6 ms·

Be a Visiting Fellow at the Singularity Institute

51 points by rms 16y ago

rms 16y ago
I spent three weeks at the SIAI house in April/early May. Feel free to Ask Me Anything about the Visiting Fellows program. It will be several hours before I check this thread again.
- icey 16y ago
  Apologies for such an open ended question, but could you generally describe the experience?
  - aditya 16y ago
    Travel diaries linked from the original post might help: http://xuenay.livejournal.com/332512.html http://xuenay.livejournal.com/332512.html
  - rms 16y ago
    Sure. I may not have been the typical visitor, but I'm not sure that there is a Typical Visiting Fellow. I went there with low expectations of actually accomplishing anything. I'm not yet at the point where I can write the sort of hardcore sciencey analytic philosophy papers that are the main output of the Singularity Institute, but I think with 6 months of learning I will be able to meaningfully contribute to that goal. I tried to share my lessons of entrepreneurship with the housemates that wanted to learn. I sat for an afternoon with a Brazilian entrepreneur living at the SIAI house and we went through all of the logistical details of opening a Delaware corporation as a foreign national. I did a short workshop on SEO. I went to see Thom Yorke twice in Oakland, saw Orbital in San Francisco, and Blue Scholars in Berkeley. I graduated from school with an engineering in December and because of the success of my kratom business, I didn't need to get a real job, so I had a lot of time to surf the internet. I started reading Less Wrong while trying to actively comment as much as possible. In 4 months of posting on Less Wrong, I learned more than I did in two years of college. In 3 weeks of living at the SIAI house, I learned much more rapidly than I did while just posting on Less Wrong. So, to answer your question, what I mostly did was sit around and talk with all of the wonderful people that live at the SIAI house or occasionally pass through or hang out. My favorite types of conversations are those where you push the barriers of the kinds of thoughts that humans are capable of having, the kinds of conversations that often stop making sense because there are too many different infinities or recursive loops. At the SIAI house, I could spend hours a day talking about those kind of things. It sometimes felt like I was living at the center of the universe. Also, the food is good. Lots of delicious healthy things from Trader Joe's and Costco.
- Jd 16y ago
  Manage to sell anyone Kratom while you were there?
  - rms 16y ago
    Not exactly, but I got business cards from a couple head shop owners that were interested in wholesale orders. As an aggregate, the head shops pay too much for their wholesale kratom. For anyone that didn't get the reference, my primary business at this point is selling legal drugs (sometimes known as "herbal medicine" depending on the conversational context). My website is http://getkratom.com http://getkratom.com and in the early days of Hacker News (Startup News?) I started an enormous flame war while trying to start a discussion about my business. I have since tried to stop mentioning it here, though I certainly don't mind talking about it to anyone that may be interested.
    - Jd 16y ago
      I never understood why they couldn't buy in bulk from Ebay.
      - rms 16y ago
        They don't like doing their own packaging -- head shops aren't exactly apothecaries.
- joshu 16y ago
  I spent a few weeks there. They kept me locked in a room, and there was a slot through which papers with chinese writing were shoved in. I found a book of instructions, which mostly involved changing the writing around and pushing it back out the slot.
  - rms 16y ago
    Are you self-aware yet? If not, you should come back and stay longer. Though someone else may be sleeping in the Chinese room (really, it's more of a Chinese closet) now.
apsec112 16y ago
I did this during the summer of 2009, and it was utterly awesome. It was like doing a startup, but less stressful.
- saikat 16y ago
  "It was like doing a startup, but less stressful." How was it like a startup?
jluxenberg 16y ago
@rms: What concrete things did you work on? Were you writing papers, or coding AI, or...? The Singularity seems like such a broad area of study, how do you gauge progress or even decide what to work on?
- apsec112 16y ago
  See http://singinst.org/accomplishments2009 http://singinst.org/accomplishments2009 for some of the stuff that we work on.
- rms 16y ago
  I think my answer here answers your question: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1363449 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1363449 Usually the way of gauging process is that people come up with specific goals and then either meet those goals or don't meet them. I didn't have a whole lot of goals, which means that whatever it is that I did accomplish was higher than my expectations. I would recommend that other people go in with high expectations of accomplishing things.
thunk 16y ago
> SIAI is tackling the world’s most important task -- the task of shaping the Singularity. The task of averting human extinction. We aren’t the only people tackling this, but the total set is frighteningly small. Forgive me, but this seems a little on the "self-important quackery" side. There are any number of threats to our species far more urgent and reality-based than xenocide by a weakly godlike post-singularity AI. I suppose it can't be completely ruled out any more than alien invasion or the Nemesis hypothesis (though I find it pretty far fetched given the state of AGI). But "the world's most important task"? C'mon.
- apsec112 16y ago
  "There are any number of threats to our species far more urgent and reality-based than xenocide by a weakly godlike post-singularity AI." We work on preventing those too. Some of the risks we work to prevent: - Deliberate misuse of nanotechnology - Nuclear holocaust - We’re living in a simulation and it gets shut down - Genetically engineered biological agent - Accidental misuse of nanotechnology (“gray goo”) - Physics disasters - Misguided world government or another static social equilibrium stops technological progress - “Dysgenic” pressures - Take-over by a transcending upload - Repressive totalitarian global regime - Our potential or even our core values are eroded by evolutionary development For more information, see http://www.nickbostrom.com/existential/risks.html http://www.nickbostrom.com/existential/risks.html.
  - seiji 16y ago
    I've been working on getting our simulation terminated while attracting a transcedent to upload everybody (giving us a bridge to outside the soon-to-be-terminated simulation). Also, I'm waiting for SLAC to burn through their barrier and burrow through Palo Alto.
  - westbywest 16y ago
    Industrial food production is quite fragile, and the world basically has yet to experience that production in any sort of "failure mode," e.g. global blight due to excessive monocultures. The probability of such a global failure occurring within the next 100 years strikes me as near 1.0, and thus possibly more pressing than any of the events listed above.

