agree. The point was originally “selfishness or effort” which would have avoided the misunderstanding. I think for Musk, the competitive aspect is definitely less important than the effort aspect (he is surely one of those persons for whom “the value of time approaches infinity”). However, I doubt that Musk would give away patents if he didn’t see an advantage in doing that.
I doubt that Musk would give away patents if he didn’t see an advantage in doing that.
He sees that it gives him an advantage with the goal of our society not burning fossil fuels. But it doesn’t give Tesla an advantage at making profits.
Do you honestly think that Musk who gives his competitors his patents for free holds something back in the way of writing articles because he fears people will compete with him?
Musk doesn’t advice other people to copy him because he lives a life that includes 80 hours of work per week that he isn’t really enjoying. It also doesn’t leave him with time to write articles.
I was going to say, I have seen articles by Elon Musk and we have been discussing them recently, it’s just that for some reason he’s written them under a silly pseudonym like ‘Wait But Why’...
Disintermediation from social media shaming. Also it’s higher status to dictate stuff, and saves time.
When does a ghostwritten book or article deserve the name of the person who types it?
Fair Enough. Maybe I should take Elon Musk out, he has in WBW found a way to push the value of advertising beyond his the cost of his time spent. If Zuckerberg posts to, I will be fully falsified. To compensate, I introduce typical person X whose personal cost-benefit analysis from posting an article is negative. I still argue that this is the standard.
I think you’re missing the broader point I was making: writing your own articles is like changing the oil in your own car. It’s what you do when you are poor, unimportant, have low value of time, or it’s your hobby.
Once you become important, you start outsourcing work to research assistants, personal assistants, secretaries, PR employees, vice presidents, grad students, etc. Musk is a billionaire and a very busy one at that and doesn’t write his own books because it makes more sense for him to bring in someone like WBW to talk to for a few hours and have his staff show them around and brief them, and then they go off and a while later ghostwrite what Musk wanted to say. Zuckerberg is a billionaire and busy and he doesn’t write all his own stuff either, he tells his PR people ‘I want to predictably waste $100m on a splashy donation; write up the press release and a package for the press etc and send me a final draft’. Jobs didn’t write his own autobiography, that’s what Isaacson was for. Memoirs or books by famous politicians or pundits—well, if they’re retired they may have written most or all of it themselves, but if they’re active...? Less famously, superstar academics will often have written little or none of the papers or books published under their names; examples here would be invidious, but I will say I’ve sometimes looked at acknowledgements sections and wondered how much of the book the author could have written themselves. (If you wonder how it’s possible for a single person to write scores of high-quality papers and books and opeds, sometimes the answer is that they are a freak of nature blessed with shortsleeping genes & endless willpower; and sometimes the answer is simply that it’s not a single person.) And this is just the written channels; if you have access to the corridors of power, your time may well better be spent networking and having in-person meetings and dinners. (See the Clinton Foundation for an example of the rhizomatic nature of power.)
I’m not trying to pass judgment on whether these are appropriate ways for the rich and powerful to express their views and influence society, but it is very naive to say that just because you cannot go to the bookstore and buy a book with Musk’s name on it as author, that he must not be actively spreading his views and trying to influence people.
Yeah, this highlights my overall issue with the OP.
Elon Musk’s path to success is well-known and not replicable. His story relies too much on (1) luck and (2) high-IQ-plus-ultra-high-conscientiousness, in that order of importance. Elon Musk is a red herring in these discussions.
More to the point, there is already an absurd overabundance of available information about how to be quite successful in business. It is not to the comparative advantage of LW to try to replicate this type of content. Likewise, the Internet hosts an absurd overabundance of practical, useful advice on
how to exercise, with the aim of producing any given physical result
how to succeed at dating, to whatever end desired
how to manage one’s personal finances
etc.
It is not the role of LW to comprehensively answer all these questions. LW has always leaned more toward rationality qua rationality. More strategy, less tactics.
Also, I think the OP is attacking a straw man to a large degree. Nobody here thinks that LW has already emmanetized the eschaton. Nobody here thinks the LW has already solved rationality. We’re just a group of people interested in thinking about and discussing these types of considerations.
All that said, when I first discovered LW (and particularly the Sequences), it was such a cognitive bombshell that I did genuinely expect that my life and mind would be completely changed. And that expectation was sort of borne out, but in ways that only make sense in a sort of post hoc fashion. As in, I used LW-inspired-cognition for a lot of major life choices, but it’s impossible to do A/B testing and determine if those were the right choices, because I don’t have access to the world where I made the opposite choice. (People elsewhere in this very comment thread repeat the meme that “LWers are not more rational than average.” Well, how would you know if they were? What does that even mean?)
You could find some people similar to you, and mumble certain incantations.
Just because the example wasn’t well-chosen that doesn’t invalidate the argument per se.
I do agree. The point was originally “selfishness or effort” which would have avoided the misunderstanding. I think for Musk, the competitive aspect is definitely less important than the effort aspect (he is surely one of those persons for whom “the value of time approaches infinity”). However, I doubt that Musk would give away patents if he didn’t see an advantage in doing that.
He sees that it gives him an advantage with the goal of our society not burning fossil fuels. But it doesn’t give Tesla an advantage at making profits.