Hello LW. My pseudonym is DiscyD3rp, and this introduction is long overdo. I am 17, male, and currently enrolled in high school. I discovered this site over a year ago, via HPMoR, and have read a good percentage of the main sequences in a kinda correct order. However, i was experiencing significant angst from what I call Dungeon Crawl Anxiety (The same reason that when exploring RPG dungeons i double back and explore even AFTER discovering the correct path). I am now (re-)reading the entirety of Eliezer’s posts in the ebook version of the sequences. I have found the re-read articles still useful after having gotten a basic handle on bayesian thought, and look forward to completing my enlightenment
As far as personality, I was (am) incredibly arrogant, and future goals involve MIRI and/or rationality teaching myself (one time involves an email to Eliezer claiming the ability to save the world, and subsequently learning that decision theory is HARD). I am not particularly talented in quickly absorbing technical fields of knowledge, but plan on on developing that skill. My existing talent seems to be manipulating idea and concepts easily and creatively once well understood. Im great at reading the map, but suffer difficulty in writing it. (In very mathy fields)
Im a born Christian, with a moderate upbringing, but likely saved from extremism by the internet just in time. Now a skeptic and an atheist.
I hope you will forgive the impertinance of offering unsolicited advice: if you havn’t already, you might consider teaching yourself several programming languages in your free time. It’s a very marketable skill, important to MIRI’s work, and in many ways suffices for a basic education in logic. The mathy stuff is probably not optional given your ambitions, and much of the same discipline and attention to detail necessary cor programming can be applied to learning serious math. Arrogance will be a terrible burden if unaccompanied by usefulness and skill.
I am currently teaching myself Haskel and have a functional programming textbook on my device. While unsolicited, i apreciate ALL advice. Any other tips?
Nope, that’s all I got. Wait, one more thing. I learned in a painful way that scholarly credentials are most cheaply won (time and effort wise) in high school, and then it gets exponentially more difficult as you age. Every hour you spend making sure you get perfect grades now is worth ten or a hundred hours in your early-mid twenties. Looking back, getting anything less than perfect grades, given how easy that is in high school, seems utterly foolish. Maybe you already know that. Good luck!
Ok, followup question: How important are scholarly credentials vs just having that knowledge without a diploma? Obviously it varies with the field and what one wishes to use the knowledge for. However, it’s important to know, because i don’t want to waste resources getting a degree when alternatively auditing courses and reading textbooks is just as useful.
Ex: Art degree is useful if I want to be employed specifically by a company that requires it, but pure knowledge is just as useful for freelance/independent work in the same field, and is much cheaper.
How important are scholarly credentials vs just having that knowledge without a diploma?
I think in almost every field and occupation, having the scholarly credentials is extremely important. Knowledge without the credentials is pretty worthless (unless its worthwhile in itself, but even then you can’t eat it): using that knowledge will generally require that people put trust in your having it, often when they’re not in a position to evaluate how much you know (either because they’re not experts, or they don’t have the time). Credentials are generally therefore the basis of that trust. Since freelance work either requires more trust, or pays very badly and inconsistently, credentials are worth getting.
And that was the point of my previous post: some way or other, you have to earn people’s trust that you can do a job worth paying you for. One way to earn that trust is to perform well despite lacking credentials. This will take an enormous amount of time and effort (during which you will not be paid, or at least not well) compared to doing whatever it takes to get as close to a 4.0 as you can. The faster you get people to trust you, the faster you can stop fighting to feed and shelter yourself and start fighting for the future of humanity.
Getting a degree sucks because it’s expensive and time consuming. But if you work harder than everyone else around you, you’ll get through it faster, and scholarships will make it closer to free. The whole point is just to get to a job where you’re doing some real good as soon as you can. Getting solid credentials is without a doubt the fastest way to do this for almost everyone.
The exceptions are people who are either very smart or very lucky. Obviously you can’t count on luck, but you shouldn’t count on being a super-genius either. First, you’re still in high school at 17. People smart enough to skip the normal system of credentials (which is really, really, really smart) are not in high school at 17. And the credential system is and has been tightening for decades, because higher education is so packed with people. You’re going to be competing with people who have degrees at almost every level, and not just BA/S’s. Empirically there’s no question that they out-compete people without degrees.
Not every degree is worth getting, of course, but the ‘autodidact’ thing is almost certainly just going to be the longest and hardest path to getting where you want to be.
