JulianMorrison comments on Less Wrong Q&A with Eliezer Yudkowsky: Video Answers - Less Wrong

41 Post author: MichaelGR 07 January 2010 04:40AM

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Comment author: JulianMorrison 07 January 2010 11:29:43PM 5 points [-]

Society is supported by "hydraulic pressure", a myriad flows of wealth/matter/energy/information and human effort each holding the others up. It's a layered, cyclic graph - technology depends on the surplus food of agriculture, agriculture depends on the efficiencies of technology. It's a massively connected graph. It has non-obvious dependencies even at short range - think what computer gamers have done for Moore's law, or music pirates for broadband. It has dependencies across time. It has a lot of dependencies in which the supporter does not know and probably wouldn't much care about the supported - consider the existence of Freemind software, which was not written for SIAI.

This whole structure expends most of its effort supporting itself, most of the rest on motivator rewards, and SIAI gets the crumbs. You could realistically get lots more crumbs.

What is the information dynamics of spreading understanding of FAI as a problem? What technologies support communication, and what are their limitations? (Especially limitations in the ability to arrange huge data for optimally for narrow human input.) How to explore the space of information-connecting technologies? Given that most people have satisficed on a learning strategy that leaves you out entirely, how can you communicate urgency to them?

What economic flows support you in the above? Who supports them?

I think your answer in #5 trivializes the question.