The goal for the incubator is to foster new conceptual alignment research bets that could go on to become full-fledged research directions, either at Conjecture or at other places. We’re thus planning to select mostly on the quality we expect for a very promising independent conceptual researcher, that is proactivity (see Paul Graham’s Relentlessly Resourceful post) and some interest or excitement about not fully tapped streams of evidence (see this recent post).
Although experience with alignment could help, it might also prove a problem if it comes with too strong ontological commitment and limits exploration of unusual research directions and ideas. The start of the program will include a lot of discussion and sharing a map of alignment and mental moves that I (Adam) have been building over the last few months, so this should bring people up to speed to do productive research.
If you have any more questions about this, feel free to reach me either on LW or at my Conjecture email.
Will you be approachable for incubating less experienced people (for example student interns), or do you not want to take that overhead right now?
(I will be running the Incubator at Conjecture)
The goal for the incubator is to foster new conceptual alignment research bets that could go on to become full-fledged research directions, either at Conjecture or at other places. We’re thus planning to select mostly on the quality we expect for a very promising independent conceptual researcher, that is proactivity (see Paul Graham’s Relentlessly Resourceful post) and some interest or excitement about not fully tapped streams of evidence (see this recent post).
Although experience with alignment could help, it might also prove a problem if it comes with too strong ontological commitment and limits exploration of unusual research directions and ideas. The start of the program will include a lot of discussion and sharing a map of alignment and mental moves that I (Adam) have been building over the last few months, so this should bring people up to speed to do productive research.
If you have any more questions about this, feel free to reach me either on LW or at my Conjecture email.