I think you err in inferences about EY’s degree of consumption based on his ease of recall. Given his extreme intelligence, we would expect him to have extraordinary recall relative to almost everybody with similar habits of consumption. Reading/viewing just moderately more than your average avid reader/viewer and having an extraordinary memory seems more than sufficient to explain this case.
Perhaps. Short of testimony from EY or testing him, I can’t know directly whether it’s great recall or great consumption.
And I think your criticism is not really valid given that EY is the mad scientist of the organization. It would be more appropriate—if relevant, which it doesn’t seem to be—leveled at Michael Vassar, the President of SIAI.
I’ll fall back on what I’ve said before: even if EY is not actually spending so much time on consuming media that it’s detrimental to his performance, the appearance is still damaging. What are the odds that every potential donor who sees things like this will just go ‘oh, that lovable-scamp/mad-scientist EY!’?
I dunno about you, but in the time period I was raised in, the archetype of ‘mad scientist’ didn’t include “loves fanfiction”. (Leaving aside entirely how relevant or important Michael Vassar may or may not be in fundraising & public outreach.)
I think of Feynman as the archetypal mad scientist, and while I don’t think he happened to love fanfiction (and actually, don’t we mean “writes fanfiction”?), I wouldn’t have been surprised to have found out that he did and I wouldn’t have thought less of him if he did.
I think the real issue is not that “writes fanfiction” is not part of the archetype but that you have (or think others will have) some kind of moral/emotional reaction to “writes fanfiction” that causes you to think about it in different terms than “writes poetry” or “loves functional programming” or “loves stamp collecting” or “loves civil war re-enactments” or whatever.
I think the underlying question is how inauthentic one should be willing to be in order to “present the best image.” You and I both love functional programming, but there are many “Enterprise Architects” that would find passion for functional programming weird and suspect, deeming it pointless love of complexity for the sake of obfuscation. Imagine you were a public figure for a software company that marketed mostly to Enterprise Java shops, and somebody tells you that you should consider avoiding writing publicly about functional programming, working on xmonad, participating in haskell-cafe, because it might give potential customers the wrong impression (however stupid that “wrong” impression might be). If you think that “functional programming” and “stamp collecting” and “writing poetry” are more valid “side passions” than writing scifi or fanfiction, can you give a good explanation for why, or is it just a matter of “what most people would think”?
We all want to affiliate with high status people, but since status is about common distant perceptions of quality, we often care more about what distant observers would think about our associates than about how we privately evaluate them.
Thus, people can genuinely dislike their allies having an activity that gives shallow negative impression (feel the dislike, not just deem the activity a mistake), even if they understand this first impression to be incorrect, or that any person giving a minute’s thought to the question will come to the same conclusion.
If you think that “functional programming” and “stamp collecting” and “writing poetry” are more valid “side passions” than writing scifi or fanfiction, can you give a good explanation for why, or is it just a matter of “what most people would think”?
But this is a specifically empirical question. Go look around the Internet—what’s the predominant view of fanfictioners among non-fanfictioners (who are aware of them)? It is very very negative, I mean, close to furry levels of opprobrium. To give an example, here’s the first response when I asked for free association for ‘fanfiction’ in #wikipedia:
11:00:53 < Lubaf> gwern: “Reeeeaaalllly creepy ideas about sexuality.”
What do you think the predominant view of functional programming is? ‘creepy sex’ or ‘hopeless loser’ or
Yeah. When I tell CS people my hobby is Haskell, do they back away and in the future avert their gaze from me? Or do they look interested and re-evaluate their opinion of competence? (The stereotype seems to be that if you use Haskell, you must be very smart indeed.)
I cannot speak for ‘Enterprise Architects’, but I would be surprised if the impression of Haskell among them was overall negative, and that they would hold negative opinions of any Haskell user.
It was a hypothetical, a thought experiment of the form “if it happened that an Enterprise Architect believed..., ”, would you let that influence your behavior or would you say the disapproval is their problem (even if it does cost you something to ignore their disapproval)?
It wasn’t a very good example though. I guess my point is that the stereotype-based disapproval of ignorant people who think that knowing somebody wrote a fanfiction gives them deep insight into their personality and their worth as human beings is not something to lose sleep over, it’s something to be ignored or even ridiculed.
