I will not be offended by a comment predicting that I believe this largely because of “little mental resistance to organizational narratives”, even if the comment has no further justification.
This isn’t a full answer, but I suspect you believe this largely because you don’t know what someone as smart as you who doesn’t have “little mental resistance to organizational narratives” looks like, because mostly you haven’t met them. They kind of look like very smart crazy people.
Hmm, so this seems plausible, but in which case, it seems like the base rate for “little mental resistance to organizational narratives” is very low, and the story should not be “Hired people probably have little mental resistance because they were hired” but should instead be “Hired probably have little mental resistance because basically everyone has little mental resistance.” (these are explanatory uses of “because”, not a causal uses.)
This second story seems like it could be either very true or very false, for different values of “little”, so it doesn’t seems like it has a truth value until we operationalize “little.”
Even beyond the base rates, it seems likely that a potential hire could be dismissed because they seem crazy, including at MIRI, but I would predict that MIRI is pretty far on the “willing to hire very smart crazy people” end of the spectrum.
This isn’t a full answer, but I suspect you believe this largely because you don’t know what someone as smart as you who doesn’t have “little mental resistance to organizational narratives” looks like, because mostly you haven’t met them. They kind of look like very smart crazy people.
Hmm, so this seems plausible, but in which case, it seems like the base rate for “little mental resistance to organizational narratives” is very low, and the story should not be “Hired people probably have little mental resistance because they were hired” but should instead be “Hired probably have little mental resistance because basically everyone has little mental resistance.” (these are explanatory uses of “because”, not a causal uses.)
This second story seems like it could be either very true or very false, for different values of “little”, so it doesn’t seems like it has a truth value until we operationalize “little.”
Even beyond the base rates, it seems likely that a potential hire could be dismissed because they seem crazy, including at MIRI, but I would predict that MIRI is pretty far on the “willing to hire very smart crazy people” end of the spectrum.