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I thoroughly agree - see my comment above. The Singularity and SENS peeps give me the exact same feeling - as does Noam Chomsky. All talk - no walk. I think it

I thoroughly agree - see my comment above. The Singularity and SENS peeps give me the exact same feeling - as does Noam Chomsky. All talk - no walk. I think it's fundamentally the difference between soft bullshit and hard calculations. Everyone can talk about AI, or linguistics, or statistics (or any complex field) in very general, undefined and bullshitty terms. But what we need, and what the machine learning guys are bringing is hard calculation - 1 + 1 = 2 or input data, get features and make decisions well above human abilities. My question to all the fringe folks: Where's the beef? What have they done? Where are the automatic cars built on Chomsky's theories? Where are the talking robots from the AGI? What methods have the SENS people got? Are the singularity folks just leeches off gullible rich people - selling them a future and taking their cash in the process without providing any real value?

corporalagumbo 14y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky_bibliography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky_bibliography Chomsky's a pretty substantial walker.
- confluence 14y ago
  I think you mean talker. Walker would be things that actually did stuff - you know like search, translation, locomotion or prediction. That's a lot of words and a lot of books in a bunch of the soft sciences (linguistics and politics) which are highly susceptible to class A bullshit. All of that doesn't mean anything - no different from Richard Dawkins who irritates me in a similar fashion - I ask once again - where's the beef? > Every time I fire a linguist, the performance of the speech recognizer goes up. -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Jelinek http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Jelinek I still don't see Chomsky robots walking around, Chomsky translation translating my text to French or Chomsky AI driving cars. Nope - all Google/IBM/Microsoft/DARPA/Boston Dynamics/etc. AKA Hard science-engineers utilising statistics, not soft science blowhards. Only thing I see Chomsky doing is talk - a lot.
  - cdavid 14y ago
    If your definition of real science is something that has good prediction/application potential, that's a rather unusual definition of science. Are mathematicians, theoretical physicists all talk as well ?
    - confluence 14y ago
      String theorists are bullshitty yes. Mathematicians aren't - you can prove their correctness over abstract planes and use them to for example run a hedge fund or a software company into trillions of revenue when making testable predictions in macro reality. Theoretical physicists that use mathematics to make testable predictions are too. You can use them to also make electric engines, statistical extractors and accurate physical simulations that are corroborated with empirical evidence. If the prediction is not testable, is unfalsifiable, is unreproducible, is not independent and is not supported by overwhelming evidence - it is bullshit - no ifs, buts or ands.
      - Volpe 14y ago
        Better let Andrew Wiles know his 8 years spent on Fermat's Last Theorem was just a bullshit waste of time, because he couldn't use it to run a hedge fund, or software company... It can only be 'proved' in the 'contrived' world of pure mathematics... what bullshit!
        confluence 14y ago
        I said mathematicians weren't bullshit.
        Volpe 14y ago
        No, you provided a qualification of why they weren't... I gave you an example of a mathematician who broke your qualification, and logically should fall into your definition of a 'quack'. The idea being, that you'd have to back pedal, and change your qualification. Which I could then use to apply to other fields, that you deem as 'quackery', and thus undo the foundation of your argument. Instead, you just denied the reality of what you said... I didn't count on that. Well done.

corporalagumbo 14y ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky_bibliography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky_bibliography Chomsky's a pretty substantial walker.

confluence 14y ago
I think you mean talker. Walker would be things that actually did stuff - you know like search, translation, locomotion or prediction. That's a lot of words and a lot of books in a bunch of the soft sciences (linguistics and politics) which are highly susceptible to class A bullshit. All of that doesn't mean anything - no different from Richard Dawkins who irritates me in a similar fashion - I ask once again - where's the beef? > Every time I fire a linguist, the performance of the speech recognizer goes up. -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Jelinek http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Jelinek I still don't see Chomsky robots walking around, Chomsky translation translating my text to French or Chomsky AI driving cars. Nope - all Google/IBM/Microsoft/DARPA/Boston Dynamics/etc. AKA Hard science-engineers utilising statistics, not soft science blowhards. Only thing I see Chomsky doing is talk - a lot.
- cdavid 14y ago
  If your definition of real science is something that has good prediction/application potential, that's a rather unusual definition of science. Are mathematicians, theoretical physicists all talk as well ?
  - confluence 14y ago
    String theorists are bullshitty yes. Mathematicians aren't - you can prove their correctness over abstract planes and use them to for example run a hedge fund or a software company into trillions of revenue when making testable predictions in macro reality. Theoretical physicists that use mathematics to make testable predictions are too. You can use them to also make electric engines, statistical extractors and accurate physical simulations that are corroborated with empirical evidence. If the prediction is not testable, is unfalsifiable, is unreproducible, is not independent and is not supported by overwhelming evidence - it is bullshit - no ifs, buts or ands.
    - Volpe 14y ago
      Better let Andrew Wiles know his 8 years spent on Fermat's Last Theorem was just a bullshit waste of time, because he couldn't use it to run a hedge fund, or software company... It can only be 'proved' in the 'contrived' world of pure mathematics... what bullshit!
      - confluence 14y ago
        I said mathematicians weren't bullshit.
        Volpe 14y ago
        No, you provided a qualification of why they weren't... I gave you an example of a mathematician who broke your qualification, and logically should fall into your definition of a 'quack'. The idea being, that you'd have to back pedal, and change your qualification. Which I could then use to apply to other fields, that you deem as 'quackery', and thus undo the foundation of your argument. Instead, you just denied the reality of what you said... I didn't count on that. Well done.