I understand the anxiety issues of, ’Do I have what it takes to accomplish this...”
I don’t understand why the existence of someone else who can would damage Eliezer’s ego. I can observe that many other people’s sense of self is violated if they find out that someone else is better at something they thought they were the best at—the football champion at HS losing their position at college, etc. However, in order for this to occur, the person needs to 1) in fact misjudge their relative superiority to others, and 2) value the superiority for its own sake.
Now, Eliezer might take the discovery of a better rationalist/fAI designer as proof that he misjudged his relative superiority—but unless he thinks his superiority is itself valuable, he should not be bothered by it. His own actual intelligence, afterall, will not have changed, only the state of his knowledge of others’ intelligence relative to his own.
Eliezer must enjoy thinking he is superior for loss of this status to bother his ‘ego’.
Though I suppose one could argue that this is a natural human quality, and Eliezer would need to be superhuman or lying to say otherwise.
Eliezer, Komponisto,
I understand the anxiety issues of, ’Do I have what it takes to accomplish this...”
I don’t understand why the existence of someone else who can would damage Eliezer’s ego. I can observe that many other people’s sense of self is violated if they find out that someone else is better at something they thought they were the best at—the football champion at HS losing their position at college, etc. However, in order for this to occur, the person needs to 1) in fact misjudge their relative superiority to others, and 2) value the superiority for its own sake.
Now, Eliezer might take the discovery of a better rationalist/fAI designer as proof that he misjudged his relative superiority—but unless he thinks his superiority is itself valuable, he should not be bothered by it. His own actual intelligence, afterall, will not have changed, only the state of his knowledge of others’ intelligence relative to his own.
Eliezer must enjoy thinking he is superior for loss of this status to bother his ‘ego’.
Though I suppose one could argue that this is a natural human quality, and Eliezer would need to be superhuman or lying to say otherwise.