Yeah, I've been struggling with this all my life. AI is obviously the important/interesting thing that's going on that I'm supposed to care about. Writing fiction, comedy, and making TTRPGs is a thing that doesn't matter and will never pay off (I'm not even good at it, and at this point it's pretty clear that I'll never be), but I just can't stop thinking about it and being passionately curious about it. But it doesn't lead to startups, or profitable products, or even anything particularly useful/meaningful to other people. Even if I did manage to get good, AI is just a few years away from being better than anyone could be. I don't really have a solution to this.
Scott Alexander and Paul Graham have amazing posts about the same thing, you should definitely check them out if you haven't read them before:
Should there be a distinction between talent/genius and aiua, as Duncan describes it? Seems that they're disctinct, to me. Though the correllations are clear.
Setting aside Paul, who I haven't read, I don't see that reading at all in Scott.
His essay is about "innate ability" or "talent": having it, respecting its unequal distribution, and using it for a comparative advantage. It's not at all about whether the talent or the problem it addresses matter, either to the weilder or to society.
Duncan's aiua is about an innate "want something, love something, care about something" feeling.
It's subtle to distinguish innate ability and innate love of an ability (and/or its outputs), but the distinction is worth considering.
If it is not controversial to say there is no such thing as a soul, then aiua is, really, the contrast between my learned (and hopefully un-learnable) conscious narrative and the value landscape in my brain?
I met someone once who very clearly _didn't have this_. She seemed hopelessly confused by a world full of people constantly doing things that weren't the best thing they could do for themselves _or_ the best thing they could do for the world.
I tried using the analogy of not-going-to-the-gym for something and to her the reason you don't go to the gym is because you think you have better things to do with your time than going to the gym. Period.
She also didn't seem very happy with her life. And I wonder if the real reason she wasn't happy was because she simply never found _any_ interest. To her, there was no difference between "the thing I want to do" and "the thing that's best to do" because she never found anything she wanted to do (this is just speculation and I have no idea if it's correct).
Yeah, I've been struggling with this all my life. AI is obviously the important/interesting thing that's going on that I'm supposed to care about. Writing fiction, comedy, and making TTRPGs is a thing that doesn't matter and will never pay off (I'm not even good at it, and at this point it's pretty clear that I'll never be), but I just can't stop thinking about it and being passionately curious about it. But it doesn't lead to startups, or profitable products, or even anything particularly useful/meaningful to other people. Even if I did manage to get good, AI is just a few years away from being better than anyone could be. I don't really have a solution to this.
Scott Alexander and Paul Graham have amazing posts about the same thing, you should definitely check them out if you haven't read them before:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/31/the-parable-of-the-talents/
https://paulgraham.com/genius.html
Should there be a distinction between talent/genius and aiua, as Duncan describes it? Seems that they're disctinct, to me. Though the correllations are clear.
Scott and Paul are describing talent/genius as having aiua for a problem that matters.
Setting aside Paul, who I haven't read, I don't see that reading at all in Scott.
His essay is about "innate ability" or "talent": having it, respecting its unequal distribution, and using it for a comparative advantage. It's not at all about whether the talent or the problem it addresses matter, either to the weilder or to society.
Duncan's aiua is about an innate "want something, love something, care about something" feeling.
It's subtle to distinguish innate ability and innate love of an ability (and/or its outputs), but the distinction is worth considering.
I guess I was talking more about Paul's essay, it's more fresh in my mind since I've read it more recently.
"A man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills."
-Arthur Schopenhauer
If it is not controversial to say there is no such thing as a soul, then aiua is, really, the contrast between my learned (and hopefully un-learnable) conscious narrative and the value landscape in my brain?
I met someone once who very clearly _didn't have this_. She seemed hopelessly confused by a world full of people constantly doing things that weren't the best thing they could do for themselves _or_ the best thing they could do for the world.
I tried using the analogy of not-going-to-the-gym for something and to her the reason you don't go to the gym is because you think you have better things to do with your time than going to the gym. Period.
She also didn't seem very happy with her life. And I wonder if the real reason she wasn't happy was because she simply never found _any_ interest. To her, there was no difference between "the thing I want to do" and "the thing that's best to do" because she never found anything she wanted to do (this is just speculation and I have no idea if it's correct).
True facts
(For anyone else wondering, OSC pronounces it eye-YOU-uh. I looked it up because reading words I don't know how to pronounce feels awkward.)
This makes me retroactively dislike those books less.