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by personjerry 4 hours ago
Hmm I spent a good amount of time in big tech, now work in AI, and I minored in philosophy at Berkeley back in the day (Parmenides, Socrates, Plato etc.)

How do I align myself with such a job?

5 comments

Usually you need to be well-published/cited in the field, so a minor would likely not qualify. People joke around, but philosophers are some of the smartest people I've ever met, and it's not even particularly close. (I graduated ~10 years ago, so most of them are sadly lawyers or in academia these days, though some are engineers or entrepreneurs.)
Same - philosopher here please hire me. My bachelors thesis was “Wittgensteinian problems for artificial general intelligence.” Three decades working closely with tech and haven’t failed the Turing test yet.

I think SBF and his education from birth (via his mother) in consequentialism should point to the issues made clear when that ethical approach goes wrong or operates from bad, egoistic data, which it’s generally always doing.

Genuinely, understanding around philosophy of action has been deeply enriching over my life. To anyone trying to decide on a minor philosophy is always an excellent choice.
You need to use everything at your disposal. Wait for the planets to align and the tea leaves to indicate good success. Don't apply until the chicken bones suggest a good time for someone with your constitution. You are going up against a thousand other candidates more or less equally qualified for a highly vague job description and 350k base salary.
Find non-Utilitarian alternative to Effective Altruism by somehow channeling Dostoevsky? Propriety and Reward?
Socrates argued if you believe something is evil and powerful people do evil then by definition they are not "powerful" -- they are just "evil". As a corollary, if you believe something is good and the people who do good happen to be the weakest members of society, by definition, they are "powerful" -- it is society that is messed up.
Getting the feeling that Socrates had a different definition for "powerful" than most.
Philosophers in general tend to have a different (more profound) definition of things than others do.