Singularity Institute $100,000 end-of-year fundraiser only 20% filled so far

FWIW, the "Future Plans" list seems to me somewhat understating the value of a donation. I realize it's fairly accurate in that it represents the activities of SI. Yet it seems like it could be presented better.

For example, the first item is "hold the Summit". But I happen to know that the Summit generally breaks even or makes a little money, so my marginal dollar will not make or break the Summit. Similarly, a website redesign, while probably important, isn't exciting enough to be listed as the second item. The third item, publish the open problems document, is a good one, though you should make it seem more exciting.

I think the donation drive page should thoroughly make the case that SI is the best use of someone's charity dollars -- that it's got a great team, great leadership, and is executing a plan with the highest probability of working at every step. That page should probably exist on its own, assuming the reader hasn't read any of the rest of the site, with arguments for why working explicitly on rationality is worthwhile; why transparency matters; why outreach to other researchers matters; what the researchers are currently spending time on and why those are the correct things for them to be working on; and so on. It can be long: long-form copy is known to work, and this seems like a correct application for it.

In fact, since you probably have other things to do, I'll do a little bit of copywriting myself to try to discover if this is really a good idea. I'll post some stuff here tomorrow after I've worked on it a bit.

Thanks for pointing out the newer info. The different expansion plans seem sensible.

I'll chime in to agree with both lukeprog in pointing out that the interview is very outdated and with Holden in correcting Louie's account of the circumstances surrounding it.

(Most of these considerations don't apply to developments in pure mathematics, which is my best guess at a fruitful mode of attacking FAI goals problem. The implementation-as-AGI aspect is a separate problem likely of a different character, but I expect we need to obtain basic theoretical understanding of FAI goals first to know what kinds of AGI progress are useful. Jumping to development of language translation software is way off-track.)

Thanks a lot for posting this link. The first point was especially good.

I feel like once we basically understand how the human predictive algorithm works, it may not be possible to improve on that algorithm (without massive and time-costly experimentation) no matter what the level of intelligence of the entity trying to improve on it. (The reason I gave: The human one has been developed by trial-and-error over millions of years in the real world, a method that won't be available to the GMAGI. So there's no guarantee that a greater intelligence could find a way to improve this algorithm without such extended trial-and-error)...

The "I feel" opening is telling. It does seem like the only way people can maintain this confusion beyond 10 seconds of thought is by keeping in the realm of intuition. In fact among the first improvements that could be made to the human predictive algorithm is to remove our tendency to let feelings and preferences get all muddled up with our abstract thought.

Holden seems to have spoken with Jasen "and others", so at least two people. I don't think it's fair to say that speaking with 1/3 of the people in an organization is as unrepresentative as speaking with 1/3,000,000 of the Boy Scouts. And since Holden sent SIAI his notes and got their feedback before publishing, they had a second chance to correct any misstatements made by the guy they gave him to interview.

So calling this interview "a complete lie" seems very unfair.

I agree that GiveWell's process is limited, and I'm interested in the GiveWell Labs project.

Carl Shulman pointed out how absurd this was: If GiveWell had existed 100 years ago, they would have argued against funding the eradication of smallpox. Their process forces them to reject the possibility that an intervention could be that effective

To clarify what I said in those comments:

Holden had a few posts that 1) made the standard point that one should use both prior and evidence to generate one's posterior estimate of a quantity like charity effectiveness, 2) used example prior distributions that assigned vanishingly low probability to outcomes far from the median, albeit disclaiming that those distributions were essential.

I naturally agree with 1), but took issue with 2). A normal distribution for charity effectiveness is devastatingly falsified by the historical data, and even a log-normal distribution has wacky implications, like ruling out long-term human survival a priori. So I think a reasonable prior distribution will have a fatter tail. I think it's problematic to use false examples, lest they get lodged in memory without metadata, especially when they might receive some halo effect from 1).

I said that this methodology and the example priors would have more or less ruled out big historical successes, not that GiveWell would not have endorsed smallpox eradication. Indeed, with smallpox I was trying to point out something that Holden would consider a problematic implication of a thin-tailed prior. With respect to existential risks, I likewise said that I thought Holden assigned a higher prior to x-risk interventions than could be reconciled with a log-normal prior, since he could be convinced by sufficient evidence (like living to see humanity colonize the galaxy, and witnessing other civilizations that perished). These were criticisms that those priors were too narrow even for Holden, not that GiveWell would use those specific wacky priors.

Separately, I do think Holden's actual intuitions are too conservative, e.g. in assigning overly low probability to eventual large-scale space colonization and large populations, and giving too much weight to a feeling of absurdity. So I would like readers to distinguish between the use of priors in general and Holden's specific intuitions that big payoffs from x-risk reduction (and AI risk specifically) face a massive prior absurdity penalty, with the key anti-x-risk work being done by the latter (which they may not share).

I never got my t-shirt.

How would one go about e-mailing you?

Unless you just meant sending a private message.

I suggest making it easier to get bigger images of your designs-- they're detailed enough that what you've got on your site, or even view image and enlarge, don't show them adequately.

Should I assume that website will also include a links from your other comments on the donation page?

You are correct.

I would go for accelerated release, rather than trying to untangle a quagmire of copyright issues, though.