Jan Czechowski's Shortform

What can EA learn from Scouting

epistemic status: random notes for writing something more structured in the future

After EA fUnconference in Berlin, I'm thinking more and more about what we can learn from the scouting movement for purpose of community building/cooperation. Some elements characteristic of scouting (note, it's a rough idea, I don't think all of them are worth reproducing):

EDIT: to clarify (as I'm afraid now in this chaotic draft this may be misunderstood) this is not a list of things I observed on fUnconference. There there was only a partial implementation of the 'small groups' idea, as indicated in the text. Everything else is my memories from scouting times, and I never observed them in any EA group.

• Arbitrary splitting larger groups into smaller troops (up to 10 people) with an appointed leader. On fUnconference this was implemented as "Huddle" groups, they were used only for daily checkups (how is everyone doing, does everybody feel welcome and is having fun) and once as (soft) default split for team-based games.
• Assigning lots of meaning to color, name, and symbols related to your small group / larger community
• Incorporating music both for general singing together but also specific songs for specific occasions (morning, before a meal, evening)
• Also, spread and evolution of songs - various smaller communities will sing similar things but will develop slight differences in details in time. This gives you both sense of belonging to the whole movement (because you know the same songs) and your local group (because you sing them in a very specific way)
• Rituals/traditions related to gathering around the campfire - leader of the gathering, a special role for the person sustaining the fire, a special role for the person starting the fire, singing together, order of picking songs to sing, order of speaking, gestures indicating you want to speak next

Coping with being average: local group. If you want to produce some content like writing, you're very likely to take popular writers as a baseline. But in times of the Internet, those are super-high-performers from the far end of the distribution. You and I are just not as good them (I'm 99% sure the reader is not in top 1%).

This might make you lose motivation. You will produce less then your reference point. Your content will feel medicore. You will get orders of magnitude smaller audience.

Idea how to cope better: instead of taking the whole internet, take a random sample of 100 people from your reference group and select top achievers (in the desired area) from this 100. They will probably be only slightly better than you.

A simple mechanism partially emulating this random sampling is your local group.

Comparing yourself to people who are closer to you on performance axis will probably be more productive. They might have struggled with similar problems as you only recently. They might have some tricks that are applicable in your case. You have higher chance of reaching their level 2 years from now.

In other words, if you want to be a better writer, aspire to be like the best writer in your local EA group, not like EY or Scott Alexander.

Bayesian Signaling: good way to think about signaling is handcrafting a piece of evidence, that for the other person will be objectively strong evidence for the claim that you're making. Hearing X saying "I'm pretty smart" is a weak evidence for the hypothesis "X is smart". Seeing a Harvard's degree with X's name on it is much stronger evidence. Hearing X saying "I'm a millionaire" is a weak evidence for the hypothesis "X is a millionaire". Receiving a 10000$ gift from them is much stronger evidence.

Thought experiment: Can question answering language model without memory, instantiated separately for every session (like GPT-3) be pursuing a goal? Does such setup exclude agency? ----Imagine you put thousand super-geniuses in prison, each in separate cell. You will call them in random order to interrogation room and always ask only one question, listen to the answer and send them back. Each person will be called only once.----- Super-geniuses are allowed to devise a strategy before you lock them. Their goal is to manipulate you to release them. Will they manage? If they are intelligent enough, the fact that each one answers only one question without knowing how many others were interrogated before and what their answers were shouldn't be a unworkable problem.

Video Games protocol: I like video games. Some of them are really life-changing stories. I have some titles on my list that have the potential to be really cool adventures. However, I'm hesitant to try them due to some considerations:

• They are very immersive experiences and will not let you do anything else at the same time. I like mixing activities
• A standard AAA RPG playthrough takes around 100 hours. One can argue that the same amount of positive experience can be taken from one good book (~10 hours)
• Lastly, video games are so addictive it's hard for me to stop playing once I start. I always play longer than planned. When making a break I want to go back to the game as soon as possible.

I'm the most concerned with the last point right now. I have some ideas to manage that better, and I'm open to new ones:

• When playing make sure there's always wallclock time displayed within eyesight. Preferably integrated on your screen. I think I once found a Skyrim mode especially for that
• Include some accountability (ask your partner to remind you the game time is over) or time tracking with daily reflection
• Only play in the mornings, before work. If you want to play longer, you have to get up earlier. And you cannot play too long because, well, you need to get to work.