Imagine you find a magic lamp. You polish it and, as expected, a genie pops out. However, it’s a special kind of genie and instead of offering you three wishes it offers to make you an expert in anything, equal to the greatest mind working in that field today, instantly and with no effort on your part. You only get to choose one subject area, with “subject area” defined as anything offered as a degree by a respectable university. Also if you try to trick the genie he’ll kick you in the nads*.
So if you could learn anything, what would you learn?
*This example is in no way intended to imply that women are less worthy of the right to be attacked by genies. Neither is it intended to imply that there could never be a female genie. That would be stupid. Where else could baby genies come from?
The nice thing about mathematics is that you can easily do it outside of school and independently, and when you do it as a mature adult, you do it because you love it and for no other reason. You are free to use better texts than you could as a student, so if you want to brush up on calculus, you can use Spivak or Courant rather than being forced to use low-quality texts that are optimized for the convenience of the professor rather than the insight of the student. There are also so many learning resources available now that weren’t available when I was a student—things like wikipedia, planet math, and physicsforums.com, not to mention software like Octave and Sage.
I’d like to add that one of the nice things about mathematics as a choice is that you can avoid credentialing issues. I’m sure we’ve all read Hanson on how most of the value of a college degree is in that the college is certifying your abilities, and stamping you.
If you chose world-class ability in economics/financial trading, say, and you are a poor student, then what are you going to do with it? You can’t make a killing on the market to prove your abilities; you can’t go work as an intern for a firm to prove your knowledge, etc.
Similarly with genetics. If I suddenly gained world-class genetic knowledge, I cannot walk up to Cold Spring Harbor and ask them to let me use some multi-million dollar equipment for a year because I have this awesome bit of research I’d like to do. I simply don’t have any proof that I’m not a random bozo who has memorized a bunch of textbooks and papers. I’d have to get lucky and convince a professor or somebody to take me on as an assistant and slowly build up my credentials until I can do the bit of research that will irrefutably establish me as a leading luminary.
Or how about physics? If I specialize in experimental or practical physics, I have the same chicken-and-egg problem; if I specialize in theoretical, then I run the risk of simply being ignored, or written off as a crank (and the better my contribution, the more likely I am to be seen as a crank!).
But with mathematics, I can just crank out a bunch of theorems and send in a paper. If people are still unconvinced, being a mathematical genius, I can just formalize it and send in a Coq/Isabelle/Twelf file consisting solely of the proof.
While mathematics certainly appears to me to be more of a meritocracy than the sciences, it’s still the case that the notion of proof has changed over time—and continues to change (witness Coq and friends) --, as have standards of rigor and what counts as mathematics. There are social and other non-mathematical reasons that influence how and why some ideas are accepted while others are rejected only to be accepted later, and vice versa.
It’s an interesting question whether this will always be the case or if it will converge on something approaching unanimously accepted truth and aesthetic criteria. Personally, I think mathematics is intrinsically an artistic endeavor and that the aesthetic aspect of it will never disappear. And where there is aesthetics, there is also politics and other sausage-making activities...
While mathematics certainly appears to me to be more of a meritocracy than the sciences, it’s still the case that the notion of proof has changed over time—and continues to change (witness Coq and friends) --, as have standards of rigor and what counts as mathematics.
The gold standard of what is a proof and what is not was achieved with the first-order predicate calculus a century ago and has not changed since. Leibniz’ dream has been realised in this area. However, no-one troubles to explicitly use the perfect language of mathematical proof and nothing else, except when the act of doing so is the point. It is enough to be able to speak it, and thereafter to use its idioms to the extent necessary to clearly communicate one’s ideas.
On the other hand, what proofs or theorems mathematicians find important or interesting will always be changing.
I don’t really think the question is whether mathematics is more meritocratic—it’s an economic question of credentialing. You need credentialing when you cannot cheaply verify performance. If I had a personal LHC and wrote a paper based on its results, I don’t think anyone would care too much about whether I have 2 PhDs or just a GED—the particle physicists would accept it. But of course, nobody has a personal LHC.
With mathematics, with formal machine-checkable proofs, the cost of verification is about as low as possible. How long does it take to load a Coq proof and check it? A second or two? Then all someone needs to do is take a look at my few premises; either the premises are dodgy (which should be obvious), or they’re common & acceptable (in which case they know I’m a math genius), or I’m exploiting a Coq flaw (in which case I’m also a math genius). Once they rule out #1, I’m golden and can begin turning the genie’s gift to good account.
