X-Risk Roll Call

[-]Eliezer Yudkowsky12y140

Mihaly Barasz is an IMO gold medalist perfect scorer. From what I've seen personally, I'd guess that Paul Christiano is better than him at math. I forget what Marcello's prodigy points were in but I think it was some sort of computing olympiad. All should have some sort of verified performance feat far in excess of the listed educational attainment.

These days I'd describe myself as a decision theorist, with a strong interest in human rationality. Boasting of my mathematical talent in that company seems inappropriate; I don't have comparable prodigy markers (well, some very early ones of similar statistical rareness, but that was at easier problems at a younger age, and I was not properly developed as a pure math prodigy since then). I've often played a key role in figuring out which math to invent, but have relatively less comparative advantage at proving things within a given system once invented, unless the key happens to be checking laws against a concrete example which I seem to do earlier than most mathematicians. What I really do doesn't seem to have very much of a name, and can't realistically be described in a document like this one.

Anna Salamon has an Erdos number of 2.

[-]JoshuaZ12y130

Anna Salamon has an Erdos number of 2.

This isn't something that is normally listed as a qualification. It essentially signals math fandom rather than math and including it in a list of qualifications sounds very unprofessional. The signaling isn't great here.

[-][anonymous]12y00

It's interesting but not impressive. The only Erdos number that has ever been a useful gauge of extraordinary skill is 0.

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[-]fowlertm12y20

"All should have some sort of verified performance feat far in excess of the listed educational attainment"

A relevant point, I'm debating adding that. The audience I'd had in mind when first putting this together was people trying to decide which courses, schools, or training would help them get into x-risk research. For that crowd, knowing who the prodigies are and what performance metrics they did well on what wouldn't be that useful. But I realize that there may be very young, very high-talent people reading a list like this and trying to decide where they should focus their efforts, and they might be interested in knowing others like them ended up in x-risk.

[-]komponisto12y110

Who did I miss?

Michael Vassar, previous president of (what is now) MIRI
Peter Thiel, major donor to MIRI
Kaj Sotala, writer, longtime LW contributor, MIRI visitor/researcher.
various CFAR people

[-]fowlertm12y20

Hadn't thought of Vassar or Thiel, thanks!

[-]Kaj_Sotala12y20

Kaj Sotala, writer, longtime LW contributor, MIRI visitor/researcher.

Background: BA (Cognitive Science, minor in Computer Science), University of Helsinki; working on MSc (Computer Science, minor in Mathematics), University of Helsinki. Personal website.

[-]fowlertm12y40

Excellent, you'll be added :)

[-]fowlertm12y10

I notice you're getting a masters with a minor attached. I didn't know that you could do that, I thought you just got a masters in a single subject. Is that unique to Finish universities or is it a common thing?

[-]Kaj_Sotala12y00

It's very common in Finnish universities, but I don't know about elsewhere.

ETA: I think our minors are smaller than in other countries, though - Wikipedia says that "To obtain an academic minor, two years of study at university in a selected subject is the usual requirement", but here you can obtain it with the equivalent of half a year to a full year worth of studies.

ETA2: Wait, that two years requirement fails a basic sanity check. Bachelor's degrees are typically 3-4 years, right? So then a minor would constitute at least full half of your degree? That can't be right.

[-]fowlertm12y00

I never had a minor, but it's usually just a handful of classes scattered throughout the course offerings. I've known people to complete minors in three semesters, and it may be possible to do it in less if you have some of the prereqs out of the way.

[-]James_Miller12y70

Forgive my lack of modesty, but Luke wrote about my writings on X-risk here:

http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/hpt/elites_and_ai_stated_opinions/

James Miller http://sophia.smith.edu/~jdmiller/resume.pdf

[-]fowlertm12y20

Not at all, happy to add you. One of the surprises I had after doing this (and one of the reasons it was valuable) was in finding that there are multiple people from economics and law who think and write about these issues. Maybe I'm just out of touch, but I wasn't expecting that.

[edit]: I'm also thinking about contacting just those people who seem a little out of place on a list like this, like the lawyers, and asking them why they ended up in x-risk and whether their background helped significantly. My own cluster of talents would make me a better fit for law school than math graduate school (leaving aside the fact that I just really want to learn some math), but it doesn't seem like the optimal way of getting into the field.

[-]Qiaochu_Yuan12y60

Benja Fallenstein is currently at the University of Bristol and was previously at the University of Vienna, although I'm not sure in exactly what capacity in either case. Nisan Stiennon now has a Ph.D. in mathematics from Stanford. And forgive my lack of modesty as well, but I'm currently a visiting fellow at MIRI. (Background: B.Sc. in mathematics from MIT, and if you care about the point Eliezer brought up, Putnam Honorable Mention. Paul Christiano was on the IMO team and Marcello Herreshoff was a USACO finalist.)

[-]Benya12y50

I've got a BSc in mathematics from University of Vienna, and the degree I'm working on in Bristol is a PhD, also in mathematics.

[-]fowlertm12y00

Excellent, I couldn't find your information anywhere. You're updated, and thank you for your help.

[-]fowlertm12y10

You'll be added, and thanks for the extra information.

