I would find it helpful to have more precision about what it means to âparticipate more in object level discussionâ.
For example: did you think that I/âthe forum was more impactful after I spent a week doing ELK? If the answer is âno,â is that because I need to be at the level of winning an ELK prize to see returns in my community building work? Or is it about the amount of time spent rather than my skill level (e.g. I would need to have spent a month rather than a week in order to see a return)?
Definitely in-expectation I would expect the week doing ELK to have had pretty good effects on your community-building, though I donât think the payoff is particularly guaranteed, so my guess would be âYesâ.
Thinks like engaging with ELK, thinking through Eliezerâs List Oâ Doom, thinking through some of the basics of biorisk seem all quite valuable to me, and my takes on those issues are very deeply entangled with a lot of community-building decisions I make, so I expect similar effects for you.
Thanks! I spend a fair amount of time reading technical papers, including the things you mentioned, mostly because I spend a lot of time on airplanes and this is a vaguely productive thing I can do on an airplane, but honestly this just mostly results in me being better able to make TikToks about obscure theorems.
Maybe my confusion is: when you say âparticipate in object level discussionsâ you mean less âbe able to find the flaw in the proof of some theoremâ and more âbe able to state whatâs holding us back from having more/âbetter theoremsâ? That seems more compelling to me.
I guess that a week doing ELK would help on thisâprobably not a big boost, but the type of thing that adds up over a few years.
I expect that for this purpose youâd get more out of spending half a week doing ELK and half a week talking to people about models of whether/âwhy ELK helps anything, what makes for good progress on ELK, what makes for someone whoâs likely to do decently well at ELK.
(Or a week on each, but wanting to comment about allocation of a certain amount of time rather than increasing the total.)
Cool, yeah that split makes sense to me. I had originally assumed that âtalking to people about models of whether ELK helps anythingâ would fall into a âcommunity building track,â but upon rereading your post more closely I donât think that was the intended interpretation.[1]
FWIW the âonly one trackâ model doesnât perfectly map to my intuition here. E.g. the founders of doordash spent time using their own app as delivery drivers, and that experience was probably quite useful for them, but I still think itâs fair to describe them as being on the âcreate a delivery appâ track rather than the âbe a delivery driverâ track.
I read you as making an analogous suggestion for EA community builders, and I would describe that as being âsuper customer focusedâ or something, rather than having only one âtrackâ.
You say âobsessing over the details of whatâs needed in direct work,â and talking to experts definitely seems like an activity that falls in that category.
I would find it helpful to have more precision about what it means to âparticipate more in object level discussionâ.
For example: did you think that I/âthe forum was more impactful after I spent a week doing ELK? If the answer is âno,â is that because I need to be at the level of winning an ELK prize to see returns in my community building work? Or is it about the amount of time spent rather than my skill level (e.g. I would need to have spent a month rather than a week in order to see a return)?
Definitely in-expectation I would expect the week doing ELK to have had pretty good effects on your community-building, though I donât think the payoff is particularly guaranteed, so my guess would be âYesâ.
Thinks like engaging with ELK, thinking through Eliezerâs List Oâ Doom, thinking through some of the basics of biorisk seem all quite valuable to me, and my takes on those issues are very deeply entangled with a lot of community-building decisions I make, so I expect similar effects for you.
Thanks! I spend a fair amount of time reading technical papers, including the things you mentioned, mostly because I spend a lot of time on airplanes and this is a vaguely productive thing I can do on an airplane, but honestly this just mostly results in me being better able to make TikToks about obscure theorems.
Maybe my confusion is: when you say âparticipate in object level discussionsâ you mean less âbe able to find the flaw in the proof of some theoremâ and more âbe able to state whatâs holding us back from having more/âbetter theoremsâ? That seems more compelling to me.
[Speaking for myself not Oliver âŚ]
I guess that a week doing ELK would help on thisâprobably not a big boost, but the type of thing that adds up over a few years.
I expect that for this purpose youâd get more out of spending half a week doing ELK and half a week talking to people about models of whether/âwhy ELK helps anything, what makes for good progress on ELK, what makes for someone whoâs likely to do decently well at ELK.
(Or a week on each, but wanting to comment about allocation of a certain amount of time rather than increasing the total.)
Cool, yeah that split makes sense to me. I had originally assumed that âtalking to people about models of whether ELK helps anythingâ would fall into a âcommunity building track,â but upon rereading your post more closely I donât think that was the intended interpretation.[1]
FWIW the âonly one trackâ model doesnât perfectly map to my intuition here. E.g. the founders of doordash spent time using their own app as delivery drivers, and that experience was probably quite useful for them, but I still think itâs fair to describe them as being on the âcreate a delivery appâ track rather than the âbe a delivery driverâ track.
I read you as making an analogous suggestion for EA community builders, and I would describe that as being âsuper customer focusedâ or something, rather than having only one âtrackâ.
You say âobsessing over the details of whatâs needed in direct work,â and talking to experts definitely seems like an activity that falls in that category.