I intended Leveling Up in Rationality to communicate this:
Despite worries that extreme rationality isn't that great, I think there's reason to hope that it can be great if some other causal factors are flipped the right way (e.g. mastery over akrasia). Here are some detailed examples I can share because they're from my own life...
But some people seem to have read it and heard this instead:
I'm super-awesome. Don't you wish you were more like me? Yay rationality!
This failure (on my part) fits into a larger pattern of the Singularity Institute seeming too arrogant and (perhaps) being too arrogant. As one friend recently told me:
At least among Caltech undergrads and academic mathematicians, it's taboo to toot your own horn. In these worlds, one's achievements speak for themselves, so whether one is a Fields Medalist or a failure, one gains status purely passively, and must appear not to care about being smart or accomplished. I think because you and Eliezer don't have formal technical training, you don't instinctively grasp this taboo. Thus Eliezer's claim of world-class mathematical ability, in combination with his lack of technical publications, make it hard for a mathematician to take him seriously, because his social stance doesn't pattern-match to anything good. Eliezer's arrogance as evidence of technical cluelessness, was one of the reasons I didn't donate until I met [someone at SI in person]. So for instance, your boast that at SI discussions "everyone at the table knows and applies an insane amount of all the major sciences" would make any Caltech undergrad roll their eyes; your standard of an "insane amount" seems to be relative to the general population, not relative to actual scientists. And posting a list of powers you've acquired doesn't make anyone any more impressed than they already were, and isn't a high-status move.
So, I have a few questions:
- What are the most egregious examples of SI's arrogance?
- On which subjects and in which ways is SI too arrogant? Are there subjects and ways in which SI isn't arrogant enough?
- What should SI do about this?
Well, no, I don't think so. Most academics do not work on impossible problems, or think of this as a worthy goal. So it should be more like "Do cool stuff, but let it speak for itself".
Moderately related: I was just today in a meeting to discuss a presentation that an undergraduate student in our group will be giving to show her work to the larger collaboration. On her first page she had
Subject
Her name
Grad student helping her
Dr supervisor no 1
Dr supervisor no 2
And to start off our critique, supervisor 1 mentioned that, in the subculture of particle physics, it is not the custom to list titles, at least for internal presentations. (If you're talking to a general audience the rules change.) Everyone knows who you are and what you've done! Thus, he gave the specific example that, if you mention "Leon", everyone knows you speak of Leon Lederman, the Nobel-Prize winner. But as for "Dr Lederman", pff, what's a doctorate? Any idiot can be a doctor and many idiots (by physics standards, that is) are; if you're not a PhD it's at least assumed that you're a larval version of one. It's just not a very unusual accomplishment in these circles. To have your first name instantly recognised is a much greater accolade. Doctors are thirteen to the dozen, but there is only one Leon.
Of course this is not really modesty, as such; it's a particular form of status recognition. We don't make much overt show of it, but everyone knows their position in the hierarchy!
Wow, I didn't even consciously recognize this convention, although I would definitely never, for instance, add titles to the author list of a paper. So I seem to have somehow picked it up without explicitly deciding to.