By meritocracy, I meant what you explain by credentialing: the idea that the work alone is absolutely sufficient to establish itself as genius or crackpottery or obvious or uninteresting or whatever, that who you are, who you know, where you went to school and who your advisors were, which conferences you’ve presented at, the time and culture in which you find yourself, whether you’re working in a trendy sub-discipline, etc., that all that is irrelevant.
How much of mathematics is machine-checkable now? My (possibly mistaken) understanding was that even the optimists didn’t expect most of existing mathematics for decades at least. And how will we formalize the new branches of mathematics that have yet to be invented? They won’t spring forth fully formed as Coq proofs. Instead, they’ll be established person-to-person at the whiteboard, explained in coffee shops and over chinese food in between workshop sessions. And much, much later, somebody will formalize the radically revised descendant of the original proof, when the cutting edge has moved on.
I’ll know you’re right and I’m wrong if I ever begin to hear regular announcements of important new theorems being given in machine-checkable format by unaffiliated non-professionals and their being lauded quickly by the professionals. And that is the easier task, since it is the creation of new branches and the abstraction and merging of seemingly unrelated or only distantly related branches that is the heart of mathematics, and that seems even less likely to be able to be submitted to a theorem prover in the foreseeable future.
I’m not sure how one would measure that. The Metamath project claims over 8k proofs, starting with ZFC set theory. I would guess that has formalized quite a bit.
I’ll know you’re right and I’m wrong if I ever begin to hear regular announcements of important new theorems being given in machine-checkable format by unaffiliated non-professionals and their being lauded quickly by the professionals.
I think that only follows if genius outsiders really do need to break into mathematics. Most math is at the point where outsiders can’t do Fields-level work without becoming in the process insiders. Consider Perelman with Poincare’s conjecture—he sounds like an outsider, but if you look at his biography he was an insider (even just through his mother!).
This is what I thought everyone was going to say. I don’t see why you’d be concerned about the paycheck though, a strong mathematics background could land you a job as a banker or trader or something. But looking at your upvotes it seems like plenty of people agree with you.
My next question would be what you’d like to have a basic introduction to. Plenty of LW posts tend to assume a grounding in subjects like maths, economics or philosophy—which is fine, this is a community for informed people—but it probably shrinks LW’s audience somewhat, and certainly shrinks the pool of people who are able to understand all the posts. We probably miss this because nobody’s going to jump into the middle of a thread and say, “I lack the education to understand this.” espiecally not a casual reader.
My upvotes are probably due to the fact that I said mathematics, rather than any agreement concerning my potential lack of paycheck. I know that a mathematics background could supply me a paycheck at this point in my life, but I was urged against it by some other people when I was choosing my major.
Basic introduction to? Is this in addition to the expertise I got from the genie, or if the genie was only offering me a basic introduction? Do I only get to choose one? Gee that’s hard. I’m pretty much working on having a basic introduction to everything already. So, given my existing basic introductions… I think I’d like to get a basic introduction to quantum physics… but that’s kind of cheating because I’d have to know a lot of physics and mathematics in the basic intro. I choose that one because I want to know it for purely vain reasons, and it would be nice to save the time of learning it for more “useful” studies.
This blog definitely is going to appeal to a minority of people. I personally do not have the proper education to follow the bayesian/frequentist debate, though I want to hear about it. I think that the healthy practice of linking to information is fantastic, as well as the lesswrong wiki. That way if you know what the person is talking about, you don’t have to follow the link, but if you need to learn, it’s right there at your fingertips.
Edit: Oh right, and I can’t contribute to quantum physics discussions very well either.
I never could get far studying it because of the immense squick factor, but if I could just KNOW all of it via genie, the squick ought to go away because then it’d be just so much brain bits.
Kind of like how intimidating complex and austere symbols become just regular greek letters after learning to read math.
I want to know foreign languages, especially Japanese, but I find them much harder to learn than other things, due to the sheer amount of brute force memorization required to learn vocabulary.
This example is in no way intended to imply that women are less worthy of the right to be attacked by genies. Neither is it intended to imply that there could never be a female genie. That would be stupid. Where else could baby genies come from?
You’re solving the wrong problem by including this asterisk. It’s easy to just call the genie “it”—which you already did above—and pick a different action—“rip off your arms” would work as well.
I read this and at first I was like, “Damn! Not only did my anti-sexism plan fail, it made me even more sexist!” but then I was all, “No way! I’m going to find a bunch of evidence that genies can’t be neuter! That’ll show ’em! Show all of them.” but then I read the Wikipedia article and it goes, “The pre-Islamic Zoroastrian culture of ancient Persia believed in jaini/jahi, evil female spirits thought to spread diseases to people.” and I was totally like, “God fucking damnit! That’s like… sexism squared!”
