First, on a meta-note, since Anna was too humble to mention it herself, I want to highlight that the CFAR 2015 Winter Fundraiser will last through January 31, 2016, with every $2 donated matched by $1 from CFAR supporters. Just to be clear, for those who don't know me, I'm not a staff person or Board member at CFAR, and am in fact the President of another organization spreading rationality and effective altruism to a broad audience, so with a somewhat distinct mission with CFAR, which targets, as Anna said, those elites who are in the strongest position to impact the world. However, I'm also a monthly donor to CFAR, and very much support the mission, and encourage you to donate to CFAR during this fundraiser, since your dollars will do a lot of good there.
Second, let me come down from meta, and speak from my CFAR donor hat. I'm curious to learn more about the target group of elites that you talk about Anna, namely those "who are most likely to actually usefully impact the world." When I think of MIRI Summer Fellows, I totally get your point regarding AI research. But what about offering training to others such as aspiring politicians/bureaucrats who are likely to be in the position to make AI-relevant policies, and also policies that address short and medium-term existential risk in the next several of decades before the possibility of FAI becomes more tangible - existential risk like cyberwarfare, nuclear war, climate change, etc. If we can get politicians to be more sane about short, medium, and long-term existential risk, it seems like that would be a win-win scenario. What are CFAR's thoughts on that?
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I mostly agree with the post, but I think it'd be very helpful to add specific examples of epistemic problems that CFAR students have solved, both "practice" problems and "real" problems. Eg., we know that math skills are trainable. If Bob learns to do math, along the way he'll solve lots of specific math problems, like "x^2 + 3x - 2 = 0, solve for x". When he's built up some skill, he'll start helping professors solve real math problems, ones where the answers aren't known yet. Eventually, if he's dedicated enough, Bob might solve really important problems and become a math professor himself.
Training epistemic skills (or "world-modeling skills", "reaching true beliefs skills", "sanity skills", etc.) should go the same way. At the beginning, a student solves practice epistemic problems, like the ones Tetlock uses in the Good Judgement Project. When they get skilled enough, they can start trying to solve real epistemic problems. Eventually, after enough practice, they might have big new insights about the global economy, and make billions at a global macro fund (or some such, lots of possibilities of course).
To use another analogy, suppose Carol teaches people how to build bridges. Carol knows a lot about why bridges are important, what the parts of a bridge are, why iron bridges are stronger than wood bridges, and so on. But we'd also expect that Carol's students have built models of bridges with sticks and stuff, and (ideally) that some students became civil engineers and built real bridges. Similarly, if one teaches how to model the world and find truth, it's very good to have examples of specific models built and truths found - both "practice" ones (that are already known, or not that important) and ideally "real" ones (important and haven't been discovered before).
Example practice problems and small real problems:
Larger real problems: Not much to point to as yet. Some CFAR alums are running start-ups, doing scientific research for MIRI or elsewhere, etc. and I imagine make estimates of various quantities in real life, but I don't know of any discoveries of note. Yet.