PeterS comments on Jul 12 Bay Area meetup - Hanson, Vassar, Yudkowsky
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
You'll need to login or register to do that
(Don't worry, it only takes a few seconds)
Create a new account
All it takes is a username and password
Comments (19)
Never been to one of the meetups before, but I'm thinking of showing up to this one. What can I expect?
The summer interns I have met are all nice, interesting and extremely bright. unless I am severely mistaken, the summer interns are mostly college age, 18-22, though Roko is probably a few years older than that. Some are under 18, and the dad of one of them came to pick him up during the last meetup. Most of the summer interns live in the big house where the meetup will take place.
There will be four to six full-time employees of the Singularity Institute in attendance. Most of these have science and math as their strongest skills or are full scientific generalists with a mastery of all the sciences, natural and social, and of important social skills like philanthropic networking or running a technology startup. You can tell how wondeful Eliezer is just by studying his vast body of written public communications. What you might not yet know is that Eliezer's standards for whom he works with are extremely high in the intellect department and in the altruism department.
In case you are now intimidated, rest assured that there will also be a few less scintillating intellects in attendance, like my pal Richard Karpinski and I, who although welcoming and well-meaning are not extremely bright, but rather only very bright, that is, only 2 standard deviations above the human average [insert: in IQ :insert] and who now suffer from the inevitable mental decline that comes with our being old farts.
(In case you are wondering, I did clear this paragraph with Richard Karpinski before posting it!)
Probably because the attendees have spent little of their lives trying to conform and to be similar to the people around them, the individual personalities vary more than they do at most gatherings.
In summary, if you get pleasure from discussing the world from an atheistic scientific perspective and from an altruistic or selfless/global perspective and if you are even remotely presentable, then there is a good chance that this meetup is among the best opportunities to experience that particular pleasure you will ever have.
Actually there are only two undergraduate interns, and one local high school senior. Most of the interns have graduate education.
OK but in addition to the local high school senior, one of last year's summer interns is 17 or just turned 18. (And both were present at the meetup.)
Yes, but that left the group with four out of sixteen age 22 or below. The rest were older.
Well that sounds interesting. And fairly terrifying too, given that I'm somewhat shy.
Only two standard deviations above the human average... sounds like you're talking about IQ?
We are probably far more afraid of you than you are of us.
Meaning?
Meaning it was a joke and we're fun people who make jokes and we totally don't want you to feel intimidated!
lol, just that some of us are shy, socially-awkward folk I guess =)
Don't worry, we should have lots of socially awkward people present. (As well as non-socially-awkward people. We take all sorts.)
I am talking about IQ. Parenthetically, an IQ 2 standard deviations above the mean is by definition an IQ of 130 which is right about the average for professional computer programmers and some engineering occupations. (Scientific occupations tend to average around 140.)
It will blow your mind....
Well certainly the SIAI summer intern experience I have had since arriving at the house has been extremely valuable and fun.