I referred specifically to “IQ tests” not to SAT, as lacking the rigour required for establishing 1 in 10 000 performance with any confidence, to balance on my point that e.g. ‘that guy seems smart’ shouldn’t possibly result in estimate of 1 in 10 000
Note that these studies use the same tests (childhood SAT) that Eliezer excelled on (quite a lot higher than the 1 in 10,000 level), and that I was taking into account in my estimation.
a: while that’d be fairly impressive, keep in mind that if it is quite a lot higher than 1 in 10 000 then my prior for it is quite a lot lower than 0.0001 with only minor updates up for ‘seeming clever’ , and my prior for someone being a psychopath/liar is 0.01, with updates up for talking other people into giving you money.
b: not having something else likewise concrete to show off (e.g. contest results of some kind and the like) will at most make me up-estimate him to bin with someone like Keith Raniere or Chris Langan (those did SAT well too), which is already the bin that he’s significantly in. Especially as he had been interested in programming, and the programming is the area where you can literally make a LOT of money in just a couple years while gaining the experience and gaining much better cred than childhood SAT. But also an area that heavily tasks general ability to think right and deal with huge amounts of learned information. My impression is that he’s a spoiled ‘math prodigy’ who didn’t really study anything beyond fairly elementary math, and my impression is that it’s his own impression except he thinks he can do advanced math with little effort using some intuition while i’m pretty damn skeptical of such stuff unless well tested.
and the programming is the area where you can literally make a LOT of money in just a couple years while gaining the experience and gaining much better cred than childhood SAT
I don’t think the childhood SAT gives that much “cred” for real-world efficacy, and I don’t conflate intelligence with “everything good a person can be.” Obviously, Eliezer is below average in the combination of conscientiousness, conformity, and so forth that causes most smart people to do more schooling. So I would expect lower performance on any given task than from a typical person of his level of intelligence. But it’s not that surprising that he would, say, continue popular blogging with significant influence on a sizable audience, rather than stop that (which he values for its effects) to work as a Google engineer to sack away a typical salary, or to do a software startup (which the stats show is pretty uncertain even for those with VC backing and previous successful startups).
‘math prodigy’ who didn’t really study anything beyond fairly elementary math, and my impression is that it’s his own impression
I agree on not having deep math knowledge, and this being reason to be skeptical of making very unusual progress in AI or FAI. However while his math scores were high, “math prodigy” isn’t quite right, since his verbal scores were even higher. There are real differences in what you expect to happen depending on the “top skill.” In the SMPY data such people often take up professions like science (or science fiction) writer (or philosopher) that use the verbal skills too, even when they have higher raw math performance than others who go to on to become hard science professors. It’s pretty mundane when such a person leans towards being a blogger rather than an engineer, especially when they are doing pretty well as the former. Eliezer has said that if not worried about x-risk he would want to become a science fiction writer, as opposed to a scientist.
Especially as he had been interested in programming, and the programming is the area where you can literally make a LOT of money in just a couple years while gaining the experience and gaining much better cred than childhood SAT.
What salary level is good enough evidence for you to consider someone clever?
Notice that your criteria for impressive cleverness excludes practically every graduate student—the vast majority make next to nothing, have few “concrete” things to show off, etc.
My impression is that he’s a spoiled ‘math prodigy’ who didn’t really study anything beyond fairly elementary math, and my impression is that it’s his own impression except he thinks he can do advanced math with little effort using some intuition while i’m pretty damn skeptical of such stuff unless well tested.
Except the interview you quoted says none of that.
JB: I can think of lots of big questions at this point, and I’ll try to get to some of those, but first I can’t resist asking: why do you want to study math?
EY: A sense of inadequacy.
[...]
[EY:] Even so, I was a spoiled math prodigy as a child—one who was merely amazingly good at math for someone his age, instead of competing with other math prodigies and training to beat them. My sometime coworker Marcello (he works with me over the summer and attends Stanford at other times) is a non-spoiled math prodigy who trained to compete in math competitions and I have literally seen him prove a result in 30 seconds that I failed to prove in an hour.
This is substantially different from EY currently being a math prodigy.
[EY:] I’ve come to accept that to some extent [Marcello and I] have different and complementary abilities—now and then he’ll go into a complicated blaze of derivations and I’ll look at his final result and say “That’s not right” and maybe half the time it will actually be wrong.
In other words, he’s no better than random chance, which is vastly different from “[thinking] he can do advanced math with little effort using some intuition.” By the same logic, you’d accept P=NP trivially.
[EY:] I’ve come to accept that to some extent [Marcello and I] have different and complementary abilities—now and then he’ll go into a complicated blaze of derivations and I’ll look at his final result and say “That’s not right” and maybe half the time it will actually be wrong.
In other words, he’s no better than random chance, which is vastly different from “[thinking] he can do advanced math with little effort using some intuition.” By the same logic, you’d accept P=NP trivially.
I don’t understand. The base rate for Marcello being right is greater than 0.5.
Maybe EY meant that, on the occasions that Eliezer objected to the final result, he was correct to object half the time. So if Eliezer objected to just 1% of the derivations, on that 1% our confidence in the result of the black box would suddenly drop down to 50% from 99.5% or whatever.
[EY:] I’ve come to accept that to some extent [Marcello and I] have different and complementary abilities—now and then he’ll go into a complicated blaze of derivations and I’ll look at his final result and say “That’s not right” and maybe half the time it will actually be wrong.
In other words, he’s no better than random chance, which is vastly different from “[thinking] he can do advanced math with little effort using some intuition.” By the same logic, you’d accept P=NP trivially.