Well you might have won this round, Yudkowsky. But you haven’t seen the last of me!
Yes, but he didn’t say “crotch”, he said “nads”. Female gonads (ovaries) are internal, so we could be kicked in the nads in the same sense as it is possible to kick someone “in”, say, the kidney. It’s just not a traditional target.
Consider me extremely impressed. Having been soundly outmatched in the battle of nitpicking, I am hereby reduced to making fawning fanboy puppy dog noises.
No, I will not marry you. I do, however, accept Internet crushes and encourage you to accordingly familiarize yourself with my works of fiction and tell all your friends about them. :)
You can have my autograph if you commission a work of art.
Hello, I went through the archive of your magical girl comic. I’m gonna keep my eye on it.
The way the premise is presented is nonsensical, but that’s a-ok in the genre, and I suspect you just wanted to through the setup quickly. Girls’ publicity is a nice twist to the trope, and I hope you’ll explore it thoroughly. I really like the tiny dragons—my favorite strip involves them. Oh, and the fact that the girls are not lawful stupid (a too common disorder among magical girls) is a big, big plus.
On the flipside, I think you should work on backgrounds and perspective more. Especially Datekaln—painting its sky solid green doesn’t do it justice. At least make a reusable texture like you did with Earth’s sky presumably.
Thanks for the feedback. Everybody loves the pagets and everybody loves that page—I should change the title to “Pagets Are Cute (and some silly humans sometimes do things).”
Backgrounds are very tedious and unrewarding to draw, so my progress on them is slow. I’ll mess with possible simple textures for Datékaln’s sky, though, since that’s easy. (Earth’s sky is just the Photoshop cloud filter.)
For personal interest, neuroscience (and the genie would wave his wand, and I would be V. Ramachandran). For benefit to society, probably genetics (or do colleges offer degrees in AI?)
I’d also like to see if I could use the genie to answer one of the great questions of the ages. I guess it all depends on how the “expert” thing is implemented. For example, if the genie created a great expert in quantum mechanics, would the expert simply know and understand facts about quantum mechanics, or would they also be such an expert as to have the correct opinion on the Copenhagen vs. many worlds question? After all, Tom did say “an expert equivalent to the greatest mind today”, and there are minds that are pretty sure they know the answer to that question, so the mind that has the correct opinion on it must be greater than an equivalent mind that doesn’t. That means if I wake up and find myself believing Many Worlds, I have very strong evidence that Many Worlds is correct.
If I thought that plan would work, I’d probably choose Philosophy. I might get kicked in the ’nads, but for the chance to have genie-approved answers all the great philosophical questions at once, it’d be worth it.
I would go for whatever could make me the most money with the pure skill that they teach in school. In most professions, it seems like you need either some talent at sales or self-promotion or just luck to be successful, in addition to whatever skill you supposedly have. I think that maybe being the world’s greatest computer engineer or something like that would probably get you paid millions without having do much other than be amazing at what you do.
My initial thinking was cardiac surgeon or something like that, but on further reflection I think that is about the worst choice possible. You have this amazing skill, but what do you do with it? Do you have to go to medical school and get easy As before you can get licensed to use it? That would really suck.
I’d have to agree with “math”, given that the ability granted includes not just comprehensive knowledge, but extreme ability to make novel important and fundamental discoveries in the field.
(How is babby genie formed? (Sorry, couldn’t resist))
I’m more likely to become massively rich by being a fantastic singer than I am to become massively rich by being a fantastic philosopher, or even a fantastic economist. My education-related values change some if I don’t have to invest time or effort in acquiring the expertise. That said, I don’t think I’ll pick singing. I think I’ll pick creative writing.
I’m more likely to become massively rich by being a fantastic singer than I am to become massively rich by being a fantastic philosopher, or even a fantastic economist.
It’s always fun to see what empirical facts might change one’s assessment. Philosophers, ever since Thales at least, haven’t been known for wealth but—Are you sure becoming one of the greatest economists in the world wouldn’t be likely to make you massively rich?
I’m sure we both agree that the average economist makes more than your average singer (and median too); but have you considered that superstar economists can still make more than superstar singers?
Michael Jackson is one of the wealthiest singers of all time (wealthiest?), yet he died with maybe 500 million USD in assets; there were hedge fund folks who made several times that in 2008 alone. And he doesn’t hold a candle to Warren Buffett. Or consider Lawrence Summers. Despite a career largely spent in government or academia, his world-class status means that he can do things like pick up a >5million USD a year salary working less than a day a week. We may argue that these kind of financial bonuses are obscene and unfair, but economists and other financial types reap them nevertheless...
