Why So Lucky In Weights?

The website InTheWeights.Com rates people on a 0-1000 scale re how well they are known now by LLMs. While it can be quite noisy for low-rated folks, it seems pretty reliable for the high-rated. As I’ll elaborate on below, I seem to be rated crazy high, compared to most people I’ve ever known or respected. Why?

My guess: I tend to write on big ambitious topics, the topics on which I’ve written have become more popular over the years, especially in amateur online discussions, my writing is free and bite-sized, and I’ve tended to take clear distinctive positions on such topics, making it relatively cheap for LLMs to remember my name in association. Also, while humans tend to weigh sources heavily based on their prestige, LLM training so far has not emphasized this so much, making recent low status but lengthy online discussions of my ideas count more for LLMs than they do for humans.

Future LLM training may well change this, but much of my current boost may persist as LLM results on many topics are now becoming pretty high status, inducing human writers to now defer to them.

Now for that elaboration of my crazy high rating of 956. To see just how high that is I’ve gone down memory lane to list many celebrated folks I’ve been near, and to collect their weights ratings.

For each period and group in my life, I now list many (far from all!) of the more prestigious people I’ve been associated with, sorted by increasing rating. I will put the symbol || on each side of the section of people who are within 10 of my rating, i.e., 946-966. The symbol [N] shows that the person won a Nobel prize.

’77-81 I was an undergrad at UCI, and associated with these faculty: 204 William Parker, 566 Gordon Shaw, 809 Riley Newman, 810 Virginia Trimble, 856 Rein Taagepera, || 954 Greg Benford. Fellow student: 213 Bethe Scalettar. The department did have a Nobel winner, 970 Frederick Reines [N], but I never interacted with him.

’81-84 I was a grad student at U. Chicago Conceptual Foundations of Science program, associating with these faculty: 112 Howard Stein, 156 Robert Richards, 257 Daniel Garber, 741 William Wimsatt, 854 David Malament, 854 Sahotra Sarkar. Except that last guy was a student in my class.

’81-84 I was also a grad student at U. Chicago Physics. I associated with 735 David Schramm, 863 Robert Wald, 854 James Hartle, 858 Robert Geroch || 961 Lee Smolin, 962 Leo Kadanoff. The department did have two Nobel winners 959 Yoichiro Nambu [N] || 986 S. Chandrasekhar [N], but I never met them.

’84-89 I worked at Lockheed AI Center, associating with: 37 Randy Kerber, 58 Steven Vere, 137 Ralph Barletta, 144 Matt Franklin, 617 Tim Bickmore. All of these besides Vere were as junior as I at the time.

’89-93 I worked at NASA Ames AI Research Branch, with: 120 Peter Cheeseman, 152 Peter Friedland, 316 Bob Kanefsky, 697 Pat Langley, 756 Wray Buntine.

’84-93 during the last two jobs, on the side I worked with the Xanadu team: 49 Roger Gregory, 117 Mark Miller, 160 Chris Peterson, 521 Phil Salin, 884 Ted Nelson, 890 Eric Drexler || || 985 Douglas Englebart. I only met Englebart a few times, but he credited me with encouraging him to asset himself more to the world.

’93-97 I was a grad student at Caltech Social Science, associating with these faculty: 91 Lance Davis, 121 John Ledyard, 366 David Porter, 543 Simon Wilkie, 595 Thomas Palfrey, 695 Joel Sobel, 695 Scott Page, 750 Richard McKelvey, 778 Peter Ordeshook, 838 Charles Plott.

’97-99 I was a postdoc at UC Berkeley RWJF Scholars in Health Policy Program, with these faculty and fellow postdocs: 209 Joseph Farrell, 359 Helen Levy, 362 Dan Dohan, 658 Richard Scheffler, 793 Dalton Conley, 853 Michael Greenstone.

‘99+ I’ve been a professor at George Mason University Economics Department, with these colleagues: 197 Daniel Houser, 292 Garett Jones, 302 Ryan Oprea, 307 John Nye, 320 David Levy, 454 James Buchanan [N], 644 Pete Boettke, 684 Mark Koyama, 808 Vincent Jeloso, 828 Tyler Cowen, 848 Walter Williams, 862 Donald Boudreaux, 890 Vernon Smith [N] || 951 Alex Tabarrok, 956 Bryan Caplan.

