I’m slowly waking up to the fact that people at the Singularity Institute as well as Less Wrong are dealing with existential risk as a Real Problem, not just a theoretical idea to play with in an academic way. I’ve read many essays and watched many videos, but the seriousness just never really hit my brain. For some reason I had never realized that people were actually working on these problems.
I’m an 18 year old recent high school dropout, about to nab my GED. I could go to community college, or I could go along with my plan of leading a simple life working a simple job, which I would be content doing. I’m a sort of tabla rossa here: if I wanted to get into the position where I would be of use to the SIAI, what skills should I develop? Which of the ‘What we’re looking for’ traits would be most useful in a few years? (The only thing I’m good at right now is reading very quickly and retaining large amounts of information about various fields: but I rarely understand the math, which is currently very limiting.)
Yorick, and anyone else who is serious about reducing existential risk and is not in our contact network: please email me. anna at singinst dot org. The reason you should email is that empirically, people seem to make much better decisions about what paths will reduce existential risks when in dialog with others. Improved information here can go a long way.
I’ll answer anyway, for the benefit of lurkers (but Yorick, don’t believe my overall advice. Email me instead, about your specific strengths and situation):
Work on rationality. To help existential risk at all, you need: (a) unusual ability to weigh evidence fairly, in confusing instances and despite the presence of strong emotions; (b) the ability to take far-more evidence seriously on an emotional and action-based level. (But (b) is only an asset after you have formed careful, robust, evidence-based conclusions. If you’re as bad a thinker as 95% of the population, acting on far-mode conclusions can be dangerous, and can make your actions worse.)
Learn one of: math, physics, programming, or possibly analytic philosophy, because they teach useful habits of thought. Programming is perhaps the most useful of these because it can additionally be used to make money.
Learn people skills. Tutoring skills; sales skills; the ability to start and maintain positive conversations with strangers; management skills and experience; social status non-verbals (which one can learn in the pickup community, among other places); observational skills and the ability to understand and make accurate predictions about the people around you; skill at making friends; skill at building effective teams...
Learn to track details, to direct your efforts well within complex projects, and to reliably get things done. Exercise regularly, too.
Note that it’s also good to have some preliminary discussion here, moving on to e-mail mainly if personal details come up that one feels unwilling to share in public. If a lot of people publicly post their interest to participate, then that will encourage others to apply as well. Plus it gives people a picture of what sort of other folks they might end up working with. Also, discussing the details of the issue in public will help those who might initially be too shy to send a private e-mail, as they can just read what’s been discussed before. Even if you weren’t shy as such, others might raise questions you didn’t happen to think of. For instance, I think Anna’s four points above are good advice for a lot of people, and I’m happy that Yorick posted the comment that prompted this response and didn’t just e-mail Anna directly.
(EDIT: Removed a few paragraphs as I realized I’d have to rethink their content.)
I’ve sent an email your way. Given that email has become a slightly unreliable medium, thanks to the arms race between Spam and Bayesian (and other) countermeasures, I’d appreciate an acknowledge (even if just to say “got it”), here or via email.
Thanks for the heads up. Oddly enough, it was sitting in the spam filter on my SIAI account (without making it through forwarding to my gmail account, where I was checking the spam filter). Yours was the only message caught in the SIAI spam filter, out of 19 who emailed so far in response to this post.
Did you have special reason to expect to be caught in a spam filter?
It happens every so often to email people send me, so I periodically check the spam folder on Gmail; by symmetry I assume it happens to email I send. It’s more likely to occur on a first contact, too. And last, I spent a fair bit of time composing that email, getting over the diffidence you’re accurately assuming.
I sent an email on January the 10th, and haven’t yet got a reply. Has my email made it to you? Granted, it is over a month since this article was posted, so I understand if you are working on things other than applications at this point...
I’m slowly waking up to the fact that people at the Singularity Institute as well as Less Wrong are dealing with existential risk as a Real Problem, not just a theoretical idea to play with in an academic way. I’ve read many essays and watched many videos, but the seriousness just never really hit my brain. For some reason I had never realized that people were actually working on these problems.