Besides, don’t forget that “there’s an insufficient amount of fun in the world” is an EXPLICIT principle and motivation of what Eliezer’s doing, right? So, given that he wants to use “mad science” to increase the amount of fun in the world, it’s probably useful to see what sorts of fun and goofiness he gets up to, no? (more to the point, if there wasn’t any such available, if he was instead all somber and serious, the reaction would be “this way-too-somber-guy is the one that plans on greatly increasing total fun in the world? I wonder what he thinks would count as ‘fun’”
Perhaps. Short of testimony from EY or testing him, I can’t know directly whether it’s great recall or great consumption.
I’ll fall back on what I’ve said before: even if EY is not actually spending so much time on consuming media that it’s detrimental to his performance, the appearance is still damaging. What are the odds that every potential donor who sees things like this will just go ‘oh, that lovable-scamp/mad-scientist EY!’?
I dunno about you, but in the time period I was raised in, the archetype of ‘mad scientist’ didn’t include “loves fanfiction”. (Leaving aside entirely how relevant or important Michael Vassar may or may not be in fundraising & public outreach.)
I think of Feynman as the archetypal mad scientist, and while I don’t think he happened to love fanfiction (and actually, don’t we mean “writes fanfiction”?), I wouldn’t have been surprised to have found out that he did and I wouldn’t have thought less of him if he did.
I think the real issue is not that “writes fanfiction” is not part of the archetype but that you have (or think others will have) some kind of moral/emotional reaction to “writes fanfiction” that causes you to think about it in different terms than “writes poetry” or “loves functional programming” or “loves stamp collecting” or “loves civil war re-enactments” or whatever.
I think the underlying question is how inauthentic one should be willing to be in order to “present the best image.” You and I both love functional programming, but there are many “Enterprise Architects” that would find passion for functional programming weird and suspect, deeming it pointless love of complexity for the sake of obfuscation. Imagine you were a public figure for a software company that marketed mostly to Enterprise Java shops, and somebody tells you that you should consider avoiding writing publicly about functional programming, working on xmonad, participating in haskell-cafe, because it might give potential customers the wrong impression (however stupid that “wrong” impression might be). If you think that “functional programming” and “stamp collecting” and “writing poetry” are more valid “side passions” than writing scifi or fanfiction, can you give a good explanation for why, or is it just a matter of “what most people would think”?
Robin Hanson wrote about a relevant phenomenon in Why Signals Are Shallow:
Thus, people can genuinely dislike their allies having an activity that gives shallow negative impression (feel the dislike, not just deem the activity a mistake), even if they understand this first impression to be incorrect, or that any person giving a minute’s thought to the question will come to the same conclusion.
After re-reading that, and reflecting on my feelings reading the OP, I think my opinion of Hanson’s signaling theories has gone up quite a bit.
This explains a LOT as applied to the feedback I get.
Money is just a proxy. Status makes the world go round.
But this is a specifically empirical question. Go look around the Internet—what’s the predominant view of fanfictioners among non-fanfictioners (who are aware of them)? It is very very negative, I mean, close to furry levels of opprobrium. To give an example, here’s the first response when I asked for free association for ‘fanfiction’ in #wikipedia:
What do you think the predominant view of functional programming is? ‘creepy sex’ or ‘hopeless loser’ or
Yeah. When I tell CS people my hobby is Haskell, do they back away and in the future avert their gaze from me? Or do they look interested and re-evaluate their opinion of competence? (The stereotype seems to be that if you use Haskell, you must be very smart indeed.)
I cannot speak for ‘Enterprise Architects’, but I would be surprised if the impression of Haskell among them was overall negative, and that they would hold negative opinions of any Haskell user.
It was a hypothetical, a thought experiment of the form “if it happened that an Enterprise Architect believed..., ”, would you let that influence your behavior or would you say the disapproval is their problem (even if it does cost you something to ignore their disapproval)?
It wasn’t a very good example though. I guess my point is that the stereotype-based disapproval of ignorant people who think that knowing somebody wrote a fanfiction gives them deep insight into their personality and their worth as human beings is not something to lose sleep over, it’s something to be ignored or even ridiculed.
Besides, don’t forget that “there’s an insufficient amount of fun in the world” is an EXPLICIT principle and motivation of what Eliezer’s doing, right? So, given that he wants to use “mad science” to increase the amount of fun in the world, it’s probably useful to see what sorts of fun and goofiness he gets up to, no? (more to the point, if there wasn’t any such available, if he was instead all somber and serious, the reaction would be “this way-too-somber-guy is the one that plans on greatly increasing total fun in the world? I wonder what he thinks would count as ‘fun’”