I agree. This job offering doesn’t sound very appealing to me. It basically reads: “Would you like to be Nick Bostrom’s slave? He is much more important than you! It will be a honour to be his slave!”
Note that I’m not saying that the job isn’t worthwile or that the world couldn’t be a better place if Bostrom had more free time to do his research, just that the ad could be framed a bit better.
I see people are highly upvoting the post, even correcting for the Bostrom’s halo effect, so I’m updating a bit in the direction of you being right. I also see that you’ve followed Lachouette suggestion, and I like it.
I would be genuinely curious to see if it worked as intended in the end, might change the way in which I conduct job interviews a bit (I obviously realize that this is an irrelevant request that will probably not be met).
Do you actually perceive a slave to be similar in status to a sidekick (or personal assistant)? I think there’s a big difference there, and they’re only close enough to equivocate if Bostrom is actually pretty low-status.
...you are talking about status concerns, right? The post talks about “hiring someone” for the position, so it seems pretty clear to me it’s a paid role.
I agree. This job offering doesn’t sound very appealing to me. It basically reads: “Would you like to be Nick Bostrom’s slave? He is much more important than you! It will be a honour to be his slave!”
Note that I’m not saying that the job isn’t worthwile or that the world couldn’t be a better place if Bostrom had more free time to do his research, just that the ad could be framed a bit better.
The point of writing an ad like that is to be appealing to people who would fit the job and not be appealing to people who wouldn’t.
Exactly—if anything I am trying to make the job seem less appealing than it will be, so we attract only the right kind of person.
I see people are highly upvoting the post, even correcting for the Bostrom’s halo effect, so I’m updating a bit in the direction of you being right. I also see that you’ve followed Lachouette suggestion, and I like it.
I would be genuinely curious to see if it worked as intended in the end, might change the way in which I conduct job interviews a bit (I obviously realize that this is an irrelevant request that will probably not be met).
Best of luck with the recruiting.
The idea here is “high impact secretary”, rather than “slave”.
Do you actually perceive a slave to be similar in status to a sidekick (or personal assistant)? I think there’s a big difference there, and they’re only close enough to equivocate if Bostrom is actually pretty low-status.
...you are talking about status concerns, right? The post talks about “hiring someone” for the position, so it seems pretty clear to me it’s a paid role.