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I cannot judge to which degree these theses are bullshit, but I've found LW a tremendously rich source of thinking tools and I'm convinced that reading or skimm

• manish_gill 11y ago
  > I cannot judge to which degree these theses are bullshit. Go the link, go to references, read about them. I'll outline the gist: Most of what Yudkowsky says is extremely sci-fi, no real basis in scientific fact, but stretching the current technological progress to the point where his opinions on things (stuff like transhumanism, singularity) can be justified. What he's preaching isn't science. Certainly not rigorous experimental science. He (along with Bostrom) tends to engage in extreme hypotheticals. Which, sure if you're a philosopher, is fine. But even then, wouldn't you want your work to be judged by like-minded peers? But alas, here has a convenient excuse of being "auto didactic" to fall back on, so he can sit on his armchair and critique traditional education, and his lack of peer reviewed material. Not to mention, and this is a bit of a pet peeve, I find that most LW people are too self-absorbed, I've literally seen a blog where the person who runs it "warns" the readers that what he writes is too complicated for people to follow. This sort of narcissistic, self congratulatory thinking is what puts me off more than anything. Writing long form posts on the Internet which use complicated words don't make you smart. http://laurencetennant.com/bonds/cultofbayes.html http://laurencetennant.com/bonds/cultofbayes.html is another critique. It comes off as bit crass, but stick with it. > I've found LW a tremendously rich source of thinking tools and I'm convinced that reading or skimming a lot of the sequences have improved my thinking. There are other ways to improve your thinking. Read books. Read different kind of books, that offer counter point of views. Farnham Street Blog is a good place to start for a list of resources for thinking tools/mental models btw. :)
  • sawwit 11y ago
    I will look into Farnham Street's Blog, thanks. > What he's preaching isn't science. I don't buy into the necessity that everything has to be peer-reviewed in the old fashioned way. There is peer-review happening in the comments to some extent. I don't take a fancy to dismissing any radical ideas as pseudoscience. It's just the outer fringe of hypotheses that need to be tested against reality, and as long they are approximately humanist, enlightened and don't contradict existing physics without depending on mathematics (or disclaimers), I cannot see anything wrong with it. As a naturalist, I pretty much agree with everything I've read on LW so far, except for the parts I cannot judge (like hypotheses about physics), which I allocate a weaker priors for and a few unconvincing pieces. > Not to mention, and this is a bit of a pet peeve, I find that most LW people are too self-absorbed, I've literally seen a blog where the person who runs it "warns" the readers that what he writes is too complicated for people to follow. I have not yet experienced that, but there are also a lot of people on reddit and HN that I don't like, yet I differentiate within these communities between what is valuable and what is not. > Most of what Yudkowsky says is extremely sci-fi, no real basis in scientific fact, but stretching the current technological progress to the point where his opinions on things (stuff like transhumanism, singularity) can be justified. At the risk of seeming indoctrinated to you, this is what I believe with high certainty: If Moore's law continues another one or two decades, I think the singularity is a very real possibility. The human brain seems to be nothing more than a learning and prediction machine, nothing what transcends what we can understand in principle. Evolution did come up with complex organisms, but the complexity is limited by biochemical mechanisms and availability of energy. In addition, nature often approximates very simple things in overly complicated ways because evolution is based on incremental changes, not on an ultimate goal that prescribes a design of low complexity. I also think that AI will very likely be superintelligent and that poses a tremendous risk in the 10-40 years to come (on the order of atomic warfare and runaway climate change). By the time someone implements an approximately human-level intelligence, we better have a good idea about how to control such a machine.
    • manish_gill 11y ago
      > There is peer-review happening in the comments to some extent. Lol. I guess we don't need college education as well then, there's education happening in the comments to some extent. We don't need traditional means of news, there's news happening on Twitter to some extent. I could go on with analogous line of reasoning. Don't get me wrong, I'm not 100% in favour of the traditional education model as well, but peer reviews exist for a reason. You and I are not experts in these fields. We rely on the expertise of people who have made it their business and life to study these fields based on a rigorous method. Would you try out homeopathy had it not been rejected completely by doctors and scientists but someone on a forum told you it worked for them? What if someone wrote a very long article with fancy words (like LW tends to do) explaining how and why it works (they exist, I assure you)? Would you try it then? > I don't take a fancy to dismissing any radical ideas as pseudoscience. Sure, I'm not saying we should be against radical ideas. That's how scientific progress happens. I'm against LW ideas, for which there is no basis in reality as far as we know based on our current understanding of science. > I differentiate within these communities between what is valuable and what is not. Indeed. But I'd rather the community's entire existence not depend on bullshit. > At the risk of seeming indoctrinated to you, ... a) Keywords: "If", "Seems" b) Tons of assumptions in that scenario you laid out. If you can't see it, I'm sorry but you're already too far gone. c) Watch some MIT lectures on computer architectures about how the trend of Moore's law has already radically shifted and is flatlining. Basically, what you've done is precisely the kind of utter crap that LW perpetuates. "If x keeps happening" without providing any reason as to why that would be true. Make some ridiculous simplifications "complexity is limited by ___", nature often does __ because ___. You basically don't provide any rational reason for why you think AI will be super intelligent and even if it were, why that would be risky. You pick numbers out of a hat (10-40 years to come). Yes, you look pretty well indoctrinated from where I'm sitting. But I hope you see the many (so many) flaws in that last paragraph of yours (it honestly made me laugh out loud :p) Predicting the future is hard business -- be it the stock market predicting what happens tomorrow, or weather forecast for the next month. It's presumptuous and hella stupid if you think you can predict where Science and Technology will be x years from now. TL;DR: Stahp.