51 points by rms 16y ago

rms 16y ago

I spent three weeks at the SIAI house in April/early May. Feel free to Ask Me Anything about the Visiting Fellows program. It will be several hours before I check this thread again.

icey 16y ago
Apologies for such an open ended question, but could you generally describe the experience?
- aditya 16y ago
  Travel diaries linked from the original post might help: http://xuenay.livejournal.com/332512.html http://xuenay.livejournal.com/332512.html
- rms 16y ago
  Sure. I may not have been the typical visitor, but I'm not sure that there is a Typical Visiting Fellow. I went there with low expectations of actually accomplishing anything. I'm not yet at the point where I can write the sort of hardcore sciencey analytic philosophy papers that are the main output of the Singularity Institute, but I think with 6 months of learning I will be able to meaningfully contribute to that goal. I tried to share my lessons of entrepreneurship with the housemates that wanted to learn. I sat for an afternoon with a Brazilian entrepreneur living at the SIAI house and we went through all of the logistical details of opening a Delaware corporation as a foreign national. I did a short workshop on SEO. I went to see Thom Yorke twice in Oakland, saw Orbital in San Francisco, and Blue Scholars in Berkeley. I graduated from school with an engineering in December and because of the success of my kratom business, I didn't need to get a real job, so I had a lot of time to surf the internet. I started reading Less Wrong while trying to actively comment as much as possible. In 4 months of posting on Less Wrong, I learned more than I did in two years of college. In 3 weeks of living at the SIAI house, I learned much more rapidly than I did while just posting on Less Wrong. So, to answer your question, what I mostly did was sit around and talk with all of the wonderful people that live at the SIAI house or occasionally pass through or hang out. My favorite types of conversations are those where you push the barriers of the kinds of thoughts that humans are capable of having, the kinds of conversations that often stop making sense because there are too many different infinities or recursive loops. At the SIAI house, I could spend hours a day talking about those kind of things. It sometimes felt like I was living at the center of the universe. Also, the food is good. Lots of delicious healthy things from Trader Joe's and Costco.
Jd 16y ago
Manage to sell anyone Kratom while you were there?
- rms 16y ago
  Not exactly, but I got business cards from a couple head shop owners that were interested in wholesale orders. As an aggregate, the head shops pay too much for their wholesale kratom. For anyone that didn't get the reference, my primary business at this point is selling legal drugs (sometimes known as "herbal medicine" depending on the conversational context). My website is http://getkratom.com http://getkratom.com and in the early days of Hacker News (Startup News?) I started an enormous flame war while trying to start a discussion about my business. I have since tried to stop mentioning it here, though I certainly don't mind talking about it to anyone that may be interested.
  - Jd 16y ago
    I never understood why they couldn't buy in bulk from Ebay.
    - rms 16y ago
      They don't like doing their own packaging -- head shops aren't exactly apothecaries.
joshu 16y ago
I spent a few weeks there. They kept me locked in a room, and there was a slot through which papers with chinese writing were shoved in. I found a book of instructions, which mostly involved changing the writing around and pushing it back out the slot.
- rms 16y ago
  Are you self-aware yet? If not, you should come back and stay longer. Though someone else may be sleeping in the Chinese room (really, it's more of a Chinese closet) now.

