I’m probably the least qualified person imaginable to represent “the Lesswrong community” given that I literally made my first post this weekend, but I did get into EA between high school and college and I have some thoughts on the topic.
My gut reaction is that it depends a lot on the kind of person this high schooler is. I was very interested in math and theoretical physics when I started thinking about EA. I don’t think I’m ever going to be satisfied with my life unless I’m doing work that’s math-heavy. I applied to schools with good AI programs with the intent of upskilling on AI/ML during college and then going into AI Safety. When I started college I waved away the honors math classes with the intent of getting into theoretical machine learning research as fast as possible. Before the end of freshman year, I realized that I was miserable and the courses felt dumb and that I was finding it very hard to relate to any of the other people in the AI program—most of them were practically-minded and non-math-y. I begged to be let back into the honors math courses and thankfully the department allowed me to do so. I proceeded to co-found the AI Safety club at my college and have been thinking somewhat independently on questions adjacent to AI Safety that interest me. In retrospect, I think that I was too gung-ho about upskilling on ML to stop and pay attention to where my skills and my passion were. This nearly resulted in me having no friend group in college and not being productive at anything.
So yeah, I don’t know what exactly I would recommend. If I had been a more practically-minded person then my actions would probably have been pretty perfect. I guess the only advice I can give is cliches: think independently, explore, talk to people, listen to yourself. Sorry I can’t say anything more concrete!
Early in college I wanted to jump into “doing A.I.” and ended up doing robotics research/clubs that I mostly hated in practice, and worse for whatever reason (probably too much obsession with discipline) didn’t even notice I hated, and I wasted a lot of time that way. It’s true that a lot of A.I. related fields attract people with less of a mathematical focus and it’s important to develop your mind working on problems you actually like.
Though the above shouldn’t be used as justification for doing nothing. Reading textbooks and taking classes becomes doing nothing if there is no output.
I’m probably the least qualified person imaginable to represent “the Lesswrong community” given that I literally made my first post this weekend, but I did get into EA between high school and college and I have some thoughts on the topic.
My gut reaction is that it depends a lot on the kind of person this high schooler is. I was very interested in math and theoretical physics when I started thinking about EA. I don’t think I’m ever going to be satisfied with my life unless I’m doing work that’s math-heavy. I applied to schools with good AI programs with the intent of upskilling on AI/ML during college and then going into AI Safety. When I started college I waved away the honors math classes with the intent of getting into theoretical machine learning research as fast as possible. Before the end of freshman year, I realized that I was miserable and the courses felt dumb and that I was finding it very hard to relate to any of the other people in the AI program—most of them were practically-minded and non-math-y. I begged to be let back into the honors math courses and thankfully the department allowed me to do so. I proceeded to co-found the AI Safety club at my college and have been thinking somewhat independently on questions adjacent to AI Safety that interest me. In retrospect, I think that I was too gung-ho about upskilling on ML to stop and pay attention to where my skills and my passion were. This nearly resulted in me having no friend group in college and not being productive at anything.
So yeah, I don’t know what exactly I would recommend. If I had been a more practically-minded person then my actions would probably have been pretty perfect. I guess the only advice I can give is cliches: think independently, explore, talk to people, listen to yourself. Sorry I can’t say anything more concrete!
Early in college I wanted to jump into “doing A.I.” and ended up doing robotics research/clubs that I mostly hated in practice, and worse for whatever reason (probably too much obsession with discipline) didn’t even notice I hated, and I wasted a lot of time that way. It’s true that a lot of A.I. related fields attract people with less of a mathematical focus and it’s important to develop your mind working on problems you actually like.
Though the above shouldn’t be used as justification for doing nothing. Reading textbooks and taking classes becomes doing nothing if there is no output.