We’ve already talked a little about economics but it seems you haven’t really got the hang of it yet. If you plan to sell your labour, the ‘value’ of your labour is not your problem, negotiate the best rate you can for what you can do. If you take a more entrepreneurial route you can try to sell a product. Again, your effort is not the point, you just negotiate for what the results are worth.
I’m starting to regret writing the post in the first person, ’cuz people think I’m actually looking for employment. I’m not, really. Anyway.
I’m not thinking about how much money I could make, I’m thinking about how competent I think I am. What you say makes sense if I cared about money. What I really care about is being able to have the identity of someone who codes competently, in which case the ‘value’ of my labor is what determines that. I want to be good at what I do, and I’m complaining about the huge gap between me-now and me-good, no matter how much money I’d make in either case.
But that’s off-topic for this post, so I shouldn’t have brought it up.
It’s kind of arrogant to think that you are qualified to be the judge of your own value. If someone seems happy to pay you for your efforts, accept it in good grace and let them worry about what your time is worth.
Of course I’d look for external validation now and then, but that’s not as important to me as building skill. Periodic tests via oDesk or the like should be enough to test my self-assessments for accuracy. But I don’t care all that much about what the market thinks, really. I just want to build skills. I’ve managed to play guitar for 3 years without having the market judge its value, but I could care less. I play guitar for myself and sometimes my friends, and I do it because I care about its ‘value’: to me. I don’t need to go busking to determine that.
I think it would be worth you while to learn some economics. Comparative Advantage would be a good place to start. Your values are valid but you should be fully aware of your choices.
I think you underestimate my knowledge of economics. I know about comparative advantage, marginal cost, diminishing marginal returns, Pareto frontiers, et cetera. I took AP Econ and folk at SIAI use the terminology quite a bit.
Bow hunting skills?
I totally have bow hunting skills! But not nunchaku skills… :/
I apologize, I tend to think that people who think their own academic accomplishments are significant factors in their future salary are probably confused about the way the world works.
I also expend significant effort on unmarketable skills (snowboarding in my case) but I don’t expect anyone else to fund me for it. We live in a market economy; figure out your comparative advantage and negotiate the maximum price you can achieve for it.
I also expend significant effort on unmarketable skills (snowboarding in my case) but I don’t expect anyone else to fund me for it. We live in a market economy, figure out your comparative advantage and negotiate the maximum price you can achieve for it.
Or, like, not. I totally realize that’s what I would do if I wanted to make money, but I don’t. At least for now, I only care about unmarketable skills. That’s why I have so many of them. It was a mistake to write this post in the first person; I’m sorry for being misleading. But I’m not actually looking for employment. I have employment opportunities already, and things to do besides.
Money is not only the unit of caring, it is the unit of exchange. It is not straightforward to trade money for time however (at least by the hour) so you are comprehensible. I’m sorry if I offended you.
Making money is not my comparative advantage. :) Really, though, I intern for SIAI, and when I’m not doing that I’m building skills so that I’ll be better able to work for SIAI, and when I’m not doing that I’m building skills that are related to intelligence amplification research. That is, at least for now, my comparative advantage: there’s no easy way for me to make enough money to pay someone else to do it better than I could. Volunteering at SIAI for a year gave me a lot of domain-specific knowledge.
I’m sorry if I offended you.
You didn’t offend me at all! Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound bristly.
Want some brutally truthful tests designed to see how competent you are?
Take the SAT test, , which measures math ability, and verbal ability. Find a few psychology tests that try and measure memorization ability(like, how quickly and well you can memorize a topic)
Why? Because real world success, in intellectual endeavors, is largely a combination of how large your fluid intelligence is+memorization ability+ work ethic. The rest is due to combos of other factors.
Besides the SAT, you can take the LSAT, and study for a few things on there that require specific knowledge. The test is the single largest predictive factor of success in law school, and blind tests of competence.
There are a few other tests you can take. I recommend the AMC, which requires studying some topics outside of the regular school curriculum, but not too much.
Or, you could play starcraft for 3 months, and see how high you end up ranking.
Beyond these,I don’t know of many good tests to see how competent you are.
Are you joking? Starcraft isn’t even a well-designed game—it has all kinds of crazy barriers to entry and elements that explicitly exist to make it unnecessary difficult for people to pick up. Besides, it’s easy for even a bad gamer (see: me) to achieve a high-looking ranking (top 25 Diamond) in Starcraft II thanks to its nonintuitive rating and placement system, and true rankings are only maintained for the top 200 people in each region.