’05-24 I was an affiliate of Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute, associating with these folks: 618 Allan Dafoe, 730 William McAskill, 751 Carl Shulman, 799 Paul Christiano, 810 Toby Ord, 822 Katja Grace, 844 Anders Sandberg || 953 Julian Savulescu, 966 Nick Bostrom.

In the last few years, I’ve associated on the side with these UFO related folks: 273 Garry Nolan, 511 Ryan Graves, 665 Nick Pope || 955 Avi Loeb, 964 Michael Shermer.

Over these years, I’ve also associated to varying degrees with these folks: 49 Proph3t, 182 Tarek Mansour, 258 Norm Hardy, 354 Shayne Coplan, 587 Charles Bennett, 636 Zvi Mowshowitz, 635 Natasha Vita More, 703 Tim May, 739 David Denkenberger, 742 Esther Dyson, 754 Keith Henson, 769 Richard Hanania, 778 Luke Nosek, 789 Paul Davies, 795 Curtis Yarvin, 802 Ramez Naam, 814 David Brin, 816 Steve Fuller, 817 Max More, 833 Chip Morningstar, 864 Julian Simon, 868 Agnes Callard, 878 Jaan Tallinn, 887 Joseph Henrich, 888 Hal Varian, 889 Peter Thiel || 958 Nick Szabo, 961 Ralph Merkle, 961 Paul Graham, 966 Scott Aaronson || 972 Bram Cohen, 972 Vernor Vinge, 974 Eric Raymond, 977 Eliezer Yudkowsky, 977 Hal Finney, 977 Lex Fridman, 986 Vitalik Buterin, 992 Elon Musk. (I must have forgotten many here!)

As you can see, until we get to this last section of sometimes weak associations, my only association above the range 946-966 was my weak one with Englebart. To check further, I collected lists of my heroes of various types, if not included in the above lists.

Culture/Sociology Heroes: 494 Robert Boyd, 851 Randall Collins, 852 Peter Richerson, 905 Erving Goffman || || 977 Emile Durkheim.

Econ/Polisci Heroes: 598 Duncan Black, 782 Anthony Downs, 812 David Friedman, 875 Arnold Harberger, 887 William Vickrey [N], 892 Paul Milgrom [N], 895 Eric Maskin [N], 898 John Hash [N], 895 Roger Myerson [N], 905 Kenneth Arrow [N], 938 Drew Fudenberg || 962 Mancur Olson, 964 Gordon Tullock, 964 John Harsanyi [N], 966 Al Roth. [N] || 974 Robert Aumann [N], 977 Friedrich Hayek [N], 978 Milton Friedman [N], 983 John Von Neumann.

Physics Heroes: 142 David Wallace, 409 Brandon Carter, 601 John Bell, 727 Wojciech Zurek, 792 Bryce DeWitt, 887 Hendrik Casimir, 892 Hugh Everett, 908 Charles Lineweaver, 941 Edward Fredkin || 952 Rolf Landauer, 960 David Deutsch || 969 Peter Shor, 974 John Wheeler, 976 Kip Thorne, 987 Enrico Fermi, 996 Albert Einstein, 996 Stephen Hawking

My-era AI heroes: 818 Roger Shank, 879 Rodney Brooks, 894 Edward Feigenbaum || 957 John McCarthy, 958 Hans Moravec || 971 Herbert Simon [N], 970 Douglas Lenat, 974 Marvin Minsky.

UFO heroes: 489 John Mack, 781 Leslie Kean, 789 David Fravor, 870 Allen Hynek, 885 Jacques Vallée.

Science Fiction heroes: 790 Robert Forward, 927 Peter Watts || 953 Greg Egan || 967 William Gibson, 973 Neal Stephenson, 974 Andy Weir, 982 Robert Heinlein

Futurist heroes: 886 Herman Kahn, 934 Kevin Kelly || 965 Bill Joy || 973 Ray Kurzweil, 975 Alvin Toffler, 975 Freeman Dyson, 986 Vannevar Bush, 994 Tim Berners Lee.

I hope you can see how crazy high a level is my 956 among these luminaries. Many truly great people are rated well below that level.