Z_M_Davis comments on Ingredients of Timeless Decision Theory - Less Wrong

43 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 19 August 2009 01:10AM

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Comment author: Z_M_Davis 20 August 2009 06:34:20PM *  3 points [-]

[Has Eliezer] ever published a paper in a peer-review journal?

"Levels of Organization in General Intelligence" appeared in the Springer volume Artificial General Intelligence. "Cognitive Biases Potentially Affecting Judgement of Global Risks" (PDF) and "Artificial Intelligence as a Positive and Negative Factor in Global Risk" (PDF) appeared in the Oxford University Press volume Global Catastrophic Risks. They're not mathy papers, though.

Comment author: DS3618 20 August 2009 09:34:16PM 3 points [-]

I am sorry I am going to take a shortcut here and respond to a couple posts along with yours. So fine I partially insert my foot in my mouth... but the issue I think here is that the papers we need to be talking about are math papers right? Anyone can publish non-technical ideas as long as they are well reasoned, but the art of science is the technical mastery.

As for Eliezer's comment concerning the irrelevance of Flare being a pre 2003 EY work I have to disagree. When you have no formal academic credentials and you are trying to make your mark in a technical field such as decision theory anything technical that you have done or attempted counts.

You essentially are building your credentials via work that you have done. I am speaking from experience since I didn't complete college I went the business route. But I can also say that I did a lot of technical work so I built my credentials in the field by doing novel technical things.

I am trying to help here coming from a similar position and wanting a PhD etc. having various technical achievements as my prior work made all the difference in getting in to a PhD program without a B.S. or M.S. It also makes all the difference in being taken seriously by the scientific community.

Which circles back to my original point which is an vague outline is not enough to show you really have a theory much less a revolutionary one. Sadly asking to be taken seriously is just not enough, you have to prove that you meet the bar of admission (decision theory is going to be math).

If someone can show me some technical math work EY has done that would be great, but as of now I have very little confidence that he has a real theory (if someone can I will drop the issue.) Yes I am aware of the Bayesian Theory paper but this lets face it is fairly basic and is far from showing that EY has the ability to revolutionize decision theory.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 20 August 2009 10:17:15PM 1 point [-]

having various technical achievements as my prior work made all the difference in getting in to a PhD program without a B.S. or M.S.

Where? What university?

Comment author: DS3618 21 August 2009 01:14:47AM 4 points [-]

The university would be Carnegie Mellon Computer Science Program (an esoteric area of CS)

As for the other parts I did some work in computer hardware specifically graphics hardware design, body armor design (bullet proof vests) etc. The body armor got to prototyping but was not marketable for a variety reasons to dull to go into. I am currently starting a video game company.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 20 August 2009 08:17:59PM *  1 point [-]

Also, volume-editing isn't as (pointlessly? signallingly?) difficult as journal peer-review.