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Wow, yes of course thinking the future of intelligence can't go foom would be bad. Since your non-profit plans on doing just that and it's really dangerous. I get that, except the foom part.
I don't see how you could argue this without a better understanding of how the brain is so smart.
All right, so it's your job to be extremely abstract. Well, abstract away. :P
I would really enjoy this post more if it were in the context of cognitive neuroscience. Or at least some phenomena actually extracted from the brain. For example, how could we detect a difference in intelligence biologically? Could this inspire a different kind of intelligence measure?
The archive version still exists here:
http://web.archive.org/web/19981206194704/http://www.physics.wisc.edu/~shalizi/aleph-anti-FAQ.html
Thanks for all of your hard work. I'll be spending many years sifting through it later I am sure.
He wasted 90% of the interview because Yudkowsky discussed how to be rational rather than answering implications of AGI being possible.
How does Yudkowsky's authority change our viewpoint of the feasibility of AGI being developed quickly when most experts clearly disagree? We need to go from the elders being wrong in technique to the path to AGI.
And what about the claim that a billion dollar project isn't needed? Singinst thinks they can do it alone, with a modest budget of a few millionaires? Isn't this a political position?
I am glad Yudkowsky is trying so hard but it seems he is doing more politics and philosophy than research. Perhaps in the long term this will be more effective, as the goal is to win, not to be right.
the ep. dealmaker said: "I would be interested in seeing you talk about belief and probability in cases where the deck is not quite so stacked as it is in your thermodynamic examples."
It seems reasonable for a financial analyst to understand that the lottery and coin flipping aren't "stacked".
Hmm, what else could he mean...
Perhaps he means something like the weather.
You mean by those last two lines that logic offer's no 'grounding' to reality and only empirical probability does? Since truth does not depend upon us, what does it depend upon? Well, the truth depends on circumstance if utilizing probability theory and empiricism. Since their is no absolute way of knowing their is also no absolute way of knowing how unlucky or lucky our circumstances are in favoring truth.
Sure, reality is non-dependent. But the nature of our circumstances are very dependent...upon that which we cannot measure. Our position in the universe.
And caledonian, if you were arguing with a theist you would have lost by now.
Your conclusion follows very clearly from the research results but it does not apply to the new situation. Doing the math is a false premise. Few people have personal experience of being tortured and more importantly no one who disagrees with you understands what you personally mean by the dust-speck. Perhaps if it was sawdust or getting pool water splashed in your eye, then it would finally register more clearly. Again, you (probably) haven't been tortured but you have gone through life without even conciously registering a dust speck in your eye. With a little adjustment above a threshold many people might switch sides. Pain is not linear.
Perhaps you could clarify what exactly is an infinite set atheist in a full post...or maybe it's only worth a comment.
caledonian said: "Perhaps the possibility that a consequence of an entity being utterly good might be its being utterly unsafe has never occurred to them."
This describes monotheism rather well. It has occured to me.
@yudkowsky I would be happy if I could judge the merit of Bayes for myself versus the frequentists approach. I doubt UTD faculty have seen the light, but who knows, they might. I wonder even more deeply if a thorough understanding of Bayes gives any insight into Epistemology? If you can answer Bayes does offer insight into epistemology I know for sure I will be around for many more months. If I remember correctly, we both have the same IQ (140) yet I am much worse at mathematics. OF course, my dad is an a/c technician, not a physicist.
I enjoy your hard work and insights Eliezer. Also Caledonians comments, mainly for their mystery.
Clarification: Just yudkowsky after 2003 or yudkowsky and bostrom together, perhaps sharing the same mistake? It would be usefull to know so I don't make the same mistake, et al.
God could be the ultimate supervillian. Except it would make for a very small 'in' group.
So what is your response to someone like Hitler? Assuming the thug won't listen? Die? Run? I mean before the AGI goes "phoom".
The part about the ontological distinctiveness between cognitive and evolutionary causes reminds me of my old English professor who mixed the two. While I knew it was wrong, I didn't have a label. He believed that nature had a kind of memory through natural selection.
Hmm, well this is getting interesting from a layman's perspective. Time to crank up that expert detector with technical explanations...
Or perhaps it isn't worth your time? I won't understand it anyway. Sigh, back to my pre-cal homework.
In the meantime, there is some irony to be found in this link:
http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2005/10/on_the_beach_wi.html
Essentially Gould is misrepresented as a creationist by creationists! Or perhaps in the less extreme conclusion, he was agnostic about creationism.
I could agree Jim about the question begging part if you haven't opened a neurology/neuroscience textbook.
You might as well have said: "Using materialist assumptions to explain chemistry is question begging. Of course christianity is incompatible with the laws of chemistry when one does not come from a materialist perspective."
So when a christian presuppositionalist claims we can only know anything because God exists, your answer would be? I mean to say their is clearly no epistemology which explains clearly and technically intelligence itself. What is the your answer to the assertion: you have no epistemology but God is the basis of epistemology? I don't agree at all, my question is simply how to respond since they assume one needs to justify logic itself.
Eliezer Yudkowsky said: "Just because you do not know how the trick works, does not mean the trick is powered by magic pixie dust."
I agree yet this won't convinve a sophisticated right-wing Christian (or Jew, or Muslim, etc).
I knew you would come through Constant simply by reading your name.
Constant, the obviousness felt by both disagreeing parties almost never changes. How many formal debates actually end with the other person changing their mind? I would take it further and say formal debate is usually worthless too.
In the meantime where are your error bars? I bet somewhere there is a fundy who includes error bars.
Tom: I agree with your analogy. Yudkowsy said: "Gray Area, what I'm arguing is that deduction, induction, and direct sensory experiences, should all be considered as equivalent-to-observation."
This is only convincing to someone who believes logic is only possible when their is some physical structure directly corresponds to logical output. Yet even the evidence indicating this is true uses logic.
I recently started (and then backed out of)a debate with a Christian presupositionalist.I had no idea how to show how logic itself works except by example. Naturally, there is no lesson on how logic works in the bible. So then, how does logic itself work and depend on physical structure? He would not answer my questions reguarding method of rationalists. Since we could not agree what rationality itself is, I did eventually learn that he doesn't believe in evolution or an old earth. He revealed this information only after realizing I no longer could take him seriously. This only occured after 25 emails between us! I wasted all that time to learn he didn't believe the results of modern science. I'll never make that mistake again. Anyone agree or disagree with the futility of debating someone who believes the universe is around 6,000 years old (and is also above age 25)?