OK, that’s interesting, but it’s not what said: that brains do help with being a good sportsperson—they’re just not a predominant feature, as in poker!
Re intelligence, well, no it’s not necessary for engaging with EA (I didn’t say it was). But it obviously helps—a lot of EA-fans are at top universities, and smarts also help with figuring out how to do good.
Is the poker-vs-sport difference decisive? Well, poker is an extremely frustrating and difficult game/sport. A top pro-player can lose money for months, due to the swings involved. It’s much easier than in sport to go on tilt. Dealing with such uncertainty is exactly the sort of thing that can help with thinking impassively about uncertain philanthropic interventions. So maybe!
I’d push back on the last paragraph here—granted, some sports are salary based and relatively financially secure from year to year. Tennis and many other individual sports are the opposite and purely based on how many matches you win. Given the huge expenses inherent in flying to tournaments and hiring coaches, many weeks are break-even or losses, even at the highest level. If dealing with this sort of uncertainty helps with EA alignment then it bodes well for approaching athletes from many individual sports.
Makes sense! How people deal with the uncertainty could also be informative. If they talk about calculating the expected value (in earnings) of a tournament, or expected points won from a shot, or get excited about sport statisticians’ work generally—then that would be extra-encouraging.
I personally wouldn’t pay that much attention to the particular language people use—it’s more highly correlated with their local culture than with abilities or interests. I’d personally be extra excited to talk to someone with a strong track record of handling uncertainty well who had a completely different vocabulary than me, although I’d also expect it to take more effort to get to the payoff.
Sure, I think your views are much more nuanced (sorry, I didn’t make it clear). The items I listed are kinda my low-effort impression; in the same mode, I could be tricked into believing the post is written by a mediocre writer when it is actually written by GPT-3). These impressions caused annoyance.
[At this point, I might be overthinking it; forgot how I actually felt.]
OK, that’s interesting, but it’s not what said: that brains do help with being a good sportsperson—they’re just not a predominant feature, as in poker!
Re intelligence, well, no it’s not necessary for engaging with EA (I didn’t say it was). But it obviously helps—a lot of EA-fans are at top universities, and smarts also help with figuring out how to do good.
Is the poker-vs-sport difference decisive? Well, poker is an extremely frustrating and difficult game/sport. A top pro-player can lose money for months, due to the swings involved. It’s much easier than in sport to go on tilt. Dealing with such uncertainty is exactly the sort of thing that can help with thinking impassively about uncertain philanthropic interventions. So maybe!
I’d push back on the last paragraph here—granted, some sports are salary based and relatively financially secure from year to year. Tennis and many other individual sports are the opposite and purely based on how many matches you win. Given the huge expenses inherent in flying to tournaments and hiring coaches, many weeks are break-even or losses, even at the highest level. If dealing with this sort of uncertainty helps with EA alignment then it bodes well for approaching athletes from many individual sports.
Makes sense! How people deal with the uncertainty could also be informative. If they talk about calculating the expected value (in earnings) of a tournament, or expected points won from a shot, or get excited about sport statisticians’ work generally—then that would be extra-encouraging.
I personally wouldn’t pay that much attention to the particular language people use—it’s more highly correlated with their local culture than with abilities or interests. I’d personally be extra excited to talk to someone with a strong track record of handling uncertainty well who had a completely different vocabulary than me, although I’d also expect it to take more effort to get to the payoff.
Sure, I think your views are much more nuanced (sorry, I didn’t make it clear). The items I listed are kinda my low-effort impression; in the same mode, I could be tricked into believing the post is written by a mediocre writer when it is actually written by GPT-3). These impressions caused annoyance.
[At this point, I might be overthinking it; forgot how I actually felt.]