fortunately or unfortunately, I also have parents to provide me with reasons to have urges to do things I wouldn't otherwise have an urge to do.

A good point.

Social incentives that directly incentivize the immediate steps toward long-term goals seem to be key to a surprisingly large portion of functional human behavior.

People acquire the habit of wearing seatbelts in part because parents'/friends' approval incentivizes it; I don't want to be the sort of person my mother would think reckless. (People are much worse at taking safety measures that are not thus backed up by social approval; e.g. driving white or light-colored cars reduces one's total driving-related death risk by ord mag 20%, but this statistic does not spread, and many buy dark cars.)

People similarly bathe lest folks smell them, keep their houses clean lest company be horrified, stick to exercise plans and study and degree plans and retirement savings plans partly via friends' approval, etc.; and are much worse at similar goals for which there are no societally cached social incentives for goal-steps. The key role social incentives play in much apparently long-term action of this is one reason people sometimes say "people do not really care about charity, their own health, their own jobs, etc.; all they care about is status".

But contra Robin, the implication is not "humans only care about status, and so we pretend hypocritically to care about our own survival while really basically just caring about status", the implication is "humans are pretty inept at acquiring urges to do the steps that will fulfill our later urges. We are also pretty inept at doing any steps we do not have a direct urge for. Thus, urges to e.g. survive, or live in a clean and pleasant house, or do anything else that requires many substeps… are often pretty powerless, unless accompanied by some kind of structure that can create immediate rewards for individual steps.

(People rarely exhibit long-term planning to acquire social status any more than we/they exhibit long-term planning to acquire health. E.g., most unhappily single folk do not systematically practice their social skills unless this is encouraged by their local social environment.)

I strongly endorse your second and fourth points; thanks for posting this. They're related to Yvain's post Would Your Real Preferences Please Stand Up?.

Generic "ambition" is a serious case of putting the cart before the horse. If you have ambition to do something, that's great; if not, deciding you should be "ambitious" and then trying to figure out what to be ambitious about rarely ends well.

I think this is why I get creeped out by ambitious people sometimes. I'd much rather my doctor be passionate about medicine than be someone who decided medicine was more "prestigious" than nursing. As a personal anecdote, I am currently in medicine because I want to specialize in psychiatry. I am passionate about psychiatry and plan to be an awesome psychiatrist. I am not quite as passionate about organic medicine with its heart attacks and kidney infections, and although I work hard at it and am pretty good, some of my classmates who get up every morning super excited because they've dreamed of treating kidney infections their whole lives are better. I don't begrudge them this and if I ever got a kidney infection I'm going straight to them and not to the doctor who went into medicine as a subgoal of something else; if they ever get depression I hope they'll come to me for the same reason.

I understand it's the same in many other fields. Paul Graham writes that successful startup founders start with a problem they want to solve, eg Larry Page and Sergey Brin were frustrated with terrible online search; unsuccessful startup founders decide they would really like to earn fantastic amounts of money and only worry about what business they'll do it in as an afterthought.

The only problem here is charity: I do think it may be morally important to be ambitious in helping others, which might even include taking a lucrative career in order to give money to charity. This is especially true if the Singularity memeplex is right and we're living in a desperate time that calls for a desperate effort. See for example Giving What You Can's powerpoint on ethical careers. At some point you need to balance how much good you want to do, with how likely you are to succeed in a career, with how miserable you want to make yourself - and at the very least rationality can help clarify that decision.

(a) My experience with the sociology of academia has been very much in line with what Lukeprog's friend, Shminux and RolfAndreassen describe. This is the culture that I was coming from in writing my post titled Existential Risk and Public Relations. Retrospectively I realize that the modesty norm is unusually strong in academia and to that extent I was off-base in my criticism.

The modesty norms have some advantages and disadvantages. I think that it's appropriate for even the best people take the view "I'm part of a vast undertaking; if I hadn't gotten there first it's not unlikely that someone else would have gotten there within a few decades." However, I'm bothered by the fact that the norm is so strong that innocuous questions/comments which quite are weak signals of immodesty are frowned upon.

(b) I agree with cousin it that it would be good for SIAI staff to "communicate more carefully, like Holden Karnofsky or Carl Shulman."

There definitely exists a stereotype that people that wear glasses are more intelligent. The cause of this common stereotype is probably that people that wear glasses are more intelligent.

Fair question, but not an easy one to answer.

I signed up for the reading group along with the 2600 Redditors. It was previously posted about here. The book is an entry point to issues of Artificial Intelligence, consciousness, cognitive biases and other subjects which interest me. I enjoy the book every time I read from it, but I believe I am missing something which could be provided in a group reading or a group study. As I stated in the previous thread, I am challenged by the musical references. The last time I read music notation routinely was when I sang in a choir in middle school; many of the Bach references and other music references to terms such as fugue, canon, fifths & thirds, &c are difficult for me to grasp.

If one of those 2600 redditors felt moved to build some youtube tutorials with a bouncing ball along and atop the Bach scores illustrating Hofstadter's arguments, then I presume many others besides myself would enjoy seeing them.

Have you seen that Feynman video where he says he usually dislikes answering "why" questions? If not that, perhaps that Louis C. K. standup routine where he talks about his daughter asking "why?" It is a discussion prompt but it often does not point to anywhere. I have that feeling now that I am rambling.

It would be easier to discuss the merits (or lack) of the book if you specify something about the book you believe lacks merit. The opinion that the book is overly hyped is a common criticism, but is too vague to be refuted.

It was a bestseller. Of course many of those people who bought it are silly.

There are 2600 people signed up for the Reddit Godel Escher Bach group.

An outside view of LessWrong:

I've had a passing interest in LW, but about 95% of all discussions seem to revolve around a few pet issues (AI, fine-tuning ephemeral utilitarian approaches, etc.) rather than any serious application to real life in policy positions or practical morality. So I was happy to see a few threads about animal rights and the like. I am still surprised, though, that there isn't a greater attempt to bring the LW approach to bear on problems that are relevant in a more quotidian fashion than the looming technological singularity.

As far as I can tell, the reason for this is that in practical matters, "politics is the mind killer" is the mind killer.

What are some efficient ways to signal intelligence? Earning an advanced degree from a selective university seems rather cost intensive.