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ChristianKl comments on "Stupid" questions thread - Less Wrong Discussion

40 Post author: gothgirl420666 13 July 2013 02:42AM

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Comment author: RomeoStevens 13 July 2013 04:43:19AM 26 points [-]

It seems to me that, unless one is already a powerful person, the best thing one can do to gain optimization power is building relationships with people more powerful than oneself. To the extant that this easily trumps the vast majority of other failings (epistemic rationality wise) as discussed on LW. So why aren't we discussing how to do better at this regularly? A couple explanations immediately leap to mind:

  1. Not a core competency of the sort of people LW attracts.

  2. Rewards not as immediate as the sort of epiphany porn that some of LW generates.

  3. Ugh fields. Especially in regard to things that are considered manipulative when reasoned about explicitly, even though we all do them all the time anyway.

Comment author: ChristianKl 13 July 2013 01:01:35PM 5 points [-]

It seems to me that, unless one is already a powerful person, the best thing one can do to gain optimization power is building relationships with people more powerful than oneself.

Power isn't one dimensional. The thing that matters isn't so much to make relationships with people who are more powerful than you in all domains but to make relationship with people who are poweful in some domain where you could ask them for help.