For the record, I genuinely object to being thought of as a “highly competent CEO.” I think “non-natural CEO working hard and learning fast and picking up lots of low-hanging fruit but also making lots of mistakes along the way because he had no prior executive experience” is more accurate. The good news is that I’ve been learning even more quickly since Matt Fallshaw joined the Board, since he’s able and willing to put in the time to transfer to me what he’s learned from launching and running multiple startups.
For the record, I genuinely object to being thought of as a “highly competent CEO.”
But that’s exactly what the Dunning-Kruger effect would lead us to expect a highly-competent CEOs to say! s/
non-natural CEO working hard and learning fast and picking up lots of low-hanging fruit but also making lots of mistakes along the way because he had no prior executive experience
To be honest, I didn’t mean much by it. Just that MIRI has been more impressive lately, and presumably a good portion of this is due to your leadership.
So this comment here about a basically unrelated matter to the topic in the title post (but one that it isn’t strange at all that you would reply to of course, since it’s about you), is it essentially a way of communicating that you’ve seen XiXiDu’s post and have chosen to ignore it? I mean, I’m sure it could be very simple and you’re just too busy to deal with this kind of thing, but I can’t help but to notice your appearance in the thread and your conspicuous lack of response of any kind, especially since, you know, you’re the CEO of the organisation XiXiDu is attempting to make peace with.
Hopefully I haven’t been too forward with what I’ve suggested here, and I’m also sorry if I’m speculating in an entirely inaccurate direction.
The short version is that I’m not sure we want to make counterclaims at the top of Alexander’s blog posts. I mostly just wish Alexander was more consistently constructive in his criticism, like many of our other critics are. I think I’m far from alone in the impression that his criticisms are an uneven mix of kinda fair criticisms, deliberate straw men (“the intelligence explosion hypothesis is a tautology”), largely irrelevant character assassination (digging up embarrassing things Eliezer wrote when he was 16), and more. But I was resisting saying even this much, because I worry about putting Alexander in a position where he again feels he’s being misrepresented and needs to defend himself.
Well, I guess let’s see what happens. But I can’t promise I’ll think it’s wise for me to reply further.
To make the first step and show that this is not some kind of evil ploy, I now deleted the (1) Yudkowsky quotes page and (2) the post on his personality (explanation on how that post came about).
I realize that they were unnecessarily offending and apologize for that. If I could turn back the clock I would do a lot differently and probably stay completely silent about MIRI and LW.
For the record, I genuinely object to being thought of as a “highly competent CEO.” I think “non-natural CEO working hard and learning fast and picking up lots of low-hanging fruit but also making lots of mistakes along the way because he had no prior executive experience” is more accurate. The good news is that I’ve been learning even more quickly since Matt Fallshaw joined the Board, since he’s able and willing to put in the time to transfer to me what he’s learned from launching and running multiple startups.
But that’s exactly what the Dunning-Kruger effect would lead us to expect a highly-competent CEOs to say! s/
To be honest, I didn’t mean much by it. Just that MIRI has been more impressive lately, and presumably a good portion of this is due to your leadership.
No. It would lead us to expect that the top quartile would rank themselves well above the median but below their actual scores.
(And then to ask why we’re thinking in such coarse granularity as quartiles.)
So this comment here about a basically unrelated matter to the topic in the title post (but one that it isn’t strange at all that you would reply to of course, since it’s about you), is it essentially a way of communicating that you’ve seen XiXiDu’s post and have chosen to ignore it? I mean, I’m sure it could be very simple and you’re just too busy to deal with this kind of thing, but I can’t help but to notice your appearance in the thread and your conspicuous lack of response of any kind, especially since, you know, you’re the CEO of the organisation XiXiDu is attempting to make peace with.
Hopefully I haven’t been too forward with what I’ve suggested here, and I’m also sorry if I’m speculating in an entirely inaccurate direction.
I haven’t figured out what to say yet. :)
The short version is that I’m not sure we want to make counterclaims at the top of Alexander’s blog posts. I mostly just wish Alexander was more consistently constructive in his criticism, like many of our other critics are. I think I’m far from alone in the impression that his criticisms are an uneven mix of kinda fair criticisms, deliberate straw men (“the intelligence explosion hypothesis is a tautology”), largely irrelevant character assassination (digging up embarrassing things Eliezer wrote when he was 16), and more. But I was resisting saying even this much, because I worry about putting Alexander in a position where he again feels he’s being misrepresented and needs to defend himself.
Well, I guess let’s see what happens. But I can’t promise I’ll think it’s wise for me to reply further.
To make the first step and show that this is not some kind of evil ploy, I now deleted the (1) Yudkowsky quotes page and (2) the post on his personality (explanation on how that post came about).
I realize that they were unnecessarily offending and apologize for that. If I could turn back the clock I would do a lot differently and probably stay completely silent about MIRI and LW.
Thanks.
Things seem basically settled over here, so I’ll just say: kudos for your efforts to break the vicious cycle!
I think “highly competent CEO” is judged at least as much by results as by comparison with a hypothetical superb CEO.