'Persistent Problems Group'? What is this, an Iain Banks novel? :)

(On a side-note, that sounds like a horrible idea. 'Yes, let's walk right into those rapidly revolving blades! Surely our rationality will protect us.')

Is there any reason to believe that the Persistent Problems Group would do better at making sense of the literature than people who write survey papers? There are lots of survey papers published on various topics in the same journals that publish the original research, so if those are good enough we don't need yet another level of review to try to make sense of things.

"Michael Vassar's Persistent Problems Group idea does need funding, though it may or may not operate under the SIAI umbrella."

It sounds like they have a similar concern.

Eric Drexler made what sounds to me like a very similar proposal, and something like this is already done by a few groups, unless I'm missing some distinguishing feature.

I'd be very interested in seeing what this particular group's conclusions were, as well as which methods they would choose to approach these questions. It does seem a little tangential to the SIAI's stated mission through.