ETA: I don’t remember the specifics, but EY once said that very probably every person-hour spent working toward FAI saves [insert shockingly large number] lives. Think about it this way: those people are all looking at you from the future, watching you to see what you do. You’re looking back at them, and watching [insert shockingly large number] of them vanish with every hour wasted. Time is a factor.
Programming is one of the very few occupations you still can get into without formal credentials, with some difficulty. Academia is right out, and so is any area where formal certification is a legal prerequisite, like most of engineering, commerce, law, medicine etc. You can certainly start your own business in one of many of the less regulated areas, if you are good, lucky and willing to work your ass off.
I apreciate coming to my defense, although my writig is poor. I’ve bean meaning to get a copy of Elements of Style from the library, and practice does make perfect, so the more I comment the better I’ll get.
did you read the part about being consistent in my own ways? i’m not criticizing him for eschewing standard rules!
oh, and if you’re all “you screwed up by joining two independent clauses with a conjunction and no comma”? that was fucking deliberate (the relevant consistency is “for speechlike writing, i use punctuation to approximate the structure of speech”)
I apologize. I was in a particular rush at the time of that particular comment, and was using my ipod. I understand that people are liable to respond adversely to bad spelling, and hope to prevent similar mistakes in the future.
I thank you for providing me with an emotive memory for why this is important, and I hope the future is just as critical of me as you currently are.
If you find sparkles’s comments helpful, great. I would not have found them worthwhile while I had high levels of typo problems (I’ve gotten better, but I’m not perfect—worse, my typos tend to change meanings rather than simply fail to make words).
Quality of writing improves with practice, but spelling mistakes of the kind you were making in the context you made them (comment section, via mobile device) are not closely correlated with quality.
was using my ipod
If these mistakes really bother you, the lesson might simply be not to post through the Ipod, without getting into the emotional reaction that sparkles is trying to generate. Because whipsawing your emotions is not a friendly act.
Because your habit of blanking old comments is much more effective communication?
Look, criticism is tolerable when it is constructive. You seem subjectively motivated to win a status contest, not provide input leading to improvement.
Edit:
spellcheck is so easy you have no excuse
bad grammar is less painful than doesn’t-even-care-to-spellcheck
None of the common words DiscyD3rp used were actually misspelled, except for “overdo”, and no apostrophe in “Im” was probably intentional, as well as a the liberties with punctuation and capitalization. But I agree with a more general point: good written English makes one more likely to be taken seriously.
Given your ambition I suggest changing your name to something respectable before you have spent time establishing a name for yourself. DiscyD3rp will make establishing credibility more difficult for you.
Ackknowledged. Its currently my go-to username for personal/fun use, and is less apropriate for serious science. I wasnt sure if LeasWrong was the best place to start professionally. Would you reccommend irl name or a professional paeudonym?
Ackknowledged. Its currently my go-to username for personal/fun use, and is less apropriate for serious science. I wasnt sure if LeasWrong was the best place to start professionally. Would you reccommend irl name or a professional paeudonym?
Given that you have indicated professional interest within the rationalist community going with a real name is a better-than-usual option.
Au contraire, mon ami! Given that he has indicated a professional interest within the rationalist community, he should shield his early steps—and the invariable (pit)falls they will lead him to—from his one unchangeable identity.
Not everyone in his early years produces EY-quality content, and even he is often confronted with—and has to distance himself from—certain remarks from decades ago. The internet does not forgive, its search engines do not forget.
On the contrary, given that he has indicated a professional interest within the rationalist community, he should shield his early steps—and the invariable (pit)falls they will lead him to—from his one unchangeable identity.
Lesswrong usernames do not tend to remain anonymous among the rationalist community even among those who make (some, but not extreme amounts) of effort to hide them. Personality and commonly expressed beliefs tend to make identity rather obvious. On the other hand pseudonymity is enough to shield you from a token google search by a mainstream employer associating you with any non mainstream beliefs expressed.
Do note that ‘better-than-usual’ option is hardly a ringing endorsement. It’s more a failure to advise against in this case rather than particular advice for. My only serious advice is to abandon any name that makes him look like a 13 year old troll.
Also, “wedrifid” advising the use of real names?
I have 27,746 karma worth of learning from that mistake.
A point I meant to make in my original comment: I hope the community support will more effectively encourage rational behavior in myself than I’ve currently been able to do solo. Enforce your group norms, and i hope to adapt to this tribe’s methods quickly, unless more effective self hacks are known.
