While I appreciate the effort toward optimal decision-making, surely there is some way to contribute without invading Eliezer’s personal life?
Can you picture anyone doing peak creative work while trying to justify every ounce of their resource use? To others or to themselves? Eliezer presumably knows he doesn’t need to do that, but… threads like this can’t help his or others’ morale. And morale is a precious resource.
Group efforts in general, and particularly philanthropic efforts, devolve too easily into shows of self-sacrifice. After all, sacrifice takes less effort in many ways, and it looks like trying . If we want to create a positive singularity, we’ll need to make our project fun, we’ll need to make the actual useful work attractive, we’ll need to get people aim for achievement (not for an appearance of “using all their resources”), and we’ll to make it something that real people want to join and don’t burn out at.
It isn’t only Eliezer who can help, by the way. If nothing else, you can help the effort get money; some of those willing and able able to do FAI research are spending their time raising money, right now, for lack of other ways to get money. If you find a way to gather money for the effort, more research will be done and the chances of a positive singularity will improve. There are other possibilities for helping, too. If you’re concerned about the future, perhaps take a look at what you have, who you know, and what you might do? Creating a positive singularity can be a lot of fun.
I think the first 3/4ths are very well stated. I couldn’t agree more.
On the last bit, my personal intuition is there are plenty of things people can do for FAI research beyond raising money. Moreover, such intangibles are likely often more important to the cause of FAI than cash.
(Also, the argument that “some of those willing and able able to do FAI research are spending their time raising money, right now, for lack of other ways to get money” may be undermined by the paragraph above it; e.g., I’d rather be thinking about FAI than raising money for others to think about FAI.)
l, Aww, Ben_Wraith:
While I appreciate the effort toward optimal decision-making, surely there is some way to contribute without invading Eliezer’s personal life?
Can you picture anyone doing peak creative work while trying to justify every ounce of their resource use? To others or to themselves? Eliezer presumably knows he doesn’t need to do that, but… threads like this can’t help his or others’ morale. And morale is a precious resource.
Group efforts in general, and particularly philanthropic efforts, devolve too easily into shows of self-sacrifice. After all, sacrifice takes less effort in many ways, and it looks like trying . If we want to create a positive singularity, we’ll need to make our project fun, we’ll need to make the actual useful work attractive, we’ll need to get people aim for achievement (not for an appearance of “using all their resources”), and we’ll to make it something that real people want to join and don’t burn out at.
It isn’t only Eliezer who can help, by the way. If nothing else, you can help the effort get money; some of those willing and able able to do FAI research are spending their time raising money, right now, for lack of other ways to get money. If you find a way to gather money for the effort, more research will be done and the chances of a positive singularity will improve. There are other possibilities for helping, too. If you’re concerned about the future, perhaps take a look at what you have, who you know, and what you might do? Creating a positive singularity can be a lot of fun.
I think the first 3/4ths are very well stated. I couldn’t agree more.
On the last bit, my personal intuition is there are plenty of things people can do for FAI research beyond raising money. Moreover, such intangibles are likely often more important to the cause of FAI than cash.
(Also, the argument that “some of those willing and able able to do FAI research are spending their time raising money, right now, for lack of other ways to get money” may be undermined by the paragraph above it; e.g., I’d rather be thinking about FAI than raising money for others to think about FAI.)