Could you be Prof Nick Bostrom's sidekick?

I would hope that this is exactly the right forum to for this approach. Acknowledging that their own "impact per working hour" is probably less than Bostrom's... is the least I would expect from someone claiming to honestly evaluate their own skills.

I agree that the approach as summarized by you isn't very appealing, but to me the ad doesn't read like this. It's a difficult job to do well, and can be prestigious. Whether it is depends on the framing you apply.

There's a big difference between "you may not be smart" and "you may not be as smart as Nick Bostrom". Nick Bostrom is a pretty smart guy, after all.

Actually, it probably is the right place - you don't actually want people who aren't smart, they would suck at the job. You want very smart people who are sufficiently aware of people smarter than them to be humble about it, and a forum with an average intelligence as high as it is here seems perfect in that respect.

I dunno, it sounds appealing to me, at least.

I agree. This job offering doesn't sound very appealing to me. It basically reads: "Would you like to be Nick Bostrom's slave? He is much more important than you! It will be a honour to be his slave!"

Note that I'm not saying that the job isn't worthwile or that the world couldn't be a better place if Bostrom had more free time to do his research, just that the ad could be framed a bit better.

That's not the way I perceive the word "sidekick". Watson was not the apprentice of Holmes, nor was Sam Frodo's apprentice. They helped their masters and learned from them, yes, but it was clear that their masters would always outclass them.

Jeeves is drastically more competent than Wooster at pretty much everything. That may not be the image you want to call up.

This is not an opportunity to exercise creativity, find the most boring stodgy company's ad for a secretary, and copy it. People will be able to read between the lines on everything else (or you can use community slang internally to explain, just not externally).

(I agree with the grandparent, part of "growing up" is adopting boring stodgy professional norms for instrumental rationality reasons).

if the ideas of innuendo could come from anywhere its where it says "conscientious and discreet" since guys are always saying they're discreet or making that a condition in their ads when they are seeking other guys to hook up with.

In case I wasn't clear, I see nothing wrong with seeking a personal assistant for Bostrom amongst EAs and LessWrongers. Obviously, many people in those groups might be very interested in the job. I'm sure it will be an interesting opportunity for whoever gets it. My objection was to the tone. I'm glad if people didn't find it as alarming as I did, but I was aware of some additional controversy, expressed both publicly in the comments and privately. And of course, there is no downvote on Facebook.

I can see how it could come across as 'hero worship', except that Bostrom is indeed a widely-recognised world-leading academic at the highest ranked philosophy department in the world. There are sound reasons to be respectful of his work.

Yes, by all means, be respectful of Bostrom's work! Luckily, there's a lot of room between "worshipful" and "respectful" to aim at. Lots of hero worship, perhaps even most of it, is directed at people who are legitimately awesome (as I personally believe Bostrom is)! And since LW has already been accused of excessive hero worship, with varying degrees of thoughtfulness, to an extent that has turned people off the site, I think it's worth considering extolling the virtues of those we admire in a more conventional manner, especially in large public forums.

I completely believe that no innuendo was intended. That's why I thought it would be helpful to let you know that at least to some people, it came off that way.

Suppose they say they're prepared to pay up to $X. Then:

• If someone turns up whose last salary was $X/2 and who would be willing to do the job for $3X/4, they're less likely to persuade them to accept that because they've said they're prepared to pay up to $X.
• If someone really outstanding is out there who'd do the job so well they'd actually be prepared to pay $3X/2, they may never find out because maybe Ms. Outstanding already has a decent job that pays more than $X and isn't interested in moving unless she gets paid more.

Posting information about likely pay is very useful for the potential employees but has scarcely any advantage for the employer. And, for better or worse, employers will generally act in their own interests more than those of their prospective employees.

As we have not secured funding yet it would be premature to do either of these things. We can negotiate a salary later on in the process depending on the person's qualifications.