I’m an 18 year old recent high school dropout, about to nab my GED. I could go to community college, or I could go along with my plan of leading a simple life working a simple job, which I would be content doing. I’m a sort of tabla rossa here: if I wanted to get into the position where I would be of use to the SIAI, what skills should I develop? Which of the ‘What we’re looking for’ traits would be most useful in a few years? (The only thing I’m good at right now is reading very quickly and retaining large amounts of information about various fields: but I rarely understand the math, which is currently very limiting.)
Yorick, and anyone else who is serious about reducing existential risk and is not in our contact network: please email me. anna at singinst dot org. The reason you should email is that empirically, people seem to make much better decisions about what paths will reduce existential risks when in dialog with others. Improved information here can go a long way.
I’ll answer anyway, for the benefit of lurkers (but Yorick, don’t believe my overall advice. Email me instead, about your specific strengths and situation):
Work on rationality. To help existential risk at all, you need: (a) unusual ability to weigh evidence fairly, in confusing instances and despite the presence of strong emotions; (b) the ability to take far-more evidence seriously on an emotional and action-based level. (But (b) is only an asset after you have formed careful, robust, evidence-based conclusions. If you’re as bad a thinker as 95% of the population, acting on far-mode conclusions can be dangerous, and can make your actions worse.)
Learn one of: math, physics, programming, or possibly analytic philosophy, because they teach useful habits of thought. Programming is perhaps the most useful of these because it can additionally be used to make money.
Learn people skills. Tutoring skills; sales skills; the ability to start and maintain positive conversations with strangers; management skills and experience; social status non-verbals (which one can learn in the pickup community, among other places); observational skills and the ability to understand and make accurate predictions about the people around you; skill at making friends; skill at building effective teams...
Learn to track details, to direct your efforts well within complex projects, and to reliably get things done. Exercise regularly, too.
Note that it’s also good to have some preliminary discussion here, moving on to e-mail mainly if personal details come up that one feels unwilling to share in public. If a lot of people publicly post their interest to participate, then that will encourage others to apply as well. Plus it gives people a picture of what sort of other folks they might end up working with. Also, discussing the details of the issue in public will help those who might initially be too shy to send a private e-mail, as they can just read what’s been discussed before. Even if you weren’t shy as such, others might raise questions you didn’t happen to think of. For instance, I think Anna’s four points above are good advice for a lot of people, and I’m happy that Yorick posted the comment that prompted this response and didn’t just e-mail Anna directly.
(EDIT: Removed a few paragraphs as I realized I’d have to rethink their content.)
I don’t feel like having this discussion in public, but Anna’s invitation is framed in broad enough terms that I’ll be getting in touch.
Where are the non pickup community places to learn social status non-verbals?
I’ve sent an email your way. Given that email has become a slightly unreliable medium, thanks to the arms race between Spam and Bayesian (and other) countermeasures, I’d appreciate an acknowledge (even if just to say “got it”), here or via email.
Thanks for the heads up. Oddly enough, it was sitting in the spam filter on my SIAI account (without making it through forwarding to my gmail account, where I was checking the spam filter). Yours was the only message caught in the SIAI spam filter, out of 19 who emailed so far in response to this post.
Did you have special reason to expect to be caught in a spam filter?
It happens every so often to email people send me, so I periodically check the spam folder on Gmail; by symmetry I assume it happens to email I send. It’s more likely to occur on a first contact, too. And last, I spent a fair bit of time composing that email, getting over the diffidence you’re accurately assuming.
your handle sounds like a brand name drug ;) e.g. paxil
I wonder how long I can expect to wait before receiving a response. I sent my email on Wednesday, by the way.
So you want to know f(x) := P(will receive a response|have not received a response in x days) for values of x from 0 to say, 7?
I’m sorry; I still haven’t responded to many of them. Somewhere in the 1-3 days range for an initial response, probably.
I suggest you reply to the parent (Anna’s) comment, that will show up in her inbox.
I sent an email on January the 10th, and haven’t yet got a reply. Has my email made it to you? Granted, it is over a month since this article was posted, so I understand if you are working on things other than applications at this point...