In response to “Independent researcher infrastructure”:
I honestly think the ideal is just to give basic income to the researchers that both 1) express an interest in having absolute freedom in their research directions, and 2) you have adequate trust for.
I don’t think much valuable gets done in the mode where people look to others to figure out what they should do. There are arguments, many of which are widely-known-but-not-taken-seriously, and I realise writing more about it here would take more time than I planned for.
Anyway, the basic income thing. People can do good research on 30k USD a year. If they don’t think that’s sufficient for continuing to work on alignment, then perhaps their motivations weren’t on the right track in the first place. And that’s a signal they probably weren’t going to be able to target themselves precisely at what matters anyway. Doing good work on fuzzy problems requires actually caring.
Well, such a low pay creates additional mental pressure to resist temptation to get 5-10x money in a normal job.
I’d rather select people carefully, but then provide them with at least a ~middle class wage
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.
Super post!
In response to “Independent researcher infrastructure”:
I honestly think the ideal is just to give basic income to the researchers that both 1) express an interest in having absolute freedom in their research directions, and 2) you have adequate trust for.
I don’t think much valuable gets done in the mode where people look to others to figure out what they should do. There are arguments, many of which are widely-known-but-not-taken-seriously, and I realise writing more about it here would take more time than I planned for.
Anyway, the basic income thing. People can do good research on 30k USD a year. If they don’t think that’s sufficient for continuing to work on alignment, then perhaps their motivations weren’t on the right track in the first place. And that’s a signal they probably weren’t going to be able to target themselves precisely at what matters anyway. Doing good work on fuzzy problems requires actually caring.
People can do good research on even less than 30k USD a year at CEEALAR (EA Hotel).
Well, such a low pay creates additional mental pressure to resist temptation to get 5-10x money in a normal job. I’d rather select people carefully, but then provide them with at least a ~middle class wage
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.