All of Kai Williams's Comments + Replies
tldr: A mathematics major graduating in May. Looking for next steps, in AI or elsewhere, but unsure of what exactly I want. Happy in general quantitative, policy, or operations roles.
Skills: Strong math background (+familiar with stats). Research skills (in math, AI Safety) including some coding (esp. python) and clear writing (won an outstanding poster at a math conference). Project management at Amazons operations internship; ran painting business for two summers, and finances for independent debate club at my school.
Location/remote: Currently in Philade...
I generally like the innovation-as-mining hypothesis with regards to the science and with some respect to the arts, but I think that there is one issue with the logical chain.
You said that "[i]f not for this phenomenon [that ideas get harder to find], sequels should generally be better than the original," but I don't think this is necessarily true. I think a more likely reason that sequels aren't generally better than the original is mostly regression to the mean and selection effects, with two main causes:
- Pure quality: Presumably, an author or a screenwri
Thanks for the piece. I think there's an unexamined assumption here about the robustness of non-earth settlement. It may be that one can maintain a settlement on another world for a long time, but unless we get insanely lucky, it seems unlikely to me that you live on another planet without sustaining technology at or above our current capabilities. It may also be that in the medium-term these settlements are dependent on Earth for manufacturing resources etc. which reduces their independence.
This isn't fatal to your thesis (especially in the long-long term), but I think having a high minimum technology threshold does undercut your thesis to some extent.