Hello LW. My pseudonym is DiscyD3rp, and this introduction is long overdo. I am 17, male, and currently enrolled in high school. I discovered this site over a year ago, via HPMoR, and have read a good percentage of the main sequences in a kinda correct order. However, i was experiencing significant angst from what I call Dungeon Crawl Anxiety (The same reason that when exploring RPG dungeons i double back and explore even AFTER discovering the correct path). I am now (re-)reading the entirety of Eliezer’s posts in the ebook version of the sequences. I have found the re-read articles still useful after having gotten a basic handle on bayesian thought, and look forward to completing my enlightenment
As far as personality, I was (am) incredibly arrogant, and future goals involve MIRI and/or rationality teaching myself (one time involves an email to Eliezer claiming the ability to save the world, and subsequently learning that decision theory is HARD). I am not particularly talented in quickly absorbing technical fields of knowledge, but plan on on developing that skill. My existing talent seems to be manipulating idea and concepts easily and creatively once well understood. Im great at reading the map, but suffer difficulty in writing it. (In very mathy fields)
Im a born Christian, with a moderate upbringing, but likely saved from extremism by the internet just in time. Now a skeptic and an atheist.
I hope you will forgive the impertinance of offering unsolicited advice: if you havn’t already, you might consider teaching yourself several programming languages in your free time. It’s a very marketable skill, important to MIRI’s work, and in many ways suffices for a basic education in logic. The mathy stuff is probably not optional given your ambitions, and much of the same discipline and attention to detail necessary cor programming can be applied to learning serious math. Arrogance will be a terrible burden if unaccompanied by usefulness and skill.
I am currently teaching myself Haskel and have a functional programming textbook on my device. While unsolicited, i apreciate ALL advice. Any other tips?
Nope, that’s all I got. Wait, one more thing. I learned in a painful way that scholarly credentials are most cheaply won (time and effort wise) in high school, and then it gets exponentially more difficult as you age. Every hour you spend making sure you get perfect grades now is worth ten or a hundred hours in your early-mid twenties. Looking back, getting anything less than perfect grades, given how easy that is in high school, seems utterly foolish. Maybe you already know that. Good luck!
Ok, followup question: How important are scholarly credentials vs just having that knowledge without a diploma? Obviously it varies with the field and what one wishes to use the knowledge for. However, it’s important to know, because i don’t want to waste resources getting a degree when alternatively auditing courses and reading textbooks is just as useful.
Ex: Art degree is useful if I want to be employed specifically by a company that requires it, but pure knowledge is just as useful for freelance/independent work in the same field, and is much cheaper.
I think in almost every field and occupation, having the scholarly credentials is extremely important. Knowledge without the credentials is pretty worthless (unless its worthwhile in itself, but even then you can’t eat it): using that knowledge will generally require that people put trust in your having it, often when they’re not in a position to evaluate how much you know (either because they’re not experts, or they don’t have the time). Credentials are generally therefore the basis of that trust. Since freelance work either requires more trust, or pays very badly and inconsistently, credentials are worth getting.
And that was the point of my previous post: some way or other, you have to earn people’s trust that you can do a job worth paying you for. One way to earn that trust is to perform well despite lacking credentials. This will take an enormous amount of time and effort (during which you will not be paid, or at least not well) compared to doing whatever it takes to get as close to a 4.0 as you can. The faster you get people to trust you, the faster you can stop fighting to feed and shelter yourself and start fighting for the future of humanity.
Getting a degree sucks because it’s expensive and time consuming. But if you work harder than everyone else around you, you’ll get through it faster, and scholarships will make it closer to free. The whole point is just to get to a job where you’re doing some real good as soon as you can. Getting solid credentials is without a doubt the fastest way to do this for almost everyone.
The exceptions are people who are either very smart or very lucky. Obviously you can’t count on luck, but you shouldn’t count on being a super-genius either. First, you’re still in high school at 17. People smart enough to skip the normal system of credentials (which is really, really, really smart) are not in high school at 17. And the credential system is and has been tightening for decades, because higher education is so packed with people. You’re going to be competing with people who have degrees at almost every level, and not just BA/S’s. Empirically there’s no question that they out-compete people without degrees.
Not every degree is worth getting, of course, but the ‘autodidact’ thing is almost certainly just going to be the longest and hardest path to getting where you want to be.
ETA: I don’t remember the specifics, but EY once said that very probably every person-hour spent working toward FAI saves [insert shockingly large number] lives. Think about it this way: those people are all looking at you from the future, watching you to see what you do. You’re looking back at them, and watching [insert shockingly large number] of them vanish with every hour wasted. Time is a factor.
...