Another surprise was the small but non-negligible number of x-riskers who 'only' have an undergraduate degree or even less. I'll probably reach out to those people to see if their backgrounds have any shared features. Unless the feature turns out to be 'I'm a prodigy'. Nothing against the prodigies (I'm wasn't too far off myself, when I was a younger), but it isn't something reproducible. The best I can do now is work hard until I'm very, very good at math/computing/philosophy, and it's less impressive when you're an adult :-)

[-]Qiaochu_Yuan12y20

Well, some of the people on this list are currently in graduate school (e.g. Paul Christiano and myself). Some others dropped out. There's something of a culture of dropping out of graduate school in the Bay Area rationality community.

[-]fowlertm12y00

Maybe I need to apply to graduate school in San Francisco and then drop out :)

Incidentally, are there good graduate schools in the area with a high concentration of rationalists or connection to the rationalist community?

[-]Qiaochu_Yuan12y20

UC Berkeley has the virtue of being physically close to CFAR / MIRI, but it has so many students that "high concentration" is both false and not obviously a good metric to use when commenting on its rationalist population (which includes me, Paul Christiano, Alex Mennen, and probably other people I'm forgetting). MIRI is planning on moving closer to it as well.

[-]Eliezer Yudkowsky12y10

CFAR and MIRI are both moving shortly to within walking distance of campus (same building).

[-]John_Maxwell12y40

Has there ever been any talk of establishing an FHI type thing at UC Berkeley? Liron Shapira might be interested in participating; he's an alumnus. Their faculty club hosted Robin Hanson's talk on effective altruism, right?

(The only problem with this plan is that it would leave too many important people vulnerable to a devastating California earthquake.)

[-]fowlertm12y00

Okay, physical proximity to those organizations will probably affect my decision. Thanks for the information.

[-]jsteinhardt12y00

Stanford and Berkeley.

Disclaimer: I'm a Stanford student.

ETA: Also see what Qiaochu said.

[-]turchin12y60

Sir Martin Rees, wrote a book about human extinction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Final_Hour

Richard Posner, wrote a book about human extinction

2004 Catastrophe: Risk and Response, ISBN 978-0-19-530647-7

John Lesli, wrote a book about human extinction - The End of the World: The Science and Ethics of Human Extinction http://books.google.ru/books/about/The_End_of_the_World.html?id=gUXgpH6nizIC&redir_esc=y

Bill Joy wrote famous article "Why the future does not need us". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_The_Future_Doesn't_Need_Us

J.Carrigan wrote about risks of dowloading alien AI via SETI. http://home.fnal.gov/~carrigan/SETI/SETI%20Hacker_AC-03-IAA-8-3-06.doc

Robert Freitas wrote an article about grey goo with math estimates. http://www.foresight.org/nano/Ecophagy.html

Adrian Kent wrote "Critical look at risk assessments for global catastrophes" - an article about collider and probabilities. http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0009204

Herman Khan wrote about Doomsday machine in the book "On Thermonuclear war". http://www.scribd.com/doc/16563514/Herman-Khan-On-Doomsday-machine

[-]fowlertm12y30

Excellent, I will check all of these out.

One of the methodological issues facing me as I worked on this was whether or not to include people who were not x-risk researchers but who had written a piece or two about x-risk. Several of the authors in the new Global Catastrophic Risk (2008) book appear to fall into this category. In practical terms, the physicists who are x-risk researchers have the same resumes as physicists who are not, but making the distinction does keep the list from getting too long.

I say all that because I may or may not decide to include each of these people in the roll call. Your effort is appreciated regardless.

[-]Pablo12y40

5) Stuart Armstrong

Background: PhD in philosophy (Oxford)

This seems incorrect. From the FHI website:

His Oxford D.Phil was in parabolic geometry, calculating the holonomy of projective and conformal Cartan geometries. He later transitioned into computational biochemistry, designing several new ways to rapidly compare putative bioactive molecules for virtual screening of medicinal compounds.

[-]fowlertm12y00

Yeah, you're right, thanks for catching that. I saw "D.Phil" and just thought 'philosophy', but I'm guessing this is math.

[-]katydee12y10

Who did I miss?

Geoff Anders of Leverage Research.

[-]fowlertm12y00

Thanks a lot, that's an organization I probably wouldn't have found on my own, and it looks like most of their associates can go on the list.

[-]Stabilizer12y10

I'm not entirely sure why, but I instinctively felt like downvoting this. Though, I haven't done it yet as I don't quite understand the urge.

[-]fowlertm12y70

I won't try to talk you out of it. I didn't post this expecting accolades, but it was a non-trivial amount of work and it will be useful to several different types of people, namely newcomers trying to get names straight and people thinking about going into x-risk who are planning for the future. After all, I didn't compile this list for no reason, I was trying to answer a different set of questions and this information wasn't available in a single convenient place. Several hours and a lot of tedium were required to track it all down, and I'd rather others not have to duplicate the effort for no reason.

So I won't apologize for it either. Originally the plan had been to make it as comprehensive as possible and post it to main, that way when I finish the bigger project to which this was just a prelude, I can link there rather than having one sprawling mega-post. Given the reception, I'm reconsidering that.