David_Gerard, Jack, timtyler, waitingforgodel, and Vaniver do not currently outweigh Eliezer_Yudkowsky, FormallyknownasRoko, Vladimir_Nesov, and Alicorn, as of now, in my mind.
It does not need to be a perfect Aumann agreement; a merely good one will still reduce the chances of overcounting or undercounting either side's evidence well below the acceptable limits.
There is no way for you to have accurately assessed this. Roko and Eliezer aren't idealized Bayesian agents, it is extremely unlikely they performed a perfect Aumann agreement.
They are approximations of Bayesian agents, and it is extremely likely they performed an approximate Aumann agreement.
To settle this particular question, however, I will pay money. I promise to donate 50 dollars to the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, independent of other plans to donate, if Eliezer confirms that he did revise his estimate down; or if he confirms that he did not revise his estimate down. Payable within two weeks of Eliezer's comment.
I'm curious: if he confirms instead that the change in his estimate, if there was one, was small enough relative to his estimate that he can't reliably detect it or detect its absence, although he infers that he updated using more or less the same reasoning you use above, will you donate or not?
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.