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lukeprog comments on Could you be Prof Nick Bostrom's sidekick? - Less Wrong
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Comments (45)
This is a very high value role to fill if someone can do it well. Think of it this way: you can contribute x-risk reduction value equivalent to Bostrom-hours while being much, much less research-capable and experienced than Bostrom. What a steal!
I doubt that this is the right forum to use the "you may not be smart, but you can still make a difference" line as an ad.
I would hope that this is exactly the right forum to for this approach. Acknowledging that their own "impact per working hour" is probably less than Bostrom's... is the least I would expect from someone claiming to honestly evaluate their own skills.
I agree that the approach as summarized by you isn't very appealing, but to me the ad doesn't read like this. It's a difficult job to do well, and can be prestigious. Whether it is depends on the framing you apply.
There's a big difference between "you may not be smart" and "you may not be as smart as Nick Bostrom". Nick Bostrom is a pretty smart guy, after all.
I dunno, it sounds appealing to me, at least.
Actually, it probably is the right place - you don't actually want people who aren't smart, they would suck at the job. You want very smart people who are sufficiently aware of people smarter than them to be humble about it, and a forum with an average intelligence as high as it is here seems perfect in that respect.
I agree. This job offering doesn't sound very appealing to me. It basically reads: "Would you like to be Nick Bostrom's slave? He is much more important than you! It will be a honour to be his slave!"
Note that I'm not saying that the job isn't worthwile or that the world couldn't be a better place if Bostrom had more free time to do his research, just that the ad could be framed a bit better.
The point of writing an ad like that is to be appealing to people who would fit the job and not be appealing to people who wouldn't.
Exactly - if anything I am trying to make the job seem less appealing than it will be, so we attract only the right kind of person.
I see people are highly upvoting the post, even correcting for the Bostrom's halo effect, so I'm updating a bit in the direction of you being right. I also see that you've followed Lachouette suggestion, and I like it.
I would be genuinely curious to see if it worked as intended in the end, might change the way in which I conduct job interviews a bit (I obviously realize that this is an irrelevant request that will probably not be met).
Best of luck with the recruiting.
The idea here is "high impact secretary", rather than "slave".
Do you actually perceive a slave to be similar in status to a sidekick (or personal assistant)? I think there's a big difference there, and they're only close enough to equivocate if Bostrom is actually pretty low-status.
...you are talking about status concerns, right? The post talks about "hiring someone" for the position, so it seems pretty clear to me it's a paid role.