ChristianKl comments on Could you be Prof Nick Bostrom's sidekick? - Less Wrong

46 Post author: RobertWiblin 05 December 2014 01:09AM

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Comment author: Cthulhoo 05 December 2014 09:15:38AM 4 points [-]

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.

Comment author: ChristianKl 05 December 2014 11:20:20AM 25 points [-]

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.

Comment author: RobertWiblin 05 December 2014 01:02:59PM 7 points [-]

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.

Comment author: Cthulhoo 05 December 2014 02:07:24PM 7 points [-]

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.

Comment author: MondSemmel 08 December 2014 06:26:44PM *  0 points [-]

The idea here is "high impact secretary", rather than "slave".