I’m sure that extraordinary expertise at economics would enable people with the right mindset to make large amounts of money, but the obvious avenues (e.g. spending all day trading stocks) would not interest me, and I’d be unlikely to value the money enough to put up with them in the quantity necessary to become massively rich. If I magically acquired extraordinary expertise at economics, I’d probably mess around with it until I had enough money to hand the reins to a less-skilled accountant to handle and invest for me and keep me in housing and groceries for the rest of my life. I’d be more comfortably upper-middle-class than rich. It’s possible that my extraordinary expertise at economics would also inform me of fun ways to make money with it, but none spring immediately to my unskilled-at-economics mind.
Its quite a leap to go from economist to hedge fund manager. Their skill sets are not at all the same. The best way to make bank if you are a brilliant economist is:
1) make a fundamental contribution to economics, especially related to finance.
2) win nobel prize or at least have your contribution adopted by industry.
3) get paid millions to “consult” or “advise” hedge fund managers who will use your name to attract investors and probably never ask you to do actual work.
So you pick the area with the highest expected monetary payoff? I’m not sure that skills in singing or creative writing serve that end, since the competition is so intense and the selection process for successful singers and writers seems somewhat arbitrary and random.
I see what you mean about the amount of effort required changing which area you would pick, and that was part of what I was getting at. I wonder how many of us choose to study a particular subject because it’s easier than the alternatives, then rationalise it later as what we really wanted. If effort wasn’t a factor and you could have chosen to study anything, what would it have been? If we on Less Wrong find ways to make learning easier, what will you do?
Creative writing might not serve that end, but it’s hardly the longest of long shots, and moreover, writing creatively is something I enjoy, unlike doing math or working on hard science or whatever. So even if I don’t wind up writing bestselling books and making a billion dollars, I can still have fun writing excellent books. It’s a tradeoff between expected monetary payoff, and the enjoyability of the task to turn the skill into the payoff.
I’m studying philosophy because most of the time, studying philosophy is fun. It’s not consistently easy, and it’s not going to make me a lot of money now or later, but it entertains me. If effort wasn’t a factor I could study, oh, medicine, and be a brilliant physician, or law and be a brilliant lawyer, but I don’t expect that (even effort aside) I would enjoy the study or practice of those fields.
So you wouldn’t pick instant expertise in philosophy because that would take the fun out of it. Do you think that if studying philosophy was easier, it would be less fun? I’m not convinced because no matter how much of an expert you are, there’s still more to learn. The genie is offering you the chance to be at the cutting edge of your field.
So you wouldn’t pick instant expertise in philosophy because that would take the fun out of it.
No. I’m saying that fun is my motivation for studying philosophy, because when I decide how to invest years of my life, I want to choose fun investments. Your genie opens up the options of choosing to (productively) invest directly in the practice, rather than the study, of various fields. There are fields that I think I would enjoy being an expert in that I would not enjoy the process of studying to become an expert in, especially when you consider that intrinsic talent/motivation/etc. might block me from acquiring expertise in some fields that the genie could make me brilliant at. Some of those fields might also net me money. Bypassing a potentially-unfun studying step makes several of them more appealing than philosophy.
OK, I see where you’re coming from. Learning to play the violin is frustrating, but it’s probably fun once you can do it.
So if we could find a way to make learning easier, hypothetically speaking, you would use that opportunity to be a better generalist rather than further specialising in your chosen area? That’s interesting because specialists are usually better paid. I wonder if that’s a common point of view.
LWers are generalists, in general. Most of us know some psychology, some economics, some philosophy, some programming and so on. But I wonder what Less Wrong would be like if we all specialised, while remaining united by the pursuit of rationality. I think Robin Hanson said something similar in that post where he compared us to survivalists, trying to learn everything and failing to reap the benefits of specialisation and cooperation.
Anyway sorry for rambling like this. I tend to use these open threads as an opportunity to think out loud, and nobody’s told me to shut up yet so I just keep going.
If learning, in general, became easier for me, I would learn more, in general. I don’t think I’d use it to do more philosophy; I think I’d use it to do the same amount of philosophy in less time.
If learning became a whole lot easier, I’d probably study foreign languages in my spare time. The ability to communicate in more languages would open up more learning potential than most other tasks.
Imagine you find a magic lamp. You polish it and, as expected, a genie pops out. However, it’s a special kind of genie and instead of offering you three wishes it offers to make you an expert in anything, equal to the greatest mind working in that field today, instantly and with no effort on your part. You only get to choose one subject area, with “subject area” defined as anything offered as a degree by a respectable university. Also if you try to trick the genie he’ll kick you in the nads*.
