The problem is that if you select people cautiously, you miss out on hiring people significantly more competent than you. The people who are much higher competence will behave in ways you don’t recognise as more competent. If you were able to tell what right things to do are, you would just do those things and be at their level. Innovation on the frontier is anti-inductive.
That said, “30k/year” was just an arbitrary example, not something I’ve calculated or thought deeply about. I think that sum works for a lot of people, but I wouldn’t set it as a hard limit.
Based on data sampled from looking at stuff. :P Only supposed to demonstrate the conceptual point.
Your “deference limit” is the level of competence above your own at which you stop being able to tell the difference between competences above that point. For games with legible performance metrics like chess, you get a very high deference limit merely by looking at Elo ratings. In altruistic research, however...
I’m sorry I didn’t express myself clearly. By “select people carefully”, I meant selecting for correct motivations, that you have tried to filter for using the subsistence salary. I would prefer using some other selection mechanism (like references), and then provide a solid paycheck (like MIRI does).
It’s certainly noble to give away everything beyond 30k like Singer and MacAskill do, but I think it should be a choice rather than a requirement.
The problem is that if you select people cautiously, you miss out on hiring people significantly more competent than you. The people who are much higher competence will behave in ways you don’t recognise as more competent. If you were able to tell what right things to do are, you would just do those things and be at their level. Innovation on the frontier is anti-inductive.
If good research is heavy-tailed & in a positive selection-regime, then cautiousness actively selects against features with the highest expected value.[1]
That said, “30k/year” was just an arbitrary example, not something I’ve calculated or thought deeply about. I think that sum works for a lot of people, but I wouldn’t set it as a hard limit.
Based on data sampled from looking at stuff. :P Only supposed to demonstrate the conceptual point.
Your “deference limit” is the level of competence above your own at which you stop being able to tell the difference between competences above that point. For games with legible performance metrics like chess, you get a very high deference limit merely by looking at Elo ratings. In altruistic research, however...
I’m sorry I didn’t express myself clearly. By “select people carefully”, I meant selecting for correct motivations, that you have tried to filter for using the subsistence salary. I would prefer using some other selection mechanism (like references), and then provide a solid paycheck (like MIRI does).
It’s certainly noble to give away everything beyond 30k like Singer and MacAskill do, but I think it should be a choice rather than a requirement.