Chris Olah on working at top AI labs without an undergrad degree

And much more.

- The concept of ‘micromarriages’ and ‘microbestfriendships’.

- How Chris thinks about writing outstanding explanations.

- Thinking about research as a market.

- Strategies for growing as a researcher.

- Why highly thoughtful cold emails can be surprisingly effective, but average cold emails do little.

So Chris tried his hand at chipping away at this problem — but concluded the nature of the problem wasn’t quite what he originally thought. In this conversation we talk about that, as well as:

Despite that, academics have little incentive to produce outstanding explanations of complex ideas that can speed up the education of everyone coming up in their field. And some even see the process of deciphering bad explanations as a desirable right of passage all should pass through, just as they did.

Incrementally improving an explanation of a technical idea might take a single author weeks to do, but could go on to save a day for thousands, tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of students, if it becomes the best option available.