It's a perfect summation of this entire intellectual project, to the extent that it deserves the phrase. The basic heuristic of these guys is throwing numbers at an established philosophical problem and seeing what sticks, down to their CV.
A few years ago someone came up with a universal caption which works
for every New Yorker cartoon: Christ, what an asshole!
I feel like that also works as a universal response for SneerClub
posts
Also, unrelated to this post, but I just remembered something funny:
my frequentist professor once said the difference between frequentists
and bayesians is that bayesians aim to be right, and frequentists aim to
be…. less wrong.
Well, achruallly Mr Bostrom simply is a genius postmodern science fiction writer. His radical innovation was writing a hard science fiction CV. Exposing the weakness of our modern job market system, and the weakness of a non-cryptocurrency academic credentials system. Truly a modern johnanathan swift, a potential new star on the firament of the heterodox intellectual dark web.
Not that it's particularly important, or that Bostrom is any less of a bullshitter, but some universities do indeed have BA degrees for STEM disciplines. For example, [Oxford](https://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/courses/course-listing/mathematics).
Why not just say “earned 3.5 normal degrees simultaneously” or
something to that effect? It’s a much clearer claim of which he could be
sure (when he wrote his CV), and it actually sounds more impressive
anyway, since record-breaking performance could refer to various
functions of his grades and exam results. However, I don’t think there’s
any problem with “bragging” on one’s CV as long as the achievement is
relevant and clearly-stated. And I don’t think this boast represents a
general feature of the rationalist movement. Yudkowsky does seem to like
showing off his intelligence, but Siskind has been open about various
academic struggles he experienced and in general seems quite modest
about his own abilities and open about the level of uncertainty he has
in particular views.
I'm more suprised with the whole flaw in thinking shown by Bostrom here 'I asked around and others didn't seem to be taken as much courses' is a such a bad way to find others who are also spending way to much time studying, as they will be studying and not socializing.
I think the idea wasn't that he expected to meet those people themselves but that he expected the community to know if someone was taking many courses. I do think that in a very competitive environment people would be gossiping about a current student with an unusually high course load, unless the school is really huge, but I don't think you'd get a good sense of the historical record just from asking the alums you know.
Don't think any of use at my uni realized how hard one of our fellow students was working until she managed to finish the degree in less time it normally takes to finish the degree. So I doubt it is that easy as 'peopel gossip'.
Eh….I don’t know how sneer worthy this is. Everybody lies up and down
on their resume/cv. I have a claim nearly as outlandish on mine about an
award I won thats a completely unverifiable offhand remark.
> Everybody lies up and down on their resume/cv.
News to me. I've always viewed doing that as asking for trouble, and flagrantly unethical if you were applying to something where you fucking up could cause serious issues.
I’ve read a lot of resumes over the years and interviewed people to determine the veracity of their claims. It’s not hard to uncover lies like this, as demonstrated by how quickly this claim crumbled under even a modicum of questioning.
Reading resumes from people who think everyone lies on their resume is very similar: The moment you apply any questioning to the claims, they crumble and retreat to something else. Or they try to creatively dig the lies deeper on the spot, which never goes quite as smoothly as they hoped. Once you’ve interviewed a lot of people in your field, it’s not hard to know how to ask questions that separate the honest resumes from the exaggerations.
I don’t know about that, every resume I’ve ever been asked to read (and was in a position to know the person well) was at least 20% fictional. You just have to be very strategic about which 20%.
If you lie about being an expert at SQL, well, that’s not a ruse which will last very long under scrutiny. But if you claim to know all the common survey tools like dscout, maze, Qualtrics, etc. it will get you past automatic recruiter filters, and who cares? They’re all similar and relatively easy to use. If it happens a company uses one that you’ve never tried, just spend a weekend poking around with it and you’ll be fine. It’s all about knowing which things are actually relevant to the job, and what you’ll be reasonably asked to prove in an interview.
Lol, no, not everybody lies on their resume. I don't lie on mine. That's unethical. These rationalist folks go on and on about how much they care about honesty and then do this. I really should stop being surprised at this point.
also what a weird thing to put on a CV but okay
this sounds like the kind of explanation that gets you fired when the HR department belatedly checks up on your CV
A few years ago someone came up with a universal caption which works for every New Yorker cartoon: Christ, what an asshole!
I feel like that also works as a universal response for SneerClub posts
Also, unrelated to this post, but I just remembered something funny: my frequentist professor once said the difference between frequentists and bayesians is that bayesians aim to be right, and frequentists aim to be…. less wrong.
That’s a lie, Bostrom.
the tweet
[deleted]
Now that is what I call “Artificial Intelligence”! 😉🤓🤣
Most of us grew out of the need to feel like the smartest person in the room around age 20, Nick.
one of the key characteristics of records is that they are usually somehow recorded somewhere
Who’s Bostrom, sorry?
At least when people put “TIME PERSON OF THE YEAR” as a bogus CV entry there’s a couple of plausible years that count…
What a dork.
Why not just say “earned 3.5 normal degrees simultaneously” or something to that effect? It’s a much clearer claim of which he could be sure (when he wrote his CV), and it actually sounds more impressive anyway, since record-breaking performance could refer to various functions of his grades and exam results. However, I don’t think there’s any problem with “bragging” on one’s CV as long as the achievement is relevant and clearly-stated. And I don’t think this boast represents a general feature of the rationalist movement. Yudkowsky does seem to like showing off his intelligence, but Siskind has been open about various academic struggles he experienced and in general seems quite modest about his own abilities and open about the level of uncertainty he has in particular views.
Eh….I don’t know how sneer worthy this is. Everybody lies up and down on their resume/cv. I have a claim nearly as outlandish on mine about an award I won thats a completely unverifiable offhand remark.