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PhilGoetz comments on Goals for which Less Wrong does (and doesn't) help - Less Wrong
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And that claim is what I have been inquiring about. How is an outsider going to tell if the people here are the best rationalists around? Your post just claimed this but did provide no evidence for outsiders to follow through on it. The only exceptional and novel thesis to be found on LW concerns decision theory which is not only buried but which one is not able to judge if it is actually valuable as long as one doesn't have a previous education. The only exceptional and novel belief (prediction) on here is that regarding the risks posed by AGI. As with the former, one is unable to judge any claims as long as one does not read the sequences (as it is claimed). But why would one do so in the first place? Outsiders are unable to judge the credence of this movement except by what their members say about it. This is my problem when I try to introduce people to Less Wrong. They don't see why it is special! They skim over some posts and there's nothing new there. You have to differentiate Less Wrong from other sources of epistemic rationality. What novel concepts are to be found here, what can you learn from Less Wrong that you might not already know or that you won't come across elsewhere?
Your post gives the impression that Less Wrong can provide great insights for personal self-improvement. That is indisputable, but those who it might help won't read it anyway or won't be able to understand it. I just doubt that people like you learn much from it. What have you learnt from Less Wrong, how did it improve your life? I have no formal education but what I've so far read of LW does not seem very impressive in the sense that there was nothing to disagree with me so that I could update my beliefs and improve my decisions. I haven't come across any post that gave me some feeling of great insight, most of it was either obvious or I figured it out myself before (much less formally of course). The most important idea associated with Less Wrong seems to be that concerning friendly AI. What's special about LW is the strong commitment here regarding that topic. That's why I'm constantly picking on it. And the best arguments for why Less Wrong hasn't helped to improve peoples perception about the topic of AI in some cases is that they are intellectual impotent. So if you are not arguing that they should give up, but rather learn more, then I ask how if not through LW, which obviously failed.
To give a summary. Everyone interested to consider reading the sequences won't be able to spot much that he/she doesn't already know or that seems unique. The people who Less Wrong would help the most do not have the necessary education to understand it. And the most important conclusion, that one should care about AGI safety, is insufficiently differentiated from the huge amount of writings concerned with marginal issues about rationality.
That shouldn't happen, because many posts are controversial and/or have little support, and some posts contradict each other.
I haven't been specific in what I said. There actually have been some posts that introduced me to new concepts and allowed me to feel more satisfied to believe certain things. Only because of LW I was able to compile this curriculum. Although there are many more insightful and novel comments in my opinion than there are posts. I don't want to appear arrogant here or downplay the value of Less Wrong. I actually believe it is one of the most important resources. I just haven't read enough of LW yet to notice any capital contradictions. That also means that there might be great insights I haven't come across yet. I also don't think that most ideas here need much support (the top-ranked post seems to be an outlier). But take a look at some popular posts, where do you disagree or what have they taught you that you didn't already come up with on your own? Take for example the Ugh fields. Someone like me who managed to abandon religion without any help on his own reads that post, agrees wholeheartedly and upvotes it. But has it helped me? No, I'm rather a person that naturally takes this attitude too serious, I consciously overthink things until I completely leave near-mode and operate in far-mode only. I thought your post on self-fulfilling correlations was awesome. But there was no novel insight for me in it either. I know lots of people who should read your post and would benefit from it a lot. But such people won't read it. People like me who visit a psychologist because they know they need help won't be surprised by the movie Contact when Jodie Foster admits it could have all been some illusion. People like me are naturally aware that they could be dreaming. Doubt and the possibility of self-delusion are fundamental premises. But the people who'd really have to go to a psychologist, or read Less Wrong, believe they are perfectly normal or don't need to be told anything.
What I'm trying to say is that if Less Wrong wants to change the world rather than being a place where hyper-rationalists can collectively pat their back, you need to think about how to reach the people who need to know about it. And you need feedback, you have to figure out why people like Ben Goertzel fail to share some conclusions being made here and update accordingly.
Were there ever any references identifying the Scary Idea as an official SIAI belief?
I think that - if they comment at all - they would come back with something like:
Does Eliezer believe that working on friendly AI and supporting friendly AI research is the most important and most rational way to positively influence the future of humanity? If he thinks so, then is it reasonable to suspect that his rationale for starting to write on matters of rationality was to plead his case for friendly AI research and convince other people that it is indeed the most effective way to help humankind? If not, what was his reason to start blogging on Overcoming Bias and Less Wrong? Why has he spent so much time helping people to become less wrong rather than working directly on friendly AI? How can you be less wrong and still doubt that you should support friendly AI research?
I still suspect that everything he does is a means to an end. I'm also the opinion that if one reads all of Less Wrong and is afterwards (in the case one wants to survive and benefit humanity) still unable to conclude that the best way to do so is by supporting the SIAI, then either one did not understand due to a lack of intelligence or Less Wrong failed to convey its most important message. Therefore you should listen to the people who have read Less Wrong and disagree. You should also try to reach the people who haven't read Less Wrong but should read it because they are in a position that makes it necessary for them to understand the issues in question.
Well, I tend to think that that working on and supporting machine intelligence research is probably the most important way to positively influence the future of civilisation. The issue of what we want the machines to do is a part of the project.
So, such beliefs don't seem particularly "far out" - to me.
FWIW, Yudkowsky describes his motivation in writing about rationality here:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/66/rationality_common_interest_of_many_causes/
...and is therefore evidence against your model (for what it's worth).
It could also be an instance of this.
Aren't these one and the same? I had "for what it's worth" in there to account for uncertainty and probable weakness of the effect.
Denotation and connotation.