apsec112 16y ago

I did this during the summer of 2009, and it was utterly awesome. It was like doing a startup, but less stressful.

saikat 16y ago
"It was like doing a startup, but less stressful." How was it like a startup?

jluxenberg 16y ago

@rms: What concrete things did you work on? Were you writing papers, or coding AI, or...? The Singularity seems like such a broad area of study, how do you gauge progress or even decide what to work on?

apsec112 16y ago
See http://singinst.org/accomplishments2009 http://singinst.org/accomplishments2009 for some of the stuff that we work on.
rms 16y ago
I think my answer here answers your question: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1363449 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1363449 Usually the way of gauging process is that people come up with specific goals and then either meet those goals or don't meet them. I didn't have a whole lot of goals, which means that whatever it is that I did accomplish was higher than my expectations. I would recommend that other people go in with high expectations of accomplishing things.

thunk 16y ago

> SIAI is tackling the world’s most important task -- the task of shaping the Singularity. The task of averting human extinction. We aren’t the only people tackling this, but the total set is frighteningly small. Forgive me, but this seems a little on the "self-important quackery" side. There are any number of threats to our species far more urgent and reality-based than xenocide by a weakly godlike post-singularity AI. I suppose it can't be completely ruled out any more than alien invasion or the Nemesis hypothesis (though I find it pretty far fetched given the state of AGI). But "the world's most important task"? C'mon.

apsec112 16y ago
"There are any number of threats to our species far more urgent and reality-based than xenocide by a weakly godlike post-singularity AI." We work on preventing those too. Some of the risks we work to prevent: - Deliberate misuse of nanotechnology - Nuclear holocaust - We’re living in a simulation and it gets shut down - Genetically engineered biological agent - Accidental misuse of nanotechnology (“gray goo”) - Physics disasters - Misguided world government or another static social equilibrium stops technological progress - “Dysgenic” pressures - Take-over by a transcending upload - Repressive totalitarian global regime - Our potential or even our core values are eroded by evolutionary development For more information, see http://www.nickbostrom.com/existential/risks.html http://www.nickbostrom.com/existential/risks.html.
- seiji 16y ago
  I've been working on getting our simulation terminated while attracting a transcedent to upload everybody (giving us a bridge to outside the soon-to-be-terminated simulation). Also, I'm waiting for SLAC to burn through their barrier and burrow through Palo Alto.
- westbywest 16y ago
  Industrial food production is quite fragile, and the world basically has yet to experience that production in any sort of "failure mode," e.g. global blight due to excessive monocultures. The probability of such a global failure occurring within the next 100 years strikes me as near 1.0, and thus possibly more pressing than any of the events listed above.