One of the most admirable and impressive things about the EA movement is how many people in it will actively study elsewhere. Whether it’s animal welfare, mosquito nets, asteroid risks, or the architecture of various AI systems, you can find many EAs going out of their way to know more details.
They don’t really benefit an expert knowledge, but because of their general center in the use of reason, they often cannot contradict the experts themselves.
Yet one thing I have never met – never seen – or seen on Twitter, is an EA that understands finance to a comparable degree. Never.
And that’s ironic, because EAs emphasize the import of probabilistic thinking.
If you ask “have you thought about being short the market?” question, one hears a variety of answers that I call “first order wrong.” That is, there may be a sophisticated defense of those points of view, but you’re just hearing a first-order response, designed to dismiss the question without further thought. A few of those answers are:
1. “Why should I gamble?” (Given your other comments, folding not gambling)
2. “There is already proof that I am right.” My friends and I made a lot of money buying Nvidia stock.”
3. “I don’t know how to be short on the market.” Or “Novice investors shouldn’t discount the market!”
4. “Did the stock market predict Hitler and World War II?”
5. “How can I get money if the world suddenly ends? After all, AGI has a motive to deceive us.”
6. “But I don’t know when the world will end!”
7. “Why should I short the market when I can make more money by going long with Nvidia!?”
8. “Well, I’m not shopping stocks!”
9. “If the world ends soon, how much money do I need?”
10. “But if the world doesn’t end, things will be really good.”
And more. (I have also heard “Are you short the market?”) I will leave it up to the reader to figure out what is wrong with these answers. In most cases o1 and Claude can help you, if needed.
I believe that Aella, first of all, is very short on the market. Good for him, since he’s pessimistic about AI. But here are two answers that I have never heard, not even once:
11. “I’m going to sit down and study finance and see if I can find a way to undercut the market. If I can’t I will feel sad, but I may come back to you for more guidance.”
12. “Soon, AI will be ready to tell me how to smartly short the market. Then I’ll do this – thanks for the tip! “
No never. The absence of the latter from the speech I find particularly odd. “The AGI will be powerful enough to destroy us, but it won’t be good enough to help me create a working summary!” OK…
Sociology here reflects more on what is happening than on the arguments themselves. Because EAs, logic types, and doomsters here are generally very good at learning new things.
Of course, once shorting the market even enters serious contemplation (don’t worry actually to do it), and you begin to see current market prices as a kind of test referendum with various doomster predictions. And suffice it to say, market prices basically provide zero support for all those predictions. And that’s embarrassing, whether you have to keep the market short or not. Many EAs and types of logic are followers of speculative markets in some cases.
However I would encourage many EAs, geniuses, and AI doomster types to learn more about basic finance. It can free you from various mental chains, and it will be useful for the rest of your life, no matter how long or short it is.
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