Yeah, I’ve done many of those. I took the SAT when I was 12. I’ve taken a few probably-inaccurate online IQ tests. I’ve done a few cognitive testing suites at SIAI. I’m in pretty good shape. In general though, there are better frameworks for cognitive testing. It’s probable that one could make a neat suite out of PEBL, which is free and very customizable. Fluid g seems over-emphasized. The limiting factor for most rationalists tends to be strong metadispositions for thought, reflection, and drive.
We didn’t study long enough to get any statistically significant data. Like, not even close. And I think sending off the data (even without names attached) would sorta breach an implicit privacy agreement among those who took part in the tests.
Jaeggi 2008 didn’t necessarily study very long either, some around/less than a week.
(I wouldn’t be asking this question, by the way, if you had written more concretely and said something like ‘We only studied for 2 days, not long enough to get any statistically significant data’.)
Hmm, most people would be ok with that sort of data being sent out in an anonymized form. I’m surprised that you didn’t suggest that before hand. Is there any chance you can contact the people in question and get their permission to release the anonymized data?
Is there any chance you can contact the people in question and get their permission to release the anonymized data?
We could, but really, there’s no information there, no matter how much Bayes magic you use. It’s noise. If the data was at all significant then we’d send it out, of course. We might actually have gotten anonymized disclosure agreement from everyone; I don’t remember. But it didn’t end up mattering.
Yeah, but that only matters from a self-assessment standpoint if the causal graph is wealth --> score <-- ability, whereas for an uncoached entrant it’s almost purely wealth --> ability --> score.
whereas for an uncoached entrant it’s almost purely wealth --> ability --> score.
And coaching can’t make up a large part of the score difference, either. There’s more than 100 points discrepancy on Critical Reading or Math alone between the lowest and highest income groups, whereas coaching only creates improvements of 30 points in Reading and Math combined.
A major problem with applying this point of economics is that most employers haven’t really got the hang of it yet either. It is a sad rationality fail to be focused on what you could have accomplished if your potential trading partners themselves were only more rational (unless you can actually make them more rational).
If you can find employers who understand this, more power to you.
We’ve already talked a little about economics but it seems you haven’t really got the hang of it yet. If you plan to sell your labour, the ‘value’ of your labour is not your problem, negotiate the best rate you can for what you can do. If you take a more entrepreneurial route you can try to sell a product. Again, your effort is not the point, you just negotiate for what the results are worth.
I’m starting to regret writing the post in the first person, ’cuz people think I’m actually looking for employment. I’m not, really. Anyway.
I’m not thinking about how much money I could make, I’m thinking about how competent I think I am. What you say makes sense if I cared about money. What I really care about is being able to have the identity of someone who codes competently, in which case the ‘value’ of my labor is what determines that. I want to be good at what I do, and I’m complaining about the huge gap between me-now and me-good, no matter how much money I’d make in either case.
But that’s off-topic for this post, so I shouldn’t have brought it up.
It’s kind of arrogant to think that you are qualified to be the judge of your own value. If someone seems happy to pay you for your efforts, accept it in good grace and let them worry about what your time is worth.
Of course I’d look for external validation now and then, but that’s not as important to me as building skill. Periodic tests via oDesk or the like should be enough to test my self-assessments for accuracy. But I don’t care all that much about what the market thinks, really. I just want to build skills. I’ve managed to play guitar for 3 years without having the market judge its value, but I could care less. I play guitar for myself and sometimes my friends, and I do it because I care about its ‘value’: to me. I don’t need to go busking to determine that.
Bow hunting skills?
I think it would be worth you while to learn some economics. Comparative Advantage would be a good place to start. Your values are valid but you should be fully aware of your choices.
I think you underestimate my knowledge of economics. I know about comparative advantage, marginal cost, diminishing marginal returns, Pareto frontiers, et cetera. I took AP Econ and folk at SIAI use the terminology quite a bit.
I totally have bow hunting skills! But not nunchaku skills… :/
I apologize, I tend to think that people who think their own academic accomplishments are significant factors in their future salary are probably confused about the way the world works.
I also expend significant effort on unmarketable skills (snowboarding in my case) but I don’t expect anyone else to fund me for it. We live in a market economy; figure out your comparative advantage and negotiate the maximum price you can achieve for it.
Or, like, not. I totally realize that’s what I would do if I wanted to make money, but I don’t. At least for now, I only care about unmarketable skills. That’s why I have so many of them. It was a mistake to write this post in the first person; I’m sorry for being misleading. But I’m not actually looking for employment. I have employment opportunities already, and things to do besides.