I need to get my shit together. This is the most compelling argument I’ve heard for “jumping through the hoops”.
Thank you for that, I hope I can actually change my mind about this.
Programming is one of the very few occupations you still can get into without formal credentials, with some difficulty. Academia is right out, and so is any area where formal certification is a legal prerequisite, like most of engineering, commerce, law, medicine etc. You can certainly start your own business in one of many of the less regulated areas, if you are good, lucky and willing to work your ass off.
you use english painfully poorly . i may be one to eschew standard rules, but i am quite consistent in my own ways and i do know them
specifically, get a spellcheck and be consistent
For comments? Really? This ain’t professional writing—and the meaning of D’s writing is quite clear.
Edit:
(emphasis in original)
I apreciate coming to my defense, although my writig is poor. I’ve bean meaning to get a copy of Elements of Style from the library, and practice does make perfect, so the more I comment the better I’ll get.
Also note the irony of the pot calling the kettle black (unless it was subtle irony, which I doubt).
That’s not sparkles’s fault, it’s just McKean’s Law
idiot
did you read the part about being consistent in my own ways? i’m not criticizing him for eschewing standard rules!
oh, and if you’re all “you screwed up by joining two independent clauses with a conjunction and no comma”? that was fucking deliberate (the relevant consistency is “for speechlike writing, i use punctuation to approximate the structure of speech”)
spellcheck is so easy you have no excuse
bad grammar is less painful than doesn’t-even-care-to-spellcheck
I apologize. I was in a particular rush at the time of that particular comment, and was using my ipod. I understand that people are liable to respond adversely to bad spelling, and hope to prevent similar mistakes in the future.
I thank you for providing me with an emotive memory for why this is important, and I hope the future is just as critical of me as you currently are.
If you find sparkles’s comments helpful, great. I would not have found them worthwhile while I had high levels of typo problems (I’ve gotten better, but I’m not perfect—worse, my typos tend to change meanings rather than simply fail to make words).
Quality of writing improves with practice, but spelling mistakes of the kind you were making in the context you made them (comment section, via mobile device) are not closely correlated with quality.
If these mistakes really bother you, the lesson might simply be not to post through the Ipod, without getting into the emotional reaction that sparkles is trying to generate. Because whipsawing your emotions is not a friendly act.
Because your habit of blanking old comments is much more effective communication?
Look, criticism is tolerable when it is constructive. You seem subjectively motivated to win a status contest, not provide input leading to improvement.
Edit:
aw, he still thinks ad hominem is cute
you should respect norm-violating lesswrong posters more
especially when someone around you goes all “yeah, thank you :D”
None of the common words DiscyD3rp used were actually misspelled, except for “overdo”, and no apostrophe in “Im” was probably intentional, as well as a the liberties with punctuation and capitalization. But I agree with a more general point: good written English makes one more likely to be taken seriously.
“apreciate”
Given your ambition I suggest changing your name to something respectable before you have spent time establishing a name for yourself. DiscyD3rp will make establishing credibility more difficult for you.
Ackknowledged. Its currently my go-to username for personal/fun use, and is less apropriate for serious science. I wasnt sure if LeasWrong was the best place to start professionally. Would you reccommend irl name or a professional paeudonym?
Given that you have indicated professional interest within the rationalist community going with a real name is a better-than-usual option.
Au contraire, mon ami! Given that he has indicated a professional interest within the rationalist community, he should shield his early steps—and the invariable (pit)falls they will lead him to—from his one unchangeable identity.
Not everyone in his early years produces EY-quality content, and even he is often confronted with—and has to distance himself from—certain remarks from decades ago. The internet does not forgive, its search engines do not forget.
Also, “wedrifid” advising the use of real names?
Lesswrong usernames do not tend to remain anonymous among the rationalist community even among those who make (some, but not extreme amounts) of effort to hide them. Personality and commonly expressed beliefs tend to make identity rather obvious. On the other hand pseudonymity is enough to shield you from a token google search by a mainstream employer associating you with any non mainstream beliefs expressed.
Do note that ‘better-than-usual’ option is hardly a ringing endorsement. It’s more a failure to advise against in this case rather than particular advice for. My only serious advice is to abandon any name that makes him look like a 13 year old troll.
I have 27,746 karma worth of learning from that mistake.
A point I meant to make in my original comment: I hope the community support will more effectively encourage rational behavior in myself than I’ve currently been able to do solo. Enforce your group norms, and i hope to adapt to this tribe’s methods quickly, unless more effective self hacks are known.