So if you could learn anything, what would you learn?
*This example is in no way intended to imply that women are less worthy of the right to be attacked by genies. Neither is it intended to imply that there could never be a female genie. That would be stupid. Where else could baby genies come from?
Mathematics
Its the foundation for everything else I want to learn. I don’t know why I didn’t major in it- other than concerns for a paycheck.
The nice thing about mathematics is that you can easily do it outside of school and independently, and when you do it as a mature adult, you do it because you love it and for no other reason. You are free to use better texts than you could as a student, so if you want to brush up on calculus, you can use Spivak or Courant rather than being forced to use low-quality texts that are optimized for the convenience of the professor rather than the insight of the student. There are also so many learning resources available now that weren’t available when I was a student—things like wikipedia, planet math, and physicsforums.com, not to mention software like Octave and Sage.
I’d like to add that one of the nice things about mathematics as a choice is that you can avoid credentialing issues. I’m sure we’ve all read Hanson on how most of the value of a college degree is in that the college is certifying your abilities, and stamping you.
If you chose world-class ability in economics/financial trading, say, and you are a poor student, then what are you going to do with it? You can’t make a killing on the market to prove your abilities; you can’t go work as an intern for a firm to prove your knowledge, etc.
Similarly with genetics. If I suddenly gained world-class genetic knowledge, I cannot walk up to Cold Spring Harbor and ask them to let me use some multi-million dollar equipment for a year because I have this awesome bit of research I’d like to do. I simply don’t have any proof that I’m not a random bozo who has memorized a bunch of textbooks and papers. I’d have to get lucky and convince a professor or somebody to take me on as an assistant and slowly build up my credentials until I can do the bit of research that will irrefutably establish me as a leading luminary.
Or how about physics? If I specialize in experimental or practical physics, I have the same chicken-and-egg problem; if I specialize in theoretical, then I run the risk of simply being ignored, or written off as a crank (and the better my contribution, the more likely I am to be seen as a crank!).
But with mathematics, I can just crank out a bunch of theorems and send in a paper. If people are still unconvinced, being a mathematical genius, I can just formalize it and send in a Coq/Isabelle/Twelf file consisting solely of the proof.
While mathematics certainly appears to me to be more of a meritocracy than the sciences, it’s still the case that the notion of proof has changed over time—and continues to change (witness Coq and friends) --, as have standards of rigor and what counts as mathematics. There are social and other non-mathematical reasons that influence how and why some ideas are accepted while others are rejected only to be accepted later, and vice versa.
It’s an interesting question whether this will always be the case or if it will converge on something approaching unanimously accepted truth and aesthetic criteria. Personally, I think mathematics is intrinsically an artistic endeavor and that the aesthetic aspect of it will never disappear. And where there is aesthetics, there is also politics and other sausage-making activities...
The gold standard of what is a proof and what is not was achieved with the first-order predicate calculus a century ago and has not changed since. Leibniz’ dream has been realised in this area. However, no-one troubles to explicitly use the perfect language of mathematical proof and nothing else, except when the act of doing so is the point. It is enough to be able to speak it, and thereafter to use its idioms to the extent necessary to clearly communicate one’s ideas.
On the other hand, what proofs or theorems mathematicians find important or interesting will always be changing.
I don’t really think the question is whether mathematics is more meritocratic—it’s an economic question of credentialing. You need credentialing when you cannot cheaply verify performance. If I had a personal LHC and wrote a paper based on its results, I don’t think anyone would care too much about whether I have 2 PhDs or just a GED—the particle physicists would accept it. But of course, nobody has a personal LHC.
With mathematics, with formal machine-checkable proofs, the cost of verification is about as low as possible. How long does it take to load a Coq proof and check it? A second or two? Then all someone needs to do is take a look at my few premises; either the premises are dodgy (which should be obvious), or they’re common & acceptable (in which case they know I’m a math genius), or I’m exploiting a Coq flaw (in which case I’m also a math genius). Once they rule out #1, I’m golden and can begin turning the genie’s gift to good account.
By meritocracy, I meant what you explain by credentialing: the idea that the work alone is absolutely sufficient to establish itself as genius or crackpottery or obvious or uninteresting or whatever, that who you are, who you know, where you went to school and who your advisors were, which conferences you’ve presented at, the time and culture in which you find yourself, whether you’re working in a trendy sub-discipline, etc., that all that is irrelevant.
