Eliezer managed signaling well enough to get a billionaire to fund him on his project. A billionaire who fund people who drop out of college systematically in projects like his 20 Under 20 program.
Trying to go the traditional route wouldn’t fit into the highly effective image that he already signals.
Put another way, the purpose of signaling isn’t so nobody will give you crap. It’s so somebody will help you accomplish your goals.
People will give you crap, especially if they can get paid to do so. See gossip journalists, for instance. They are not paid to give boring and unsuccessful people crap; they are paid to give interesting and successful people crap.
Your last para would imply that not getting crap from gossip journalists means you are not interesting or successful. Eliezer/MIRI gets almost no press. Are you sure that’s what you meant?
Well, yes, there is going to be some inevitable crap, but the purpose of signalling is so that you could impress a much larger pool of people. So it might not be much help for gossip journalists, but it might help with the marginal professional ethicist, mathematician, or public figure. In that area, you might get some additional “Anybody who can do that must be damn impressive.”. Does the additional damn-impressive outweigh the cost? I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking.
Peter Thiel (the billionaire) has the proven ability to spot talent, which is why he is a billionaire. Eliezer has traits that Thiel values, and this is probably much more important than any signal Eliezer sent.
Impressing Thiel is independent of a future degree or not, because he’s already impressed. Where’s the next billionaire going to come from, and will they coincidentally also be as contrarian as Thiel? Maybe MIRI doesn’t need another billionaire, but I don’t think they’d turn one away.
Impressing Thiel is independent of a future degree or not, because he’s already impressed.
I think the deal that Eliezer has with Thiel is that Eliezer does MIRI full time. Switching focus to getting a degree might violate the deal.
Gives that Thiel has a lot of money impressing Thiel more might also be very useful if they want more money from him.
Where’s the next billionaire going to come from, and will they coincidentally also be as contrarian as Thiel?
Do you really think that someone who isn’t contrarian will put his money into MIRI?
The present set up is quite okay. Those who want people with academic credentials can give their money to FHI. Those who want more contrarian people can give their money to MIRI.
Whether or not Eliezer has a degree doesn’t change that he’s the kind of person who has a public Okcupid profile detailing his sexual habits and the fact that he’s polyamorous.
When Steve Job was alive and run around in a sweater, he didn’t cause people to disregard him because he wasn’t wearing a suit.
People respect the person who’s a contrarian who’s okay with not everyone liking him. The contrarian who tries to get every to like them on the other hand get’s no respect.
On the other hand if he decides to get a degree and pulls it off in a year or something impressive like that it could just feed into the contrarian genius image.
Yes, but that would prokbably either mean paying someone else to do your homework with means that you are vunerable to attack or making studying the sole focus for a year.
In addition “getting flak” isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
It can be counter-signaling if you can get flak and stay standing.
It can also polarize people and separate those who can evaluate the inside arguments to realize that you’re good from those who can’t and have to just write you off for having no formal education.
Eddie has some math talent. He can invest some time, money, and effort C to get a degree, which allows other people to discern that he has a higher probability of having that math talent. This higher probability confers some benefit in that other people will more readily take his advice in mathematical matters, or talk with him about his math.
The fun twist is that Eddie lives in a society with many other individuals with varying degrees of math talent, each of whom can expend C to get a degree and the associated benefits. People with almost no mathematical talent have a prohibitively high C, because even if they can pony up the time and money, they have to work very hard to fake their way through. But people with high math ability often choose to stand out by getting the degree, because their C is relatively lower, and a very high proportion of them get degrees. This creates a high association between degrees and mathematical ability, and makes it unlikely to see high mathematical ability in the absence of a degree.
That’s the basic idea, plus degrees signal other things which may be completely unrelated to math, but are still nice. Even in the case where the degree has no causal effect no math ability, there are benefits to having one, in that the other math people can judge very quickly that they’re interested in talking to you.
Hopefully that demonstrates that I understand signalling. My question is about the costs and benefits of a particular signal.
It demonstrate that you don’t. Humans make decisions via something called the availability heuristic.
If you bring into the awareness of the person that you are talking that you are a mathematician that only has a bachleor, no master, no PHD and no professorship that you aren’t bringing expertise into his mind.
If you are however a self taught person who managed to published multiple papers among them a paper titled “Complex Value Systems in Friendly AI” in Artificial General Intelligence Lecture Notes in Computer Science Volume and who has his own research institute that’s a better picture.
If you have published papers that a lot more relevant for relevant experts than whether you have a degree that verifies basic understanding.
If a person really cares whether Eliezer has a math degree he already lost that person.
I’m not certain that getting a degree now counts as the traditional route. Also, I don’t think that an additional degree is particularly damaging to his image. People aren’t going to lose interest in FAI if he sells out and gets a traditional degree. Or they are and I have no idea what kind of people are involved.
I don’t think you understand signaling well.
