Ah. So I'm not sure I can represent Critch here off-the-cuff, but my interpretation of this post is a bit different than what you've laid out here.

This is not a proposal for how the field overall should grow. There should be infrastructural efforts made to onboard people via mentorship, things like AI Safety Camp, things like MIRI Fellows, etc.

This post is an on-the-margin recommendation to some subset of people. I think there were a few intents here:

1. If you're basic plan is to donate, consider trying to become useful for direct work instead. Getting useful on direct work probably requires at least some chunk of time for thinking and understanding the problem, and some chunk of time for learning new skills.

2. The "take time off to think" thing isn't meant to be "do solo work" (like writing papers) It's more specifically for learning about the AI Alignment problem and landscape. From there, maybe the thing you do is write papers (solo or at an org), or maybe it's apply for a managerial or ops position at an org, or maybe it's founding a new project.

3. I think (personal opinion, although I expect Critch to agree), that when it comes to learning skills there are probably better ways to go about it than "just study independently." (Note the sub-sections on taking advantage of being in school). This will vary from person to person.

4. Not really covered in the post, but I personally think there's a "mentorship bottleneck". It's obviously better to have mentors and companions, and the field should try to flesh that out. The filter for people who can work at least somewhat independently and figure things out for themselves is a filter of necessity, not an ideal situation.

3. I think Critch was specifically trying to fill some particular-gaps on the margin, which is "people who can be trusted to flesh out the middle-tier hierarchy", who can be entrusted to launch and run new projects competently without needing to be constantly doublechecked. This is necessary to grow the field for people who do still need mentorship or guidance. (My read from recent 80k posts is that the field is still somewhat "management bottlenecked")

Agreed but with the caveat that I'd rather see something imperfect than nothing at all. I like the post and I'm glad it was cross-posted.

(Off the cuff thoughts, which are very low confidence. Not attributed to Critch at all)

So, this depends quite a bit on how you think the world is shaped (which is a complex enough question that Critch made the recommendation to just think about it for weeks or months). But the three classes of answer that I can think of are:

a) in many possible worlds, the selfish and altruistic answers are just the same. The best way to survive a fast or even moderate takeoff is to ensure a positive singularity, and just pouring your efforts and money into maximizing the chance of that is really all you can do.

b) in some possible worlds (perhaps like Robin Hanson's Age of Em), it might matter that you have skills that can go into shaping the world (such as skilled programming). Though this is realistically only an option for some people.

c) for the purposes of flourishing in the intervening years (if we're in a slowish takeoff over the next 1-4 decades), owning stock in the right companies or institutions might help. (although some caution about worrying this over the actual takeoff period may be more of a distraction than helpful)

d) relatedly, simply getting yourself psychologically ready for the world to change dramatically may be helpful in and of itself, and/or be useful to make yourself ready to take on sudden opportunities as they arise.