lukeprog comments on Hack Away at the Edges - Less Wrong

48 Post author: lukeprog 01 December 2011 01:26PM

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Comment author: Louie 02 December 2011 09:29:39AM *  24 points [-]

It is delusional for most people to believe that they can contribute usefully to really hard problems.

It's damaging to repeat this though, since most bright people who are 1 in 10,000+ think they are 1 in 10 due to Dunning-Krugger effects.

Except in trivial ways, like helping those who are capable of it with mundane tasks in order to free up more of their time and energy.

Mundane work is not trivial. For instance, I've watched lukeprog spend more of his days moving furniture at Singularity Institute in the past 6 months than anyone else in Berkeley... including dozens of volunteers and community members in the area all of whom could have have done it, none of whom considered trying. For most tasks, hours really are fungible. If otherwise smart people didn't think mundane work was trivial, we'd get so much more done. Nothing is harder for me to get done at Singularity Institute than work that "anybody could do".

As another example, I've had 200 volunteers offer to do work for Singularity Institute. Many have claimed they would do "anything" or "whatever helped the most". SEO is clearly the most valuable work. Unfortunately, it's something "so mundane", that anybody could do it... therefore, 0 out of 200 volunteers are currently working on it. This is even after I've personally asked over 100 people to help with it.

Comment author: [deleted] 02 December 2011 04:59:17PM *  13 points [-]

SEO is clearly the most valuable work. Unfortunately, it's something "so mundane", that anybody could do it.

I actually think you have it backwards there. The reason people aren't engaging in this activity is because it is the opposite of mundane. It is confusing, difficult, and requires previous skills.

General Evidence: There are lots of postings for Search Engine Optimizers, and they all want applicants to already have experience doing SEO. If it was something that was so mundane that anyone could do it with a couple hours of training, what you'd see instead are "no experience necessary" job postings for SEO where the company is willing to take an hour or two to train a schlub that they can then pay minimum wage too.

(Speaking of minimum wage, if you guys are spending a significant amount of your time doing menial tasks like moving furniture, it might be time to get a schlub of your own. You can pay someone $8/hr to do menial tasks 20 hrs/ week, for a total of about $8000 / year.)

Personal Anecdotal Supporting Evidence: I clicked on your link, and the thought in my head wasn't "oh, this is too mundane", but rather was "wtf?? This looks super-complex and confusing. It must be the type of thing that "computer people" know how to do. Not something for me. I don't have the knowledge or skill-set"

Comment author: lukeprog 03 December 2011 10:41:14AM *  14 points [-]

The reason people aren't engaging in [SEO] is because it is the opposite of mundane. It is confusing, difficult, and requires previous skills.

Not really. The link-building tutorial page Louie links to at the Singularity Volunteers site contains several examples of link-building tasks that require little experience:

Comment on blogs and in forums. Although some blogs still utilize “nofollow” tags on outbound comment links, it is not a trend that I foresee continuing as long as comment spam protection keeps improving. Therefore, I recommend leaving high-quality insightful comments on other blogs, which will create a backlink and could entice blog owners to link back to your site in the future. Also, you have a far better chance of acquiring a back link if you’ve contributed something to someone else’s blog first.

[Submit] your website to various niche, local, and general directories...

The other pages linked at the bottom of that page provide lots of other examples.

Also, Louie is entirely right about this:

Mundane work is not trivial. For instance, I've watched lukeprog spend more of his days moving furniture at Singularity Institute in the past 6 months than anyone else in Berkeley... including dozens of volunteers and community members in the area all of whom could have have done it, none of whom considered trying. For most tasks, hours really are fungible... Nothing is harder for me to get done at Singularity Institute than work that "anybody could do".

I've spent enough time cleaning rooms and moving boxes and furniture and so on at Singularity Institute (including an entire day just last week) that I could have written and published 1-3 more papers by now if I hadn't done any of that.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what happens when people get the idea that mundane work is "trivial."

If you want to do mundane tasks for me so I can write more papers on Friendly AI like this one, please contact me: luke [at] singularity.org.

Props to John Maxwell for being the latest person to actually do something mundane and high value for me, freeing up my time so I can work on an intelligence explosion book chapter tonight.

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