Open thread, January 25- February 1

NancyLebovitz

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Even if you know that signaling is stupid, it doesn't escape the cost of not signaling.

It's a longstanding trope that Eliezer gets a lot of flack for having no formal education. Formal education is not the only way to gain knowledge, but it is a way of signaling knowledge, and it's not very easy to fake (Not so easy to fake that it falls apart as a credential on its own). Has anyone toyed around with the idea of sending him off to get a math degree somewhere? He might learn something, and if not it's a breezy recap of what he already knows. He comes out the other side without the eternal "has no formal education" tagline, and a whole new slew of acquaintances.

Now, I understand that there may be good reasons not to, and I'd very much appreciate someone pointing me to any previous discussion in which this has been ruled out. Otherwise, how feasible does it sound to crowdfund a "Here's your tuition and an extra sum of money to cover the opportunity cost of your time, I don't care how unfair it is that people won't take you seriously without credentials, go study something useful, make friends with your professors, and get out with the minimum number of credits possible" scholarship?

Different target groups may use different signals.

For example, for a scientist the citations may be more important than formal education. For an ordinary person with a university diploma who never published anything anywhere, formal education will probably remain the most important signal, because that's what they use. A smart sponsor may instead consider the ability of getting things done. And the New Age fans will debate about how much Eliezer fits the definitions of an "indigo child".

If the goal is to impress people for whom having an universi... (read more)

0[anonymous]12y

Would getting more citations partly nullify the lack of formal education?

2drethelin12y

This might have been a good call 10 years ago but nowadays Eliezer is participating in regular face to face meetings with skilled mathematicians and scientists in the context of constructing and analyzing theorems and decision strategies. This means that for a large amount of the people who are most important to convince, he gets to screen out all the "evidence" of not having a degree. And to a large extent, someone having the respect of a bunch of math phds is more important a qualifier of talent than having that phd themselves. There's theoretically still the problem of selling Eliezer to the muggles but I don't think that's anywhere near as important as getting serious thinkers on board.