WrongBot comments on The Importance of Self-Doubt - Less Wrong

23 Post author: multifoliaterose 19 August 2010 10:47PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (726)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: [deleted] 20 August 2010 09:25:43PM 4 points [-]

Okay, I take that back. I did know about the connection between SIAI and FHI and Oxford.

What are these academic papers published in? A lot of them don't provide that information; one is in Global Catastrophic Risks.

At any rate, I exaggerated in saying there isn't any engagement with the academic mainstream. But it looks like it's not very much. And I recall a post of Eliezer's that said, roughly, "It's not that academia has rejected my ideas, it's that I haven't done the work of trying to get academia's attention." Well, why not?

Comment author: WrongBot 20 August 2010 09:53:51PM 4 points [-]

And I recall a post of Eliezer's that said, roughly, "It's not that academia has rejected my ideas, it's that I haven't done the work of trying to get academia's attention." Well, why not?

Limited time and more important objectives, I would assume. Most academic work is not substantially better than trial-and-error in terms of usefulness and accuracy; it gets by on volume. Volume is a detriment in Friendliness research, because errors can have large detrimental effects relative to the size of the error. (Like the accidental creation of a paperclipper.)