dxu comments on The Importance of Sidekicks - LessWrong

127 Post author: Swimmer963 08 January 2015 11:21PM

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Comment author: shminux 08 January 2015 04:05:27PM 10 points [-]

Another thought about the sidekick status. I recall this comment by Eliezer, where he says, in part:

If you know yourself for an NPC and that you cannot start such a project yourself, you ought to throw money at anyone launching a new project whose probability of saving the world is not known to be this small.

I could be misreading it, but if you replace "money" with "effort", he basically describes the sideckick role as "NPC". Which rubbed me the wrong way even then. I certainly would not describe you or Brienne as NPCs, no way. I wonder if it's just an unfortunate choice of words.

Comment author: dxu 21 January 2015 04:53:41AM *  0 points [-]

Being charitable, it seems to me that this is more a case of the word (phrase? acronym?) "NPC" having somewhat unfortunate connotations than of any direct malice being intended. For instance, if we take Eliezer's quote and replace "know yourself for an NPC" with "are aware that you have little chance of contributing directly to [our agenda]", we get something that's far less objectionable. Since replacing the word with the meaning shouldn't change anything if you're doing it right, I don't "NPC" was intended as anything more than a simple turn of phrase. The use of "NPC" simply strikes me as Eliezer's typical flair for drama, rather than some sort of deliberate snipe.