I think that was part of the whole “haha goodhart’s law doesn’t exist, making value is really easy” joke. However, it’s also possible that that’s… actually one of the hard-to-fake things they’re looking for (along with actual competence/intelligence). See PG’s Mean People Fail or Earnestness. I agree that “just give good money to good people” is a terrible idea, but there’s a steelman of that which is “along with intelligence, originality, and domain expertise, being a Good Person (whatever that means) and being earnest is a really good trait in EA/LW and the world at large, and so we should try and find people who are Good and Earnest, to whatever extent that we can make sure that isn’t Goodharted .”
(I somewhat expect someone at LW to respond to this saying “no, the whole goodness thing was a joke”)
I think that was part of the whole “haha goodhart’s law doesn’t exist, making value is really easy” joke. However, it’s also possible that that’s… actually one of the hard-to-fake things they’re looking for (along with actual competence/intelligence). See PG’s Mean People Fail or Earnestness. I agree that “just give good money to good people” is a terrible idea, but there’s a steelman of that which is “along with intelligence, originality, and domain expertise, being a Good Person (whatever that means) and being earnest is a really good trait in EA/LW and the world at large, and so we should try and find people who are Good and Earnest, to whatever extent that we can make sure that isn’t Goodharted .”
(I somewhat expect someone at LW to respond to this saying “no, the whole goodness thing was a joke”)