About Me

post by Abe Dillon (abe-dillon) · 2023-11-10T18:32:21.678Z · LW · GW · 0 comments

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I want to write about (and work on) lofty topics in fields like artificial intelligence, machine learning, synthetic biology, math, and philosophy, however; I'm keenly aware that my credentials are... underwhelming: I barely graduated with a bachelors degree in electrical engineering in 2008 and have had a rocky career as a software engineer ever since. Despite my attempts to break into those aforementioned fields, none of my software engineering experience has directly involved any of them.

I believe I have valuable ideas to add to these fields, but I'm also worried about becoming one of "those people" who mistake their ignorance of a field for a superpower as though it offers them clarity and a "fresh perspective" that experts in the field lack. I don't want to barge into a conversation that philosophers have been having for millenia and embarrass myself by confidently spout my opinion as though it's irrefutable fact. I know about the Dunning-Krugar effect and I'm aware that software engineers in particular have a history of assuming they're the smartest people in the room at all times no matter the subject or room.

I'm writting this blurb so that I can link to it in future posts as a sort of disclaimer, because every time I try to start a write about my thoughts on the alignment problem (for instance), a voice in the back of my head keeps saying, "You know you're basically trying to formalize the meaning of life in an equation, right? You barely passed philosophy 101 and fell asleep during every class on mathematical proofs!" and I feel the need to preface everything with, "I'm basically a dummy with no expertise in any of the subjects I'm writing about. Take everything I say with a mountain of salt and please be nice! I'm sorry in advance for acting like a defensive asshole when I respond poorly to legitimate critique. I'm worried I'm too immature to disentangle my ego from my posts."

Hopefully, this will allow me to keep my future writing more concise because the reader and I will be on the same page, so to speak. I won't have to litter my writting with uncertain qualifiers like, "in my opinion", "I think", "I'm not sure, but as far as I understand", etc. because we're in agreement that all of that is implied. Everything I write is my opinion by virtue of the fact that I wrote it. Please excuse any air of athority in my writing due to lack of such quallifiers.

Thanks for understanding,
Abe Dillon

 

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