Thanks for your comment, but I'm going with a different style. This kind of opening is actually quite common in Anglophone philosophy, as the quickest route to tenure is to make really bold claims and then come up with ingenius ways of defending them.
I know that Less Wrong can be somewhat averse to the style of contemporary Anglophone philosophy, but that will not dissuade me from using it. To drive home the point that my style here is common in Anglophone philosophy (I'm avoiding calling it analytic philosophy), here a few examples...
The opening paragraphs of David Lewis' On the Plurality of Worlds, in which he defends a radical view known as modal realism, that all possible worlds actually exist:
This book defends modal realism: the thesis that the world we are part of is but one of a plurality of worlds, and that we who inhabit this world are only a few out of all the inhabitants of all the worlds.
I begin the first chapter by reviewing the many ways in which systematic philosophy goes more easily if we may presuppose modal realism...
In the second chapter, I reply to numerous objections...
In the third chapter, I consider the prospect that a more credible ontology might yield the same benefits...
Opening paragraph (abstract) of Neil Sinhababu's "Possible Girls" for the Pacific Philosophical Quarterly:
I argue that if David Lewis’ modal realism is true, modal realists from different possible worlds can fall in love with each other. I offer a method for uniquely picking out possible people who are in love with us and not with our counterparts. Impossible lovers and trans-world love letters are considered. Anticipating objections, I argue that we can stand in the right kinds of relations to merely possible people to be in love with them and that ending a transworld relationship to start a relationship with an actual person isn’t cruel to one’s otherworldly lover.
Opening paragraph of Peter Klein's "Human Knowledge and the Infinite Regress of Reasons" for Philosophical Perspectives:
The purpose of this paper is to ask you to consider an account of justification that has largely been ignored in epistemology. When it has been considered, it has usually been dismissed as so obviously wrong that arguments against it are not necessary. The view that I ask you to consider can be called "Infinitism." Its central thesis is that the structure of justificatory reasons is infinite and non-repeating. My primary reason for recommending infinitism is that it can provide an acceptable account of rational beliefs, i.e., beliefs held on the basis of adequate reasons, while the two alternative views, foundationalism and coherentism, cannot provide such an account.
And, the opening paragraph of Steven Maitzen's paper arguing that a classical theistic argument actually proves atheism:
Chapter 15 of Anselm's Prosblogion contains the germ of an argument that confronts theology with a serious trilemma: atheism, utter mysticism, or radical anti-Anselmianism. The argument establishes a disjunction of claims that Anselmians in particular, but not only they, will find disturbing: (a) God does not exist, (b) no human being can have even the slightest conception of God, or (c) the Anselmian requirement of maximal greatness in God is wrong. Since, for reasons I give below, (b) and (c) are surely false, I regard the argument as establishing atheism.
And those are just the first four works that came to mind. This kind of abrupt opening is the style of Anglophone philosophy, and that's the style I'm using. Anyone who keeps up with Anglophone philosophy lives and breathes this style of writing every week.
Anglophone philosophy is not written for people who are casually browsing for interesting things to read. It is written for academics who have hundreds and hundreds of papers and books we might need to read, and we need to know right away in the opening lines whether or not a particular book or paper addresses the problems we are researching.
I'm researching and writing a book on meta-ethics and the technological singularity. I plan to post the first draft of the book, in tiny parts, to the Less Wrong discussion area. Your comments and constructive criticisms are much appreciated.
This is not a book for a mainstream audience. Its style is that of contemporary Anglophone philosophy. Compare to, for example, Chalmers' survey article on the singularity.
Bibliographic references are provided here.
Part 1 is below...
Chapter 1: The technological singularity is coming soon.
The Wright Brothers flew their spruce-wood plane for 200 feet in 1903. Only 66 years later, Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, more than 240,000 miles from Earth.
The rapid pace of progress in the physical sciences drives many philosophers to science envy. Philosophers have been researching the core problems of metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics for millennia and not yet come to consensus about them like scientists have for so many core problems in physics, chemistry, and biology.
I won’t argue about why this is so. Instead, I will argue that maintaining philosophy’s slow pace and not solving certain philosophical problems in the next two centuries may lead to the extinction of the human species.
This extinction would result from a “technological singularity” in which an artificial intelligence (AI) of human-level general intelligence uses its intelligence to improve its own intelligence, which would enable it to improve its intelligence even more, which would lead to an “intelligence explosion” feedback loop that would give this AI inestimable power to accomplish its goals. If so, then it is critically important to program its goal system wisely. This project could mean the difference between a utopian solar system of unprecedented harmony and happiness, and a solar system in which all available matter is converted into parts for a planet-sized computer built to solve difficult mathematical problems.
The technical challenges of designing the goal system of such a superintelligence are daunting.[1] But even if we can solve those problems, the question of which goal system to give the superintelligence remains. It is a question of philosophy; it is a question of ethics.
Philosophy has impacted billions of humans through religion, culture, and government. But now the stakes are even higher. When the technological singularity occurs, the philosophy behind the goal system of a superintelligent machine will determine the fate of the species, the solar system, and perhaps the galaxy.
***
Now that I have laid my positions on the table, I must argue for them. In this chapter I argue that the technological singularity is likely to occur within the next 200 years unless a worldwide catastrophe drastically impedes scientific progress. In chapter two I survey the philosophical problems involved in designing the goal system of a singular superintelligence, which I call the “singleton.”
In chapter three I show how the singleton will produce very different future worlds depending on which normative theory is used to design its goal system. In chapter four I describe what is perhaps the most developed plan for the design of the singleton’s goal system: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s “Coherent Extrapolated Volition.” In chapter five, I present some objections to Coherent Extrapolated Volition.
In chapter six I argue that we cannot decide how to design the singleton’s goal system without considering meta-ethics, because normative theory depends on meta-ethics. In chapter seven I argue that we should invest little effort in meta-ethical theories that do not fit well with our emerging reductionist picture of the world, just as we quickly abandon scientific theories that don’t fit the available scientific data. I also specify several meta-ethical positions that I think are good candidates for abandonment.
But the looming problem of the technological singularity requires us to have a positive theory, too. In chapter eight I propose some meta-ethical claims about which I think naturalists should come to agree. In chapter nine I consider the implications of these plausible meta-ethical claims for the design of the singleton’s goal system.
***
[1] These technical challenges are discussed in the literature on artificial agents in general and Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) in particular. Russell and Norvig (2009) provide a good overview of the challenges involved in the design of artificial agents. Goertzel and Pennachin (2010) provide a collection of recent papers on the challenges of AGI. Yudkowsky (2010) proposes a new extension of causal decision theory to suit the needs of a self-modifying AI. Yudkowsky (2001) discusses other technical (and philosophical) problems related to designing the goal system of a superintelligence.