If a device gives a correct diagnosis 999,999 times out of 1,000,000 and is applied to a population that has about 1 in 1,000,000 chance of being positive then a positive diagnosis by the device has approximately 50% chance of being correct. That doesn’t make it “no better than random chance”. It makes it amazingly good.
Notice that your criteria for impressive cleverness excludes practically every graduate student—the vast majority make next to nothing, have few “concrete” things to show off, etc.
It’s not criteria for cleverness, it is criteria for evidence when the prior is 0.0001 (for 1 in 10 000) . One can be clever at one in 7 billions level, and never having done anything of interest, but I can’t detect such person as clever at one in 10 000 level with any confidence without seriously strong evidence.
This is substantially different from EY currently being a math prodigy.
I meant, a childhood math prodigy.
In other words, he’s no better than random chance
If Marcello failed one time out of ten and Eliezer detected it half of the time, that would be better than chance. Without knowing failure rate of Marcello (or without knowing how the failures are detected besides being pointed out by EY), one can’t say whenever it is better than chance or not.
Note that these studies use the same tests (childhood SAT) that Eliezer excelled on (quite a lot higher than the 1 in 10,000 level), and that I was taking into account in my estimation.
Sources?
Also,
a: while that’d be fairly impressive, keep in mind that if it is quite a lot higher than 1 in 10 000 then my prior for it is quite a lot lower than 0.0001 with only minor updates up for ‘seeming clever’ , and my prior for someone being a psychopath/liar is 0.01, with updates up for talking other people into giving you money.
b: not having something else likewise concrete to show off (e.g. contest results of some kind and the like) will at most make me up-estimate him to bin with someone like Keith Raniere or Chris Langan (those did SAT well too), which is already the bin that he’s significantly in. Especially as he had been interested in programming, and the programming is the area where you can literally make a LOT of money in just a couple years while gaining the experience and gaining much better cred than childhood SAT. But also an area that heavily tasks general ability to think right and deal with huge amounts of learned information. My impression is that he’s a spoiled ‘math prodigy’ who didn’t really study anything beyond fairly elementary math, and my impression is that it’s his own impression except he thinks he can do advanced math with little effort using some intuition while i’m pretty damn skeptical of such stuff unless well tested.
I don’t think the childhood SAT gives that much “cred” for real-world efficacy, and I don’t conflate intelligence with “everything good a person can be.” Obviously, Eliezer is below average in the combination of conscientiousness, conformity, and so forth that causes most smart people to do more schooling. So I would expect lower performance on any given task than from a typical person of his level of intelligence. But it’s not that surprising that he would, say, continue popular blogging with significant influence on a sizable audience, rather than stop that (which he values for its effects) to work as a Google engineer to sack away a typical salary, or to do a software startup (which the stats show is pretty uncertain even for those with VC backing and previous successful startups).
I agree on not having deep math knowledge, and this being reason to be skeptical of making very unusual progress in AI or FAI. However while his math scores were high, “math prodigy” isn’t quite right, since his verbal scores were even higher. There are real differences in what you expect to happen depending on the “top skill.” In the SMPY data such people often take up professions like science (or science fiction) writer (or philosopher) that use the verbal skills too, even when they have higher raw math performance than others who go to on to become hard science professors. It’s pretty mundane when such a person leans towards being a blogger rather than an engineer, especially when they are doing pretty well as the former. Eliezer has said that if not worried about x-risk he would want to become a science fiction writer, as opposed to a scientist.
Hey, Raniere was smart enough to get his own cult going.
Or old enough and disillusioned enough not to fight the cultist’s desire to admire someone.
What salary level is good enough evidence for you to consider someone clever?
Notice that your criteria for impressive cleverness excludes practically every graduate student—the vast majority make next to nothing, have few “concrete” things to show off, etc.
Except the interview you quoted says none of that.
[...]
This is substantially different from EY currently being a math prodigy.
In other words, he’s no better than random chance, which is vastly different from “[thinking] he can do advanced math with little effort using some intuition.” By the same logic, you’d accept P=NP trivially.
I don’t understand. The base rate for Marcello being right is greater than 0.5.
Maybe EY meant that, on the occasions that Eliezer objected to the final result, he was correct to object half the time. So if Eliezer objected to just 1% of the derivations, on that 1% our confidence in the result of the black box would suddenly drop down to 50% from 99.5% or whatever.
Yes, but that’s not “no better than random chance.”
Sure. I was suggesting a way in which an objection which is itself only 50% correct could be useful, contra Dmytry.
Oh, right. The point remains that even a perfect Oracle isn’t an efficient source of math proofs.
You do not understand how basic probability works. I recommend An Intuitive Explanation of Bayes’ Theorem.
If a device gives a correct diagnosis 999,999 times out of 1,000,000 and is applied to a population that has about 1 in 1,000,000 chance of being positive then a positive diagnosis by the device has approximately 50% chance of being correct. That doesn’t make it “no better than random chance”. It makes it amazingly good.
It’s not criteria for cleverness, it is criteria for evidence when the prior is 0.0001 (for 1 in 10 000) . One can be clever at one in 7 billions level, and never having done anything of interest, but I can’t detect such person as clever at one in 10 000 level with any confidence without seriously strong evidence.
I meant, a childhood math prodigy.
If Marcello failed one time out of ten and Eliezer detected it half of the time, that would be better than chance. Without knowing failure rate of Marcello (or without knowing how the failures are detected besides being pointed out by EY), one can’t say whenever it is better than chance or not.