Perplexed 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: WrongBot 20 August 2010 09:13:15PM 7 points [-]

Here's the thing. The whole SIAI project is not publicly affiliated with (as far as I've heard) other, more mainstream institutions with relevant expertise.

LessWrong is itself a joint project of the SIAI and the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford. Researchers at the SIAI have published these academic papers. The Singularity Summit's website includes a lengthy list of partners, including Google and Scientific American.

The SIAI and Eliezer may not have done the best possible job of engaging with the academic mainstream, but they haven't done a terrible one either, and accusations that they aren't trying are, so far as I am able to determine, factually inaccurate.

Comment author: Perplexed 21 August 2010 05:30:53PM *  6 points [-]

Researchers at the SIAI have published these academic papers.

But those don't really qualify as "published academic papers" in the sense that those terms are usually understood in academia. They are instead "research reports" or "technical reports".

The one additional hoop that these high-quality articles should pass through before they earn the status of true academic publications is to actually be published - i.e. accepted by a reputable (paper or online) journal. This hoop exists for a variety of reasons, including the claim that the research has been subjected to at least a modicum of unbiased review, a locus for post-publication critique (at least a journal letters-to-editor column), and a promise of stable curatorship. Plus inclusion in citation indexes and the like.

Perhaps the FHI should sponsor a journal, to serve as a venue and repository for research articles like these.

Comment author: CarlShulman 21 August 2010 05:48:02PM 1 point [-]

Perhaps the FHI should sponsor a journal

There are already relevant niche philosophy journals (Ethics and Information Technology, Minds and Machines, and Philosophy and Technology). Robin Hanson's "Economic Growth Given Machine Intelligence" has been accepted in an AI journal, and there are forecasting journals like Technological Forecasting and Social Change. For more unusual topics, there's the Journal of Evolution and Technology. SIAI folk are working to submit the current crop of papers for publication.

Comment author: Perplexed 21 August 2010 05:53:17PM 1 point [-]

Cool!