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By this measure, I would say Bostrom is not a crank. Yudkowsky is less clear. I'd say no, but I'd understand if Yudkowsky trips some folks' crank detectors.
by rntz 10y ago
By this measure, I would say Bostrom is not a crank. Yudkowsky is less clear. I'd say no, but I'd understand if Yudkowsky trips some folks' crank detectors.
- maxerickson 10y agoEinstein's paper on the photoelectric effect is a bit less than 7000 words. It is part of the foundation of quantum mechanics. Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies is in the range of 100,000 words (348 pages * roughly 300 words per page). I'm not familiar with it, but looking around it isn't even clear if it even lays out any sort of concrete theory.
- rntz 10y ago1. Plenty of academics write books. 2. Comparing a paper and a book for length is obviously unfair. Bostrom has also written papers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Bostrom#Journal_articles_.28selected.29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Bostrom#Journal_articles_... 3. "Concrete theory" is vague. Is it a stand-in for "I won't accept any argument by a philosopher, only physicists need apply"?
- maxerickson 10y agoI'm not intentionally trying to snub philosophy. With concrete theory, the point I was reaching for is that when you look to measure impact you probably want to point back to a compact articulation of an idea. The book comparison was probably a cheap shot (on the other side of it, Einstein didn't need popular interest/approval for his ideas to matter; I think that is a positive). I think as much as anything the comparison is worthless because we can look backwards at Einstein.
- rntz 10y agoSure, that's fair. I think Bostrom is no Einstein. But I maintain that he's no crank, either. There's a lot of space in the world for people who are neither.
- philipkglass 10y agoI read Superintelligence and found it "watery" -- weak arguments mixed with sort of interesting ones, plus very wordy. At the risk of misrepresenting the book, since I don't have it in front of me, here's what bothered me most: stating early that AI is basically an effort to approximate an optimal Bayesian agent, then much later showing that a Bayesian approach permits AI to scope-creep any human request into a mandate to run amok and convert the visible universe into computronium. That doesn't demonstrate that I should be scared of AI running amok. It demonstrates that the first assumption -- we should Bayes all the things! -- is a bad one. If that's all I was supposed to learn from all the running-amok examples, who's the warning aimed at? AFAICT the leading academic and industry research in AI/ML isn't pursuing the open-ended-Bayesian approach in the first place, largely isn't pursuing "strong" AI at all. Non-experts are, for other reasons, also in no danger of accidentally making AI that takes over the world.
- erikbye 10y agoBostrom's book is wordy, boring, filled with weak parables, analogies, lacking concretization of a theory. Like always, alarmist material sells better than realism.
- grzm 10y agolacking concretization of a theory. Would you elaborate? It's got some pretty big names recommending it. And Bostrom himself is an Oxford University professor.
- squeaky-clean 10y agoBostrom has also published papers. Comparing a book and a scientific paper isn't very fair.
- maxerickson 10y agoPlease see my spirited defense from 13 hours ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13242592 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13242592
- squeaky-clean 10y agoI saw that, I still disliked the comment enough that I needed to write that. Also to claim that the book has no concrete theory in the same sentence as you stating you're not familiar with the book. Like, c'mon...
- maxerickson 10y agoThat isn't what I claimed.
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