So, it seems like most people here are really smart. And a lot of us, I'm betting, will have been identified as smart when we were children, and gotten complimented on it a lot.
I guess I am the big exception here. I completely failed at school. I once took part in an IQ test done by the local jobs employment agency and received a score low enough that the executive didn't want to tell me exactly how I scored to not discourage me (he said much below average but I shouldn't bother and just try my best).
Just a few days ago I finished reading my first non-fiction book, at age 27 (which will hopefully be the first of hundreds to come).
Okay, here is the first stupid question: I once read that some people don't vote because they believe that they can't influence the outcome enough to outweigh the time it takes to vote (decide who to vote for etc.). Other reasons include the perceived inability to judge which candidate will be better. That line of reasoning seems to be even more relevant when it comes to existential risk charities. Not only might your impact turn out to be negligible but it seems even more difficult to judge the best charity. Are people who contribute money to existential risk charities also voting on presidential elections?
Second stupid question: There is a lot of talk about ethics on lesswrong. I still don't understand why people talk about ethics and not just about what they want. Whatever morality is or is not, shouldn't it be implied by what we want and the laws of thought?
Third stupid question: I still don't get how expected utility maximization doesn't lead to the destruction of complex values. Even if your utility-function is complex, some goals will yield more utility than others and don't hit diminishing marginal returns. Bodily sensations like happiness for example don't seem to run into diminishing returns. I don't see how you can avoid world-states where wireheading is the favored outcome. Anecdotal evidence for this outcome is the behavior of people on lesswrong with respect to saving the world, a goal that does currently outweigh most other human values due to its enormous expected utility. I don't see why this wouldn't be the case for wireheading as well, or other narrow goals like leaving the universe or hacking the matrix instead of satisfying all human values like signaling games or procrastination. If you are willing to contribute your money to an existential risk charity now, even given the low probability of its success, then why wouldn't you do the same after the singularity by contributing the computational resources you would be using until the end of the universe to the FAI so that it can figure out how to create a pocket universe or travel back in time to gain more resources to support many more human beings?
...I once read that some people don't vote because they believe that they can't influence the outcome enough to outweigh the time it takes to vote (decide who to vote for etc.). Other reasons include the perceived inability to judge which candidate will be better. That line of reasoning seems to be even more relevant when it comes to existential risk charities. Not only might your impact turn out to be negligible but it seems even more difficult to judge the best charity. Are people who contribute money to existential risk charities also voting on presidenti
(If I do anything wrong here, please tell me. I don't know what I'm doing and would benefit from being told what I've got wrong, if anything. I've never made a top-level post here before.)
So, it seems like most people here are really smart. And a lot of us, I'm betting, will have been identified as smart when we were children, and gotten complimented on it a lot. And it's pretty common for that to really mess you up, and then you don't end up reaching your full potential. Admittedly, maybe only people who've gotten past all that read Less Wrong. Maybe I'm the exception. But somehow I doubt that very much.
So here's the only thing I can think of to say if this is your situation: ask stupid questions.
Seriously, even if it shows that you have no clue what was just said. (Especially if it shows that. You don't want to continue not understanding.) You can optimize for being smart, you can optimize for seeming smart, but sometimes you need to pick which one to optimize for. It may make you uncomfortable to admit to not knowing something. It may make you feel like the people around you will stop thinking you're all-knowing. But if you don't know how to ask stupid questions, and you just keep pretending to understand, you'll fall behind and eventually be outed as being really, really stupid, instead of just pretty normal. Which sounds worse?
Here, let me demonstrate: so, what tags go on this post and how would I know?
So, anyone else know of any similar things to do, to get back to optimizing for being smart instead of for seeming smart?