Psychopaths are probably quite rational about pursuing their own personal terminal goals.
I doubt it. In my experience, the average person is quite stupid. My thought is that the fact that they're a sociopath means that they have different goals, but not necessarily that they're more instrumentally rational (better at achieving your goals, whatever they are).
You can't say they're doing anything wrong, can you?
No, but I can say that I don't like them :)
Is there anything you can really say to convince a rational psychopath who is smart enough to get away unpunished for his actions to act in a way that is better for society?
Interesting question. If they genuinely prefer to cause harm to people, and if they really are instrumentally rational enough to only do things that help them achieve their goals, then no. But altruistic acts are one of the biggest correlates of happiness in normal people, so perhaps their psychopathy isn't set in stone and they could be convinced that there's a way to achieve more happiness.
allow me to retire on pension after 25 years
You may need a lot less money to retire than you'd think. Depending on how much you spend. The author argues (throughout the site) that a lot of spending is on essentially status-related goods, and that spending money on free time (indirectly) and security is more likely to lead to happiness (if you're the right type of person, but I sense that you are).
Anyway, I found Scott's post about comparative advantage interesting and relevant.
My thoughts on this are a bit unconventional. Most people use the term intelligence to refer to things like aptitude, working memory size and ability to remember things. I think that those things are overrated and that the ability to break things down like a reductionist is underrated. I started to write about it here, but am having trouble. I welcome any feedback (if you have any thoughts, please use Medium's side comments, it's really useful)
People used to ask me for writing advice. And I, in all earnestness, would say “Just transcribe your thoughts onto paper exactly like they sound in your head.” (from article)
Yes! Well, I think it's an oversimplification, but I very much agree with the direction of the advice. I hate formality. In school they give you all of these rules about how to write, and these rules seem to take you further and further away from how you actually speak. I always thought that these rules were bad, and I rebelled and got only average grades in writing even though I think I'm an amazing writer :)
Specifically, it’s whether I can say “No, I’m really not cut out to be Elon Musk” and go do something else I’m better at without worrying that I’m killing everyone in Canada.
That seems to be the central point the article is about, and also sort of what we're talking about. I actually don't even think there's that much to say. When I dissolve the topic, all I see is:
I could add a lot of qualifiers to 1, 2 and 3, but I think you get what I'm saying so I won't.
Re: comparative advantage
It seems to me that people don't apply EV when calculating comparative advantages. Ie. they think about how much output they could generate right now rather than how much output they could be expected to generate over a period of time.
I'm a big believer that the ceiling of peoples' abilities is much higher than they think, and so taking this into account, my calculations of EV tend to be higher. Like, to people who say that they can't contribute to existential risk reduction, I'd say "How much do you think you could contribute if you studied really hard for 20 years?". And in calculating EV's for things like existential risk reduction, I think people fall victim to scope insensitivity. Even if you don't have a great chance at contributing, the magnitude of impact that a contribution would have is soooo great that it probably still leads to a high overall EV. Depending on preference ratios of course.
but really that's only relative to thinking about people dying and going to hell
I'm sorry you thought that. I can't imagine how horrifying that must be.
Edit: I read the AI article you linked, and the part 2 afterwards, and it made the whole AI idea seem a lot more concrete/probable/exciting
:) It was somewhat life changing for me. I actually understood it. Before reading that I just read a few things on LW, and didn't really understand it.
It makes me wonder, though, is it selfish to work on AI?
Yes! I think that selfishness is a huge component of the benefit of working on AI. After all you are one of the people who would benefit, and you have a lot to gain/lose. People don't seem to acknowledge this. But you would also be helping billions of currently living people, and bajillions of yet-to-be-born people, so for those reasons it's an incomprehensibly altruistic thing to do.
The people working on it will die if they don't succeed, so personally they have nothing to lose even if they accidentally cause an early extinction of the human race. Then again, if we assume our eventual extinction is inevitable without AI, the overall risk-reward ratio favors research.
