you’ll only get the people who most legibly conform to your current model of what’s promising
I want to state my strong agreement with these ideas. It isn’t hard to come up with dozens of examples of people who didn’t seem particularly impressive and then went on to be much more impressive than any reasonable observer would have expected.
I would also be surprised if EAs (a community of people who think about scope insensitivity, moral cluelessness, and similar ideas that I roughly categorize as “intellectual humility”) are able to identify talent confidently in advance.
I’m a bit worried that the current trends are making EAs somewhat insular along the lines of class/socioeconomic status, as the legible things (attending Stanford, doing internships, networking) tend to be things that are strongly correlated with growing up with a wealthy family, as well as being things that are much harder to do/obtain if you grow up without money. I don’t have enough information nor have I put enough thought to expand upon this idea, but it is something I’m interested in exploring more.
I want to state my strong agreement with these ideas. It isn’t hard to come up with dozens of examples of people who didn’t seem particularly impressive and then went on to be much more impressive than any reasonable observer would have expected.
I would also be surprised if EAs (a community of people who think about scope insensitivity, moral cluelessness, and similar ideas that I roughly categorize as “intellectual humility”) are able to identify talent confidently in advance.
I’m a bit worried that the current trends are making EAs somewhat insular along the lines of class/socioeconomic status, as the legible things (attending Stanford, doing internships, networking) tend to be things that are strongly correlated with growing up with a wealthy family, as well as being things that are much harder to do/obtain if you grow up without money. I don’t have enough information nor have I put enough thought to expand upon this idea, but it is something I’m interested in exploring more.