It probably has something to do with the fact that Paul Christiano was a silver medalist. (Paul is currently just a Research Associate, but I think he is much more involved with SI than the others. See here for recent discussion of some of his work.)
If people know of stronger predictors of raw math ability than IMO performance, Putnam performance, and early-age 800 on Math SAT, I’d like to know what they are.
This is generally not an indicator available for young people (and I think it’s reasonable for MIRI recruiting efforts to target young people), and when it is, it isn’t obviously a good idea to use. There are research opportunities available at the high school and undergraduate level, but they are not universally available, and I have been told by people who sit on graduate admissions committees that most of the research that gets produced by these opportunities is bad. Among the research that is not bad, I think it’s likely to be unclear to what extent quality of the work is due to the student’s efforts or the program / advisor’s. (I have heard rumors that in one particular such program, the advisor plots out the course of the research in advance and leads students through it as something like a series of guided exercises.) Edit: I worded that somewhat poorly; I didn’t mean to suggest that the work has been done by someone other than the student, but a nontrivial portion of the success of a research project at this level is due to the careful selection of a research problem and careful guidance on the part of the program / advisor, which is not what we want to select for.
By contrast, tests like the AMC (which leads to the IMO in the US), the Putnam, and the SAT are widely available and standardized.
The fact that you are looking for “raw” math ability seems questionable. If their most recent achievements are IMO/SAT, you’re looking at high schoolers or early undergrads (Putnam winners have their tickets punched at top grad schools and will be very hard to recruit). Given that, you’ll have at least a 5-10 year lag while they continue learning enough to do basic research.
The IMO/IOI and qualification processes for them seem to be useful as early indicators of general intelligence; they obviously don’t capture everyone or even a huge fraction of all comparably smart people, but they seem to have fewer false positives by far than almost any other external indicators until research careers begin in earnest.
We used contests heavily in the screening process for SPARC in part for this reason, and in part because there is a community surrounding contests which the SPARC instructors understand and have credibility with, and which looks like it could actually benefit from exposure to (something like) rationality, which seems like an awesome opportunity.
“IMO medal-winning level” is (I presume) intended to refer to a level of general intelligence / affinity for math. As I said, the majority of people at this level don’t in fact have IMO medals, and some IMO medalists aren’t at this level. The fact that this descriptor gets used, instead of something like “top 0.01%”, probably comes down to a combination of wanting to avoid precision (both about what is being measured and how high the bar is), and wanting to use a measure which reflects well on the current state of affairs. There may be similar, but I expect (and hope) much smaller, effects on thinking in addition to talking.
I don’t think I’ve had a large effect on the way SI folks view possible researchers. I don’t know how large an effect I’ve had on the way Luke talks about possible researchers.
Also note: I’m a very marginal IMO medalist. People analogous to me don’t have medals in most nearby possible worlds.
What’s your evidence that you’re a marginal IMO medalist?
I only ask because I’ve noticed that my perception of a person’s actual ability and my perception of their ego seem to be negatively correlated among the people I’ve met, including Less Wrong users. For example, I once met a guy at a party who told me he wasn’t much of a coder; next semester he left undergrad to be the CTO of a highly technical Y Combinator startup.
This is part of the reason why I’m a little skeptical of SI’s of telling people “send us an e-mail if you did well on the Putnam”—I would guess a large fraction of those who did well on the Putnam think they did well by pure luck. (Imposter syndrome.) SI might be better off trying to collect info on everyone who thinks they might want to work on FAI, no matter how untalented, and judge relative competence for themselves instead of letting FAI contributor wannabes judge themselves. (Or at least specify a score above which one should definitely contact them, regardless of how lucky one feels one got.)
One of the main effects of illusory superiority in IQ is the Downing effect. This describes the tendency of people with a below average IQ to overestimate their IQ, and of people with an above average IQ to underestimate their IQ.
(I personally am a very good example of this, because although I think I’m not terribly bright, I am in fact a genius.)