Eliezer managed signaling well enough to get a billionaire to fund him on his project. A billionaire who fund people who drop out of college systematically in projects like his 20 Under 20 program.
Trying to go the traditional route wouldn’t fit into the highly effective image that he already signals.
Put another way, the purpose of signaling isn’t so nobody will give you crap. It’s so somebody will help you accomplish your goals.
People will give you crap, especially if they can get paid to do so. See gossip journalists, for instance. They are not paid to give boring and unsuccessful people crap; they are paid to give interesting and successful people crap.
Your last para would imply that not getting crap from gossip journalists means you are not interesting or successful. Eliezer/MIRI gets almost no press. Are you sure that’s what you meant?
Eliezer gets a lot more press than I do, which is just fine with me.
Well, yes, there is going to be some inevitable crap, but the purpose of signalling is so that you could impress a much larger pool of people. So it might not be much help for gossip journalists, but it might help with the marginal professional ethicist, mathematician, or public figure. In that area, you might get some additional “Anybody who can do that must be damn impressive.”. Does the additional damn-impressive outweigh the cost? I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking.
The discussion about mean vs variance in this post may be relevant.
Peter Thiel (the billionaire) has the proven ability to spot talent, which is why he is a billionaire. Eliezer has traits that Thiel values, and this is probably much more important than any signal Eliezer sent.
Impressing Thiel is independent of a future degree or not, because he’s already impressed. Where’s the next billionaire going to come from, and will they coincidentally also be as contrarian as Thiel? Maybe MIRI doesn’t need another billionaire, but I don’t think they’d turn one away.
I think the deal that Eliezer has with Thiel is that Eliezer does MIRI full time. Switching focus to getting a degree might violate the deal. Gives that Thiel has a lot of money impressing Thiel more might also be very useful if they want more money from him.
Do you really think that someone who isn’t contrarian will put his money into MIRI? The present set up is quite okay. Those who want people with academic credentials can give their money to FHI. Those who want more contrarian people can give their money to MIRI.
Whether or not Eliezer has a degree doesn’t change that he’s the kind of person who has a public Okcupid profile detailing his sexual habits and the fact that he’s polyamorous.
When Steve Job was alive and run around in a sweater, he didn’t cause people to disregard him because he wasn’t wearing a suit.
People respect the person who’s a contrarian who’s okay with not everyone liking him. The contrarian who tries to get every to like them on the other hand get’s no respect.
On the other hand if he decides to get a degree and pulls it off in a year or something impressive like that it could just feed into the contrarian genius image.
Yes, but that would prokbably either mean paying someone else to do your homework with means that you are vunerable to attack or making studying the sole focus for a year.
Yes, the autodidact signal can be tremendously effective, particularly in tech/libertarian company.
In addition “getting flak” isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
It can be counter-signaling if you can get flak and stay standing.
It can also polarize people and separate those who can evaluate the inside arguments to realize that you’re good from those who can’t and have to just write you off for having no formal education.
Eddie has some math talent. He can invest some time, money, and effort C to get a degree, which allows other people to discern that he has a higher probability of having that math talent. This higher probability confers some benefit in that other people will more readily take his advice in mathematical matters, or talk with him about his math.
The fun twist is that Eddie lives in a society with many other individuals with varying degrees of math talent, each of whom can expend C to get a degree and the associated benefits. People with almost no mathematical talent have a prohibitively high C, because even if they can pony up the time and money, they have to work very hard to fake their way through. But people with high math ability often choose to stand out by getting the degree, because their C is relatively lower, and a very high proportion of them get degrees. This creates a high association between degrees and mathematical ability, and makes it unlikely to see high mathematical ability in the absence of a degree.
That’s the basic idea, plus degrees signal other things which may be completely unrelated to math, but are still nice. Even in the case where the degree has no causal effect no math ability, there are benefits to having one, in that the other math people can judge very quickly that they’re interested in talking to you.
Hopefully that demonstrates that I understand signalling. My question is about the costs and benefits of a particular signal.
It demonstrate that you don’t. Humans make decisions via something called the availability heuristic.
If you bring into the awareness of the person that you are talking that you are a mathematician that only has a bachleor, no master, no PHD and no professorship that you aren’t bringing expertise into his mind.
If you are however a self taught person who managed to published multiple papers among them a paper titled “Complex Value Systems in Friendly AI” in Artificial General Intelligence Lecture Notes in Computer Science Volume and who has his own research institute that’s a better picture.
If you have published papers that a lot more relevant for relevant experts than whether you have a degree that verifies basic understanding. If a person really cares whether Eliezer has a math degree he already lost that person.
I’m not certain that getting a degree now counts as the traditional route. Also, I don’t think that an additional degree is particularly damaging to his image. People aren’t going to lose interest in FAI if he sells out and gets a traditional degree. Or they are and I have no idea what kind of people are involved.