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komponisto comments on Intellectual Hipsters and Meta-Contrarianism - Less Wrong
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Here I go, speaking for other people, but I'm guessing that people at the LessWrong meetup at least met some baseline of all those other qualities, by komponisto's estimation, and that the difference of intelligence allowed for such a massive increase in ability to communicate made talking so much more enjoyable, given that ey was talking to decent people.
Each quality may not be linear. If someone is "half as nice" as another person, I don't want to talk to them at half the frequency, or bet that I'll fully enjoy conversation half of the time. A certain threshold of most qualities makes a person totally not worth talking to. But at the same time, a person can only be so much more thoughtful, respectful, funny, supportive, before you lose your ability to identify with them again! That's my experience anyhow - if I admire a person too much, I have difficulty imagining that they identify with me as I do with them. Trust needs some symmetry. And so there are probably optimal levels of friendship-worthy qualities (very roughly by any measure), a minimum threshold, and a region where a little difference makes a big difference. The left-bounded S-curves of friendship.
Then there is order. For different qualities, the difference between a person at minimum-threshold and at optimal is worth very different amounts of satisfaction to you. Some qualities probably have a threshold so low, you don't think about it. Not having inexplicable compulsions to murder is a big plus on my list. When that's the case, the quality seems to vary so slightly over most people, you almost take it for granted that people have enough of that quality. The more often you meet people at the minimum, the more amazing it will seem to meet someone at optimal. If you spend a long time surrounded by jerks, meeting supportive people is probably more amazing than usual. If you grow up surrounded by supportive people who have no idea what you're talking about half of the time, gaining that ability to communicate is probably worth a lot.
Finally, there's the affect heuristic. If a personality quality gain compared to the experienced average is worth a lot, of course it can distort your valuation of the difference of other qualities. If I were trapped all my life in a country whose language could capture only 1% of the ideas mine did, filled with good people who mostly just don't care about those other 99% of ideas, I would still feel greatly relieved to meet someone who spoke my language. Even if the person was a little bit below the threshold that marks em a jerk. But why is the person more likely to be a jerk anyhow? What if the person is actually really good and decent as well? I might propose.
I don't know if komponisto had the urge to marry anyone at the meetup. But I'm sure it happens.
Actually, I was talking about my two-week stay as an SIAI Visiting Fellow. (Which is kind of like a Less Wrong meetup...)
But, yeah.
I'm quite curious about what benefits you experienced from your two week visit... anything you can share or is it all secret and mysterious?
Not that I am considering applying. If I was I would have had to refrain from telling Eliezer (and probably Alicorn) whenever they are being silly. The freedom to speak ones mind without the need for securing approval is just too attractive to pass up! :)
Perhaps the most publicly noticeable result was that I had the opportunity to write this post (and also this wiki entry) in an environment where writing Less Wrong posts was socially reinforced as a worthwhile use of one's time.
Then, of course, are the benefits discussed above -- those that one would automatically get from spending time living in a high-IQ environment. In some ways, in fact, it was indeed like a two-week-long Less Wrong meetup.
I had the opportunity to learn specific information about subjects relating to artificial intelligence and existential risk (and the beliefs of certain people about these subjects), which resulted in some updating of my beliefs about these subjects; as well as the opportunity to participate in rationality training exercises.
It was also nice to become personally acquainted with some of the "important people" on LW, such as Anna Salamon, Kaj Sotala, Nick Tarleton, Mike Blume, and Alicorn (who did indeed go by that name around SIAI!); as well as a number of other folks at SIAI who do very important work but don't post as much here.
Conversations were frequent and very stimulating. (Kaj Sotala wasn't lying about Michael Vassar.)
As a result of having done this, I am now "in the network", which will tend to facilitate any specific contributions to existential risk reduction that I might be able to make apart from my basic strategy of "become as high-status/high-value as possible in the field(s) I most enjoy working in, and transfer some of that value via money to existential risk reduction".
Eliezer is uninvolved with the Visiting Fellows program, and I doubt he even had any idea that I was there. Nor is Alicorn currently there, as I understand.
Neither of these should stop you. Alicorn lives on the other side of the country from the house, and Eliezer is pretty lax about criticism (and isn't around much, anyway).
Oh, there's the thing with being on the other side of the world too. ;)
They pay for airfare, you know...
Damn you and your shooting down all my excuses! ;)
Not that I'd let them pay for my airfare anyway. I would only do it if I could pay them for the experience.
Fortunately, you appear to be able to rationalize more quite easily. ;)
I hear that the secret to being a fellow is show rigorously that the probability that one of them is being silly is greater than 1/2. Just a silly math test.
Ah, you lucky fellow!