How much of mathematics is machine-checkable now? My (possibly mistaken) understanding was that even the optimists didn’t expect most of existing mathematics for decades at least. And how will we formalize the new branches of mathematics that have yet to be invented? They won’t spring forth fully formed as Coq proofs. Instead, they’ll be established person-to-person at the whiteboard, explained in coffee shops and over chinese food in between workshop sessions. And much, much later, somebody will formalize the radically revised descendant of the original proof, when the cutting edge has moved on.
I’ll know you’re right and I’m wrong if I ever begin to hear regular announcements of important new theorems being given in machine-checkable format by unaffiliated non-professionals and their being lauded quickly by the professionals. And that is the easier task, since it is the creation of new branches and the abstraction and merging of seemingly unrelated or only distantly related branches that is the heart of mathematics, and that seems even less likely to be able to be submitted to a theorem prover in the foreseeable future.
I’m not sure how one would measure that. The Metamath project claims over 8k proofs, starting with ZFC set theory. I would guess that has formalized quite a bit.
I think that only follows if genius outsiders really do need to break into mathematics. Most math is at the point where outsiders can’t do Fields-level work without becoming in the process insiders. Consider Perelman with Poincare’s conjecture—he sounds like an outsider, but if you look at his biography he was an insider (even just through his mother!).
This is what I thought everyone was going to say. I don’t see why you’d be concerned about the paycheck though, a strong mathematics background could land you a job as a banker or trader or something. But looking at your upvotes it seems like plenty of people agree with you.
My next question would be what you’d like to have a basic introduction to. Plenty of LW posts tend to assume a grounding in subjects like maths, economics or philosophy—which is fine, this is a community for informed people—but it probably shrinks LW’s audience somewhat, and certainly shrinks the pool of people who are able to understand all the posts. We probably miss this because nobody’s going to jump into the middle of a thread and say, “I lack the education to understand this.” espiecally not a casual reader.
My upvotes are probably due to the fact that I said mathematics, rather than any agreement concerning my potential lack of paycheck. I know that a mathematics background could supply me a paycheck at this point in my life, but I was urged against it by some other people when I was choosing my major.
Basic introduction to? Is this in addition to the expertise I got from the genie, or if the genie was only offering me a basic introduction? Do I only get to choose one? Gee that’s hard. I’m pretty much working on having a basic introduction to everything already. So, given my existing basic introductions… I think I’d like to get a basic introduction to quantum physics… but that’s kind of cheating because I’d have to know a lot of physics and mathematics in the basic intro. I choose that one because I want to know it for purely vain reasons, and it would be nice to save the time of learning it for more “useful” studies.
This blog definitely is going to appeal to a minority of people. I personally do not have the proper education to follow the bayesian/frequentist debate, though I want to hear about it. I think that the healthy practice of linking to information is fantastic, as well as the lesswrong wiki. That way if you know what the person is talking about, you don’t have to follow the link, but if you need to learn, it’s right there at your fingertips.
Edit: Oh right, and I can’t contribute to quantum physics discussions very well either.
Hard to choose between Science and Math, but I’ll take Math.
Hey, B.Sc is a degree, right?
Marketing
Biology, specifically brain-related neurosci.
I never could get far studying it because of the immense squick factor, but if I could just KNOW all of it via genie, the squick ought to go away because then it’d be just so much brain bits. Kind of like how intimidating complex and austere symbols become just regular greek letters after learning to read math.
I want to know foreign languages, especially Japanese, but I find them much harder to learn than other things, due to the sheer amount of brute force memorization required to learn vocabulary.
The other thing I would consider is this.
You’re solving the wrong problem by including this asterisk. It’s easy to just call the genie “it”—which you already did above—and pick a different action—“rip off your arms” would work as well.
I read this and at first I was like, “Damn! Not only did my anti-sexism plan fail, it made me even more sexist!” but then I was all, “No way! I’m going to find a bunch of evidence that genies can’t be neuter! That’ll show ’em! Show all of them.” but then I read the Wikipedia article and it goes, “The pre-Islamic Zoroastrian culture of ancient Persia believed in jaini/jahi, evil female spirits thought to spread diseases to people.” and I was totally like, “God fucking damnit! That’s like… sexism squared!”
Well you might have won this round, Yudkowsky. But you haven’t seen the last of me!
But that would be less funny.
Incidentally, being kicked in the crotch isn’t exactly pleasant for women, either...
Yes, but he didn’t say “crotch”, he said “nads”. Female gonads (ovaries) are internal, so we could be kicked in the nads in the same sense as it is possible to kick someone “in”, say, the kidney. It’s just not a traditional target.
::reads that again::
::investigates definitions of “nads”::
Wow.
I have just been owned.
