I think “putting out fires” has more of the correct connotations—insofar as I’m correctly identifying what Nate means, it feels more like defiance and agency than anything about status. I know fully well that most of the fires I’m addressing/have addressed are not considered fires by other people (or they would’ve put them out already)! It feels like being infuriated that no one is doing the obvious thing and almost everyone I talk to is horribly unreasonable about this, so it’s time to roll up my sleeves and go to work.
On the other hand, I think going to school wearing a clown suit has many wrong connotations. It brings in feelings of shame and self-consciousness, when the appropriate emotion is (imo) defiance and doing the blazing obvious thing! I don’t think the Shard Theory folk think they are wearing a clown suit; in my interactions with him I feel like Alex Turner tends to be more defiant or infuriated than self-conscious. (Feel free to correct me if this is not the case!)
Shard theory did have some clown suit energy at first. Shard theory / disagreeing strongly with Eliezer (!) felt like wearing a clown suit, to some part of me, but the rest of me didn’t care.
I also felt something like “if I can’t communicate these ideas or am not willing to burn status to get eyes on them, there was no point in my having had status anyways.” From Looking back on my alignment PhD:
I realized my gut expectations were that he was broadly correct and that this theory of alignment could actually be right. However, I realized I wasn’t consciously letting myself think that because it would be Insufficiently Skeptical to actually think the alignment problem is solvable. This seemed obviously stupid to me, so I quickly shut that line of thinking down and second-order updated towards optimism so that I would stop predictably getting more optimistic about Quintin’s theory.
I realized I assigned about 5% credence[1] to “this line of thinking marks a direct and reasonably short path to solving alignment.” Thus, on any calculation of benefits and harms, I should be willing to stake some reputation to quickly get more eyeballs on the theory, even though I expected to end up looking a little silly (with about 95% probability). With my new attitude, I decided “whatever, let’s just get on with it and stop wasting time.”
The old “don’t leave any avenue of being criticized!” attitude would have been less loyal to my true beliefs: “This could work, but there are so many parts I don’t understand yet. If I figure those parts out first, I can explain it better and avoid having to go out on a limb in the process.” Cowardice and social anxiety, dressed up as prudence and skepticism.
These days, I do feel more defiant/irritated, and not like I’m wearing a clown suit.
“Is there really something there with shard theory?” does not feel like a live question to me anymore, because it resolved “yes”, in my view. But I also have closed off the more optimistic ends of my uncertainty, where I thought there was a ~5% chance of quickly and knowably-to-me solving alignment.
I also felt something like “if I can’t communicate these ideas or am not willing to burn status to get eyes on them, there was no point in my having had status anyways.”
Yeah, I resonate very strongly with this feeling as well! The whole reason to have generic resources is to spend them on useful things!
Upvoted but strong disagree.
I think “putting out fires” has more of the correct connotations—insofar as I’m correctly identifying what Nate means, it feels more like defiance and agency than anything about status. I know fully well that most of the fires I’m addressing/have addressed are not considered fires by other people (or they would’ve put them out already)! It feels like being infuriated that no one is doing the obvious thing and almost everyone I talk to is horribly unreasonable about this, so it’s time to roll up my sleeves and go to work.
On the other hand, I think going to school wearing a clown suit has many wrong connotations. It brings in feelings of shame and self-consciousness, when the appropriate emotion is (imo) defiance and doing the blazing obvious thing! I don’t think the Shard Theory folk think they are wearing a clown suit; in my interactions with him I feel like Alex Turner tends to be more defiant or infuriated than self-conscious. (Feel free to correct me if this is not the case!)
Shard theory did have some clown suit energy at first. Shard theory / disagreeing strongly with Eliezer (!) felt like wearing a clown suit, to some part of me, but the rest of me didn’t care.
I also felt something like “if I can’t communicate these ideas or am not willing to burn status to get eyes on them, there was no point in my having had status anyways.” From Looking back on my alignment PhD:
These days, I do feel more defiant/irritated, and not like I’m wearing a clown suit.
“Is there really something there with shard theory?” does not feel like a live question to me anymore, because it resolved “yes”, in my view. But I also have closed off the more optimistic ends of my uncertainty, where I thought there was a ~5% chance of quickly and knowably-to-me solving alignment.
Yeah, I resonate very strongly with this feeling as well! The whole reason to have generic resources is to spend them on useful things!