Scott Alexander: uncertainty

Transcript context

…Well I do think that it should be treated more as a viable career path. Where right now, if you told your parents, “I’m going to become a startup founder”, I think the reaction would be like, “there’s a 1% chance you’ll succeed, but it’s an interesting experience and if you do succeed, that’s crazy. That’ll be great. If you don’t, you’ll learn something. It’ll be helpful to the thing you do afterwards”. We know that’s true of blogging, right? We know that it helps you build up a network, it helps you develop your ideas. And if you do succeed, you get a dream job for a lifetime. And I think maybe they don’t have that mindset, but also they under appreciate how much you actually could succeed at it. It’s not a crazy outcome to make a lot of money as a blogger. I think it might be a crazy outcome to make a lot of money as a blogger. I don’t know what percent of people who start a blog end up making enough that they can quit their day job. My guess is it’s a lot worse than for startup founders. I would not even have that as a goal so much as like the Scott Aaronson goal of, okay, you’re still a professor, but now you’re the professor whose views everybody knows and who has kind of a boost up in respect in your field and especially outside of your field. And also you can correct people when they’re wrong, which is a very important side benefit. Yeah. How does your old blogging feedback into your current blogging? So when you’re discussing a new idea, I mean, AI or whatever else, are you just able to pull from the insights from your previous commentary on sociology or anthropology or history or something?…

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