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I think you're comparing apples to oranges here. When people get into topics where they have no personal contact with reality, you should be comparing to fields where experiments aren't feasible and people are mostly pontificating. When people read books written by people that are crazy or lying but popular, you should be comparing to fields where professors are faking data to get publications - while also trading citations, of course. When you compare individuals to something like experimental physics or civil engineering, you should be comparing that to something like cooking food.

The thing is, I've noticed that a lot of the curriculum in schools is blind imitation of high-status science-y people, which can end up as cargo culting. Textbooks and classes have students memorize terms for certain things because "smart people know those words, and we should make kids be more like the smart people" - but they use those words because they understand underlying concepts, and without that the words can be useless.

This reminds me of Feynman talking about textbooks.

Now that we have the internet, you can simply see what kinds of technical language experts use and learn about those terms yourself. The distinctions "autodidact" is supposed to imply might have been weakened by the internet, and for that matter by libraries.

Of course, you'd also have to pick the experts you're going to imitate on your own, but then, you also have to pick professors or schools or textbooks. Following a societal consensus about competence should work about equally well either way.

Autodidacts are easily recognized by their unknown unknowns. They may know a lot, but what they don't know, they usually don't even know that it exists.

I remember talking with a director of a Max Planck institute. Ion transport was relevant to the conversation, and I said something about how "of course, while lithium ions are light, that doesn't mean they diffuse quickly because they're strongly bound to their solute complex, more than sodium ions". He said, "Aha, I see you're well-educated". I thought that was funny because that wasn't something I ever took any classes on or got mentoring about. The other funny thing about that conversation was that his pet project was this energy storage idea that had no chance of working because he didn't understand ion solvation well enough.

These days, professional exams have been largely subsumed by university degrees, but there used to be people who'd just study on their own for a bar exam, highway engineer exam, actuarial exam, etc, and then go work in that field. How would that fit into your classification?

I too like Sam Altman, his writing and the way he often communicates. He strives for what he believes is good.

I'm really not sure why you (or other people) say that. I saw, for example, his interview with Lex, and my impression was that he doesn't care about or understand AI safety but he memorized some phrases to appeal to people who don't think too hard about them. Also, that he's a good actor who can make it seem like he cares deeply; it reminded me of watching characters like Sam Carter in SG1 talk about physics.

I would add I am a big fan of his medical and fusion efforts.

I'm not, but that's because I understand the technical details and know those approaches can't work. In any case, my view is that his investments in those were driven largely by appealing to people like you.

Answer by bhauthMar 03, 202470

Anyway, I'm wondering why people don't exploit this?

I think people usually do this with art instead of stocks.

Yes, I'm defining "market failures" as things that more markets don't solve, but macroeconomics and sociology aren't fields where such things are mathematically proven. We have to go on empirical evidence, and my interpretation of the empirical evidence is that such market failures exist and are significant.

Market failures that the market doesn't subsequently correct aren't a big enough problem that something "needs to be done" about them, especially given the risk that government intervention will make things worse.

So, we're back to "giving up on improving" market failures, because you don't think they're actually a significant problem?

Anyway, most people disagree with you here. In the real world, you're outvoted and will lose elections, and I guarantee the above argument won't change most people's minds.

How many horses were there?

Also, development of those 3 technologies wasn't limited by available power.

New technology could also create new market failures, eg by enabling new kinds of collusion or creating new externalities. You could see the RealPage suit or PFOA pollution for examples.

Is your proposal to selectively direct technological progress towards techs that solve market failures and away from techs that create them? How would you do this besides...government involvement?

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