I think the confusion comes from the meaning of "collectivist." Collectivism (in the cultural sense, at least in corss-cultural psychology) is something more like "your identity and obligations are tied to specific groups" rather than "I should do work for the whole." For most Chinese people that starts with family, then extends to relatives, classmates, coworkers and people from your hometown.
I generally think of this as concentric circles of obligation/relationship (although the more poetic description is from Fei Xiaotong: ripples from a stone dropped i... (read more)
Would this book be helpful to read even if I am already familiar with the broad arguments for AI safety/alignment? I'm not in a role where I need to professionally communicate to the public about AI safety, so I'm wondering if I will learn anything new, or if this is basically a convenient packaging of a bunch of stuff that I'm already familiar with from reading Less Wrong and similar AI safety content for a few years.
a good manager would be good at optimizing against those utility curves
Yup! One of the best things a manager can do is to know their people, which allows them to tailor their communication, motivating words, and all other behaviors in a way that will be most effective for the target recipient. It is a beautiful thing to see in action, and it is a great aspiration to have in professional life.
After prompting Claude a little bit, I have learned something new. I was approaching it from a very narrow perspective, but it seems pretty likely that these other factors do quite a bit of the explanatory work. There is something about how the government was or wasn't able to use its power in the lives of common people. I don't have a good grasp of it and I haven't read the research; I've only read this initial Claude-produced output. But I find it interesting and it introduced me to new possibilities that I hadn't encountered before (even after many year... (read more)