Thanks for the great post. Ryan, I’m curious how you figured this at an early stage:
I figured that in the longer term, my greatest chance at having a substantial impact lay in my potential as a researcher, but that I would have to improve my maths and programming skills to realize that.
I thought that more technical skills were rarer, were neglected in some parts of academia (e.g. in history), and were the main thing holding me back from being able to understand papers about emerging technologies… Also, I asked Carl S, and he thought that if I was to go into research, these would be the best skills to get. Nowadays, one could ask a lot more different people.
I was influenced at that time by people like Matt Fallshaw and Ben Toner, who thought that for sufficiently good intellectual work, funding would be forthcoming. It seemed like insights were mostly what was needed to reduce existential risks...
Thanks for the great post. Ryan, I’m curious how you figured this at an early stage:
I thought that more technical skills were rarer, were neglected in some parts of academia (e.g. in history), and were the main thing holding me back from being able to understand papers about emerging technologies… Also, I asked Carl S, and he thought that if I was to go into research, these would be the best skills to get. Nowadays, one could ask a lot more different people.
How’d you decide to go focus on going into research, even before you decided that developing technical skills would be helpful for that path?
I was influenced at that time by people like Matt Fallshaw and Ben Toner, who thought that for sufficiently good intellectual work, funding would be forthcoming. It seemed like insights were mostly what was needed to reduce existential risks...