[LINK] John Baez Interview with astrophysicist Gregory Benford

multifoliaterose

The content of John Baez's This Week's Finds: Week 310:

Includes

Discussion of global warming and geoengineering.
A reference to a paper by David Wolpert and Gregory Benford on Newcomb's paradox

Note: The upcoming This Week's Finds: Week 311 is an interview with Eliezer Yudkowsky by John Baez.

The content of John Baez's This Week's Finds: Week 310:

Includes

Discussion of global warming and geoengineering.
A reference to a paper by David Wolpert and Gregory Benford on Newcomb's paradox

Note: The upcoming This Week's Finds: Week 311 is an interview with Eliezer Yudkowsky by John Baez.

The SIAI does publish no progress report

They do do various things like that from time to time - e.g.; http://singinst.org/achievements

and does not disclose how it uses the money it gets.

Up to 2008, almost half of it went into paying their own salaries, IIRC.

The SIAI accounts are on Guidestar. You have to register, though.

In 2009, they received 432,139 of "gifts", made 194,686 by putting on a conference - and paid Yudkowsky 95,550 and Vassar 52,083. Yudkowsky probably also got a fair bit of the 83,934 spent on project 4c. 400,000 was also spent on the things described at the end of the document. Figures are all USD.

"Probably?" According to what priors? Do not make stuff up. As of 2013, MIRI has never paid anyone more than $99K in one year, and IIRC the $95K shown there was due to an error by the payroll service we were using which accidentally shifted one month of my salary backward by one year (paid on Dec 31 instead of Jan 1).