It’s partly the choice that is killing me, do X or Y or continue thinking about either doing X or Y, or maybe search for some superior unknown unknown activity Z?
A sufficiently advanced optimization process can work towards any goal. One reason AI is so great is that it is strictly superior in terms of finding thing we missed. It’s possible that we could come up with something good sooner if we did not work on AI, but we have no evidence that that is the case.
Should I stop doing sports, should I even stop thinking too much because it increases the blood circulation in my brain (I noticed that I hear my blood flow when thinking too hard)?
As someone who cares greatly about existential risk, wouldn’t the value of thinking outweigh the risk if there were any chance that you could help?
And what about what I really want to do, intuitively, should I just ignore that?
Intuitively as in “some stupid part of my brain keep trying to trick the more rational part into doing X” or as in “I’m really good at X but too worried about how much it will really help to do it effectively”?
Don’t be too worried that you won’t be able to contribute. According to one SIAI visiting fellow, “an ability to do ‘something that anyone could do’ is an accomplishment in itself—that is, the ability to do something even though it isn’t great and glorious and exciting. She mentioned, and my own experience agrees, that getting volunteers to do exciting things is easy, but getting them to do the less glamorous work (of which there is much more to do) is much harder.” If others really are that much more skilled than you, you can still do a lot of good by assisting their efforts.
First of all, read the sequences.
A sufficiently advanced optimization process can work towards any goal. One reason AI is so great is that it is strictly superior in terms of finding thing we missed. It’s possible that we could come up with something good sooner if we did not work on AI, but we have no evidence that that is the case.
As someone who cares greatly about existential risk, wouldn’t the value of thinking outweigh the risk if there were any chance that you could help?
Intuitively as in “some stupid part of my brain keep trying to trick the more rational part into doing X” or as in “I’m really good at X but too worried about how much it will really help to do it effectively”?
Don’t be too worried that you won’t be able to contribute. According to one SIAI visiting fellow, “an ability to do ‘something that anyone could do’ is an accomplishment in itself—that is, the ability to do something even though it isn’t great and glorious and exciting. She mentioned, and my own experience agrees, that getting volunteers to do exciting things is easy, but getting them to do the less glamorous work (of which there is much more to do) is much harder.” If others really are that much more skilled than you, you can still do a lot of good by assisting their efforts.