Consider me extremely impressed. Having been soundly outmatched in the battle of nitpicking, I am hereby reduced to making fawning fanboy puppy dog noises.
::takes deep breath::
oh-my-god-i’m-not-worthy-can-I-have-your-autograph-will-you-marry-me-teach-me-oh-great-master-squee-etc-etc...
::runs out of breath::
Phew. I hope I got that out of my system. Let’s see...
::still has the completely ridiculous urge to propose marriage::
Guess not.
::sighs::
I have now acquired yet another pointless Internet crush. Oh well, nothing to do but try to ignore it...
No, I will not marry you. I do, however, accept Internet crushes and encourage you to accordingly familiarize yourself with my works of fiction and tell all your friends about them. :)
You can have my autograph if you commission a work of art.
Hello, I went through the archive of your magical girl comic. I’m gonna keep my eye on it.
The way the premise is presented is nonsensical, but that’s a-ok in the genre, and I suspect you just wanted to through the setup quickly. Girls’ publicity is a nice twist to the trope, and I hope you’ll explore it thoroughly. I really like the tiny dragons—my favorite strip involves them. Oh, and the fact that the girls are not lawful stupid (a too common disorder among magical girls) is a big, big plus.
On the flipside, I think you should work on backgrounds and perspective more. Especially Datekaln—painting its sky solid green doesn’t do it justice. At least make a reusable texture like you did with Earth’s sky presumably.
Thanks for the feedback. Everybody loves the pagets and everybody loves that page—I should change the title to “Pagets Are Cute (and some silly humans sometimes do things).”
Backgrounds are very tedious and unrewarding to draw, so my progress on them is slow. I’ll mess with possible simple textures for Datékaln’s sky, though, since that’s easy. (Earth’s sky is just the Photoshop cloud filter.)
For personal interest, neuroscience (and the genie would wave his wand, and I would be V. Ramachandran). For benefit to society, probably genetics (or do colleges offer degrees in AI?)
I’d also like to see if I could use the genie to answer one of the great questions of the ages. I guess it all depends on how the “expert” thing is implemented. For example, if the genie created a great expert in quantum mechanics, would the expert simply know and understand facts about quantum mechanics, or would they also be such an expert as to have the correct opinion on the Copenhagen vs. many worlds question? After all, Tom did say “an expert equivalent to the greatest mind today”, and there are minds that are pretty sure they know the answer to that question, so the mind that has the correct opinion on it must be greater than an equivalent mind that doesn’t. That means if I wake up and find myself believing Many Worlds, I have very strong evidence that Many Worlds is correct.
If I thought that plan would work, I’d probably choose Philosophy. I might get kicked in the ’nads, but for the chance to have genie-approved answers all the great philosophical questions at once, it’d be worth it.
I’d pick neurology, assuming that doesn’t cause my brain to implode.
I would go for whatever could make me the most money with the pure skill that they teach in school. In most professions, it seems like you need either some talent at sales or self-promotion or just luck to be successful, in addition to whatever skill you supposedly have. I think that maybe being the world’s greatest computer engineer or something like that would probably get you paid millions without having do much other than be amazing at what you do.
My initial thinking was cardiac surgeon or something like that, but on further reflection I think that is about the worst choice possible. You have this amazing skill, but what do you do with it? Do you have to go to medical school and get easy As before you can get licensed to use it? That would really suck.
I’d have to agree with “math”, given that the ability granted includes not just comprehensive knowledge, but extreme ability to make novel important and fundamental discoveries in the field.
(How is babby genie formed? (Sorry, couldn’t resist))
Does this apply only to theoretical expertise, or could I choose (say) vocal music and then totally win on American Idol?
I checked with the genie and he said fine. Not very rationalist-y of you, though.
I’m more likely to become massively rich by being a fantastic singer than I am to become massively rich by being a fantastic philosopher, or even a fantastic economist. My education-related values change some if I don’t have to invest time or effort in acquiring the expertise. That said, I don’t think I’ll pick singing. I think I’ll pick creative writing.
It’s always fun to see what empirical facts might change one’s assessment. Philosophers, ever since Thales at least, haven’t been known for wealth but—Are you sure becoming one of the greatest economists in the world wouldn’t be likely to make you massively rich?
I’m sure we both agree that the average economist makes more than your average singer (and median too); but have you considered that superstar economists can still make more than superstar singers?
Michael Jackson is one of the wealthiest singers of all time (wealthiest?), yet he died with maybe 500 million USD in assets; there were hedge fund folks who made several times that in 2008 alone. And he doesn’t hold a candle to Warren Buffett. Or consider Lawrence Summers. Despite a career largely spent in government or academia, his world-class status means that he can do things like pick up a >5million USD a year salary working less than a day a week. We may argue that these kind of financial bonuses are obscene and unfair, but economists and other financial types reap them nevertheless...
