It seems that you’re averse to social status, or reject the premise in some way. That is a common cause of self-deprecation. The dynamics underlying social status, and the downstream effects, are in fact awful and shouldn’t exist. It makes sense to look at the situation with social status and recoil in horror and disgust. I did something similar from 2014-2016, declined to participate, and it made my life hell. A proper fix is not currently within reach (accelerating AI might do a lot, building aligned AGI almost certainly will), and failing to jump through the hoops will make everything painful for you and the people around you (or at least unpleasant). Self-deprecation requires way more charisma than it appears, since they are merely pretending to throw away social status; we are social status-pursuing monkeys in a very deep way, and hemorrhaging one’s own social status for real is the wrong move in our civilization’s current form. This will be fixed eventually, unless we all die. Until then, “is this cringe” is a surprisingly easy subroutine to set up; I know, I’ve done it.
I’d just note—beware the concept that social “status” is a one dimensional variable. but yes, the things the typical one dimensional characterization of refer to are, in very many cases, summaries of real dynamics.
It looks like bad luck.
It seems that you’re averse to social status, or reject the premise in some way. That is a common cause of self-deprecation. The dynamics underlying social status, and the downstream effects, are in fact awful and shouldn’t exist. It makes sense to look at the situation with social status and recoil in horror and disgust. I did something similar from 2014-2016, declined to participate, and it made my life hell. A proper fix is not currently within reach (accelerating AI might do a lot, building aligned AGI almost certainly will), and failing to jump through the hoops will make everything painful for you and the people around you (or at least unpleasant). Self-deprecation requires way more charisma than it appears, since they are merely pretending to throw away social status; we are social status-pursuing monkeys in a very deep way, and hemorrhaging one’s own social status for real is the wrong move in our civilization’s current form. This will be fixed eventually, unless we all die. Until then, “is this cringe” is a surprisingly easy subroutine to set up; I know, I’ve done it.
Read Ngo’s AI safety from first principles summary in order to make sure you’re not missing anything important, and the Superintelligence FAQ and the Unilateralists Curse if that’s not enough and you still get the sense that you’re not on the same page as everyone else.
If all of this seems a bit much, amplify daily motivation by reading the Execute by default, AI timelines dialog, Buck’s freshman year, and What to do in response to an emergency.
I’d just note—beware the concept that social “status” is a one dimensional variable. but yes, the things the typical one dimensional characterization of refer to are, in very many cases, summaries of real dynamics.