It probably has something to do with the fact that Paul Christiano was a silver medalist. (Paul is currently just a Research Associate, but I think he is much more involved with SI than the others. See here for recent discussion of some of his work.)
No, we were IMO fetishists before we met Paul.
If people know of stronger predictors of raw math ability than IMO performance, Putnam performance, and early-age 800 on Math SAT, I’d like to know what they are.
Past achievement in original math research, of course.
This is generally not an indicator available for young people (and I think it’s reasonable for MIRI recruiting efforts to target young people), and when it is, it isn’t obviously a good idea to use. There are research opportunities available at the high school and undergraduate level, but they are not universally available, and I have been told by people who sit on graduate admissions committees that most of the research that gets produced by these opportunities is bad. Among the research that is not bad, I think it’s likely to be unclear to what extent quality of the work is due to the student’s efforts or the program / advisor’s. (I have heard rumors that in one particular such program, the advisor plots out the course of the research in advance and leads students through it as something like a series of guided exercises.) Edit: I worded that somewhat poorly; I didn’t mean to suggest that the work has been done by someone other than the student, but a nontrivial portion of the success of a research project at this level is due to the careful selection of a research problem and careful guidance on the part of the program / advisor, which is not what we want to select for.
By contrast, tests like the AMC (which leads to the IMO in the US), the Putnam, and the SAT are widely available and standardized.
The fact that you are looking for “raw” math ability seems questionable. If their most recent achievements are IMO/SAT, you’re looking at high schoolers or early undergrads (Putnam winners have their tickets punched at top grad schools and will be very hard to recruit). Given that, you’ll have at least a 5-10 year lag while they continue learning enough to do basic research.
Yes. So? During that time, you can get them interested in rationality and x-risk.
The IMO/IOI and qualification processes for them seem to be useful as early indicators of general intelligence; they obviously don’t capture everyone or even a huge fraction of all comparably smart people, but they seem to have fewer false positives by far than almost any other external indicators until research careers begin in earnest.
We used contests heavily in the screening process for SPARC in part for this reason, and in part because there is a community surrounding contests which the SPARC instructors understand and have credibility with, and which looks like it could actually benefit from exposure to (something like) rationality, which seems like an awesome opportunity.
“IMO medal-winning level” is (I presume) intended to refer to a level of general intelligence / affinity for math. As I said, the majority of people at this level don’t in fact have IMO medals, and some IMO medalists aren’t at this level. The fact that this descriptor gets used, instead of something like “top 0.01%”, probably comes down to a combination of wanting to avoid precision (both about what is being measured and how high the bar is), and wanting to use a measure which reflects well on the current state of affairs. There may be similar, but I expect (and hope) much smaller, effects on thinking in addition to talking.
I don’t think I’ve had a large effect on the way SI folks view possible researchers. I don’t know how large an effect I’ve had on the way Luke talks about possible researchers.
Also note: I’m a very marginal IMO medalist. People analogous to me don’t have medals in most nearby possible worlds.
What’s your evidence that you’re a marginal IMO medalist?
I only ask because I’ve noticed that my perception of a person’s actual ability and my perception of their ego seem to be negatively correlated among the people I’ve met, including Less Wrong users. For example, I once met a guy at a party who told me he wasn’t much of a coder; next semester he left undergrad to be the CTO of a highly technical Y Combinator startup.
This is part of the reason why I’m a little skeptical of SI’s of telling people “send us an e-mail if you did well on the Putnam”—I would guess a large fraction of those who did well on the Putnam think they did well by pure luck. (Imposter syndrome.) SI might be better off trying to collect info on everyone who thinks they might want to work on FAI, no matter how untalented, and judge relative competence for themselves instead of letting FAI contributor wannabes judge themselves. (Or at least specify a score above which one should definitely contact them, regardless of how lucky one feels one got.)
Less Wrong post on mathematicians and status:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/2vb/vanity_and_ambition_in_mathematics/
IAWYC, and so does Wikipedia:
(I personally am a very good example of this, because although I think I’m not terribly bright, I am in fact a genius.)
Sure, but with the obsession as the antecedent.