I’m sure that extraordinary expertise at economics would enable people with the right mindset to make large amounts of money, but the obvious avenues (e.g. spending all day trading stocks) would not interest me, and I’d be unlikely to value the money enough to put up with them in the quantity necessary to become massively rich. If I magically acquired extraordinary expertise at economics, I’d probably mess around with it until I had enough money to hand the reins to a less-skilled accountant to handle and invest for me and keep me in housing and groceries for the rest of my life. I’d be more comfortably upper-middle-class than rich. It’s possible that my extraordinary expertise at economics would also inform me of fun ways to make money with it, but none spring immediately to my unskilled-at-economics mind.
Its quite a leap to go from economist to hedge fund manager. Their skill sets are not at all the same. The best way to make bank if you are a brilliant economist is: 1) make a fundamental contribution to economics, especially related to finance. 2) win nobel prize or at least have your contribution adopted by industry. 3) get paid millions to “consult” or “advise” hedge fund managers who will use your name to attract investors and probably never ask you to do actual work.
Not for our genie!
EDIT: also, I think trading skills are covered under either economics or another college major, so the genie can give you them.
investment banking, maybe? I’m not sure of the degree on that, but it seems more likely to bring money, and likely to bing more money.
So you pick the area with the highest expected monetary payoff? I’m not sure that skills in singing or creative writing serve that end, since the competition is so intense and the selection process for successful singers and writers seems somewhat arbitrary and random.
I see what you mean about the amount of effort required changing which area you would pick, and that was part of what I was getting at. I wonder how many of us choose to study a particular subject because it’s easier than the alternatives, then rationalise it later as what we really wanted. If effort wasn’t a factor and you could have chosen to study anything, what would it have been? If we on Less Wrong find ways to make learning easier, what will you do?
Creative writing might not serve that end, but it’s hardly the longest of long shots, and moreover, writing creatively is something I enjoy, unlike doing math or working on hard science or whatever. So even if I don’t wind up writing bestselling books and making a billion dollars, I can still have fun writing excellent books. It’s a tradeoff between expected monetary payoff, and the enjoyability of the task to turn the skill into the payoff.
I’m studying philosophy because most of the time, studying philosophy is fun. It’s not consistently easy, and it’s not going to make me a lot of money now or later, but it entertains me. If effort wasn’t a factor I could study, oh, medicine, and be a brilliant physician, or law and be a brilliant lawyer, but I don’t expect that (even effort aside) I would enjoy the study or practice of those fields.
So you wouldn’t pick instant expertise in philosophy because that would take the fun out of it. Do you think that if studying philosophy was easier, it would be less fun? I’m not convinced because no matter how much of an expert you are, there’s still more to learn. The genie is offering you the chance to be at the cutting edge of your field.
No. I’m saying that fun is my motivation for studying philosophy, because when I decide how to invest years of my life, I want to choose fun investments. Your genie opens up the options of choosing to (productively) invest directly in the practice, rather than the study, of various fields. There are fields that I think I would enjoy being an expert in that I would not enjoy the process of studying to become an expert in, especially when you consider that intrinsic talent/motivation/etc. might block me from acquiring expertise in some fields that the genie could make me brilliant at. Some of those fields might also net me money. Bypassing a potentially-unfun studying step makes several of them more appealing than philosophy.
OK, I see where you’re coming from. Learning to play the violin is frustrating, but it’s probably fun once you can do it.
So if we could find a way to make learning easier, hypothetically speaking, you would use that opportunity to be a better generalist rather than further specialising in your chosen area? That’s interesting because specialists are usually better paid. I wonder if that’s a common point of view.
LWers are generalists, in general. Most of us know some psychology, some economics, some philosophy, some programming and so on. But I wonder what Less Wrong would be like if we all specialised, while remaining united by the pursuit of rationality. I think Robin Hanson said something similar in that post where he compared us to survivalists, trying to learn everything and failing to reap the benefits of specialisation and cooperation.
Anyway sorry for rambling like this. I tend to use these open threads as an opportunity to think out loud, and nobody’s told me to shut up yet so I just keep going.
If learning, in general, became easier for me, I would learn more, in general. I don’t think I’d use it to do more philosophy; I think I’d use it to do the same amount of philosophy in less time.
If learning became a whole lot easier, I’d probably study foreign languages in my spare time. The ability to communicate in more languages would open up more learning potential than most other tasks.