Money is not only the unit of caring, it is the unit of exchange. It is not straightforward to trade money for time however (at least by the hour) so you are comprehensible. I’m sorry if I offended you.
Especially if you are in a country where that kind of thing is illegal.
Making money is not my comparative advantage. :) Really, though, I intern for SIAI, and when I’m not doing that I’m building skills so that I’ll be better able to work for SIAI, and when I’m not doing that I’m building skills that are related to intelligence amplification research. That is, at least for now, my comparative advantage: there’s no easy way for me to make enough money to pay someone else to do it better than I could. Volunteering at SIAI for a year gave me a lot of domain-specific knowledge.
You didn’t offend me at all! Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound bristly.
Want some brutally truthful tests designed to see how competent you are?
Take the SAT test, , which measures math ability, and verbal ability. Find a few psychology tests that try and measure memorization ability(like, how quickly and well you can memorize a topic)
Why? Because real world success, in intellectual endeavors, is largely a combination of how large your fluid intelligence is+memorization ability+ work ethic. The rest is due to combos of other factors.
Besides the SAT, you can take the LSAT, and study for a few things on there that require specific knowledge. The test is the single largest predictive factor of success in law school, and blind tests of competence.
There are a few other tests you can take. I recommend the AMC, which requires studying some topics outside of the regular school curriculum, but not too much.
Or, you could play starcraft for 3 months, and see how high you end up ranking.
Beyond these,I don’t know of many good tests to see how competent you are.
Are you joking? Starcraft isn’t even a well-designed game—it has all kinds of crazy barriers to entry and elements that explicitly exist to make it unnecessary difficult for people to pick up. Besides, it’s easy for even a bad gamer (see: me) to achieve a high-looking ranking (top 25 Diamond) in Starcraft II thanks to its nonintuitive rating and placement system, and true rankings are only maintained for the top 200 people in each region.
Yeah, I’ve done many of those. I took the SAT when I was 12. I’ve taken a few probably-inaccurate online IQ tests. I’ve done a few cognitive testing suites at SIAI. I’m in pretty good shape. In general though, there are better frameworks for cognitive testing. It’s probable that one could make a neat suite out of PEBL, which is free and very customizable. Fluid g seems over-emphasized. The limiting factor for most rationalists tends to be strong metadispositions for thought, reflection, and drive.
They have those?
They’re ad hoc, we’ve used one for a dual n-back study which ended up yielding insufficient data.
Any chance you could write up that study? I don’t believe I have seen any SIAI-related DNB study; certainly it’s not in my FAQ.
(Remember kids: only you can fight publication bias!)
We didn’t study long enough to get any statistically significant data. Like, not even close. And I think sending off the data (even without names attached) would sorta breach an implicit privacy agreement among those who took part in the tests.
Jaeggi 2008 didn’t necessarily study very long either, some around/less than a week.
(I wouldn’t be asking this question, by the way, if you had written more concretely and said something like ‘We only studied for 2 days, not long enough to get any statistically significant data’.)
Hmm, most people would be ok with that sort of data being sent out in an anonymized form. I’m surprised that you didn’t suggest that before hand. Is there any chance you can contact the people in question and get their permission to release the anonymized data?
We could, but really, there’s no information there, no matter how much Bayes magic you use. It’s noise. If the data was at all significant then we’d send it out, of course. We might actually have gotten anonymized disclosure agreement from everyone; I don’t remember. But it didn’t end up mattering.
Shouldn’t doing something successfully in the real world be in there somewhere?
and wealth.
Read “the bell curve”
basically, smart parents were more likely to go to a higher ranking school, and move themselves up in the social heirarchy.
Smart people tend to have smart kids. Dumb people tend to have dumb kids. Hence, the scores.
For the race aspect of this, you can find the stats where poor east asian kids do better than rich white kids.At least on the math portion.
Yeah, but that only matters from a self-assessment standpoint if the causal graph is wealth --> score <-- ability, whereas for an uncoached entrant it’s almost purely wealth --> ability --> score.
Fair enough.
And coaching can’t make up a large part of the score difference, either. There’s more than 100 points discrepancy on Critical Reading or Math alone between the lowest and highest income groups, whereas coaching only creates improvements of 30 points in Reading and Math combined.
A major problem with applying this point of economics is that most employers haven’t really got the hang of it yet either. It is a sad rationality fail to be focused on what you could have accomplished if your potential trading partners themselves were only more rational (unless you can actually make them more rational).
If you can find employers who understand this, more power to you.