I'm confused. If you assume that dying is bad, you have a lot to lose (proportional to the badness of dying). Are you considering death to be a neutral event?
Maybe I should consider giving some/all of my donations to MIRI.
To me that seems like a great option. Others seem to think so as well. Personally I don't know nearly enough about AI or the other options to be able to say with even moderate confidence.
I doubt it. In my experience, the average person is quite stupid.
Okay, yeah, I should have added the word some. Kaczynski is the only psychopath I've really read much about, so maybe I really did extrapolate his seeming rationality onto other psychopaths, even though we probably never hear about 99% of them. That would have to be some kind of bias; out of curiosity how would you label it? Maybe survivorship bias? Or availability heuristic? Anchoring? Or maybe even all of the above?
You may need a lot less money to retire than you'd think.
Believe me, ...
This was originally a comment to VipulNaik's recent indagations about the academic lifestyle versus the job lifestyle. Instead of calling it lifestyle he called them career options, but I'm taking a different emphasis here on purpose.
Due to information hazards risks, I recommend that Effective Altruists who are still wavering back and forth do not read this. Spoiler EA alert.
I'd just like to provide a cultural difference information that I have consistently noted between Americans and Brazilians which seems relevant here.
To have a job and work in the US is taken as a *de facto* biological need. It is as abnormal for an American, in my experience, to consider not working, as it is to consider not breathing, or not eating. It just doesn't cross people's minds.
If anyone has insight above and beyond "Protestant ethics and the spirit of capitalism" let me know about it, I've been waiting for the "why?" for years.
So yeah, let me remind people that you can spend years and years not working. that not getting a job isn't going to kill you or make you less healthy, that ultravagabonding is possible and feasible and many do it for over six months a year, that I have a friend who lives as the boyfriend of his sponsor's wife in a triad and somehow never worked a day in his life (the husband of the triad pays it all, both men are straight). That I've hosted an Argentinian who left graduate economics for two years to randomly travel the world, ended up in Rome and passed by here in his way back, through couchsurfing. That Puneet Sahani has been well over two years travelling the world with no money and an Indian passport now. I've also hosted a lovely estonian gentleman who works on computers 4 months a year in London to earn pounds, and spends eight months a year getting to know countries while learning their culture etc... Brazil was his third country.
Oh, and never forget the Uruguay couple I just met at a dance festival who have been travelling as hippies around and around South America for 5 years now, and showed no sign of owning more than 500 dollars worth of stuff.
Also in case you'd like to live in a paradise valley taking Santo Daime (a religious ritual with DMT) about twice a week, you can do it with a salary of aproximatelly 500 dollars per month in Vale do Gamarra, where I just spent carnival, that is what the guy who drove us back did. Given Brazilian or Turkish returns on investment, that would cost you 50 000 bucks in case you refused to work within the land itself for the 500.
Oh, I forgot to mention that though it certainly makes you unable to do expensive stuff, thus removing the paradox of choice and part of your existential angst from you (uhuu less choices!), there is nearly no detraction in status from not having a job. In fact, during these years in which I was either being an EA and directing an NGO, or studying on my own, or doing a Masters (which, let's agree is not very time consuming) my status has increased steadily, and many opportunities would have been lost if I had a job that wouldn't let me move freely. Things like being invited as Visiting Scholar to Singularity Institute, like giving a TED talk, like directing IERFH, and like spending a month working at FHI with Bostrom, Sandberg, and the classic Lesswrong poster Stuart Armstrong.
So when thinking about what to do with you future my dear fellow Americans, please, at least consider not getting a job. At least admit what everyone knows from the bottom of their hearts, that jobs are abundant for high IQ people (specially you my programmer lurker readers.... I know you are there...and you native English speakers, I can see you there, unnecessarily worrying about your earning potential).
A job is truly an instrumental goal, and your terminal goals certainly do have chains of causation leading to them that do not contain a job for 330 days a year. Unless you are a workaholic who experiences flow in virtue of pursuing instrumental goals. Then please, work all day long, donate as much as you can, and may your life be awesome!