Okay. Given your and the folks who downvoted my comment's perceptions, I'll revise my opinion on the matter. I'll also put that under "analogies not to use"; I was probably insufficiently familiar with the pop culture.
The thing I meant to say was just... Roko made a post, Nick suggested it gave bad impressions, Roko deleted it. wfg spent hours commenting again and again about how he had been asked to delete it, perhaps by someone "high up within SIAI", and how future censorship might be imminent, how the fact that Roko had had a bascially unrelated conversation suggested that we might be lying to donors (a suggestion that he didn't make explicitly, but rather left to innuendo), etc. I feel tired of this conversation and want to go back to research and writing, but I'm kind of concerned that it'll leave a bad taste in readers mouths not because of any evidence that's actually being advanced, but because innuendo and juxtapositions, taken out of context, leave impressions of badness.
I wish I knew how to have a simple, high-content, low-politics conversation on the subject. Especially one that was self-contained and didn't leave me feeling as though I couldn't bow out after awhile and return to other projects.
I wish I knew how to have a simple, high-content, low-politics conversation on the subject.
This is about politics. The censorship of an idea related to a future dictator implementing some policy is obviously about politics.
You tell people to take friendly AI serious. You tell people that we need friendly AI to marshal our future galactic civilisation. People take it serious. Now the only organisation working on this is the SIAI. Therefore the SIAI is currently in direct causal control of our collective future. So why do you wonder people care about cen...
Ideally, I'd like to save the world. One way to do that involves contributing academic research, which raises the question of what's the most effective way of doing that.
The traditional wisdom says if you want to do research, you should get a job in a university. But for the most part the system seems to be set up so that you first spend a long time working for someone else and research their ideas, after which you can lead your own group, but then most of your time will be spent on applying for grants and other administrative trivia rather than actually researching the interesting stuff. Also, in Finland at least, all professors need to also spend time doing teaching, so that's another time sink.
I suspect I would have more time to actually dedicate on research, and I could get doing it quicker, if I took a part-time job and did the research in my spare time. E.g. the recommended rates for a freelance journalist in Finland would allow me to spend a week each month doing work and three weeks doing research, of course assuming that I can pull off the freelance journalism part.
What (dis)advantages does this have compared to the traditional model?
Some advantages:
Some disadvantages:
EDIT: Note that while I certainly do appreciate comments specific to my situation, I posted this over at LW and not Discussion because I was hoping the discussion would also be useful for others who might be considering an academic path. So feel free to also provide commentary that's US-specific, say.