John_Maxwell_IV comments on Elon Musk donates $10M to the Future of Life Institute to keep AI beneficial - Less Wrong

54 Post author: ciphergoth 15 January 2015 04:33PM

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Comment author: John_Maxwell_IV 18 January 2015 05:45:54AM *  3 points [-]

The halo effect is when your brain tricks you in to collapsing all of a person's varied attributes and abilities in to a single dimension of how much you respect them. Dan Quayle's success in politics provides limited evidence that he's a good speller. Satoshi Nakamoto's high status as the inventor of Bitcoin provides limited evidence that he is good looking. Justin Bieber's success as a pop star provides limited evidence that he's good at math. Etc.

  • Elon Musk is famous for being an extremely accomplished in the hi-tech world. This provides strong evidence that Musk is "competent". "Trustworthy" I'm not as sure about.

  • Less Wrong users can be highly rational and make accurate predictions worth listening to while lacking "fundamental social skills".

  • An individual Less Wronger who has lots of great ideas and writes well online might be too socially anxious to be a good conversationalist.