GiveWell.org interviews SIAI

Paul Crowley

Holden Karnofsky of GiveWell.org interviewed Jasen Murray of SIAI and published his notes (Edit: PDF, thanks lukeprog!), with updates from later conversations. Lots of stuff to take an interest in there - thanks to jsalvatier for drawing our attention to it. One new bit of information stands out in particular:

Michael Vassar is working on an idea he calls the "Persistent Problems Group" or PPG. The idea is to assemble a blue-ribbon panel of recognizable experts to make sense of the academic literature on very applicable, popular, but poorly understood topics such as diet/nutrition. This would have obvious benefits for helping people understand what the literature has and hasn't established on important topics; it would also be a demonstration that there is such a thing as "skill at making sense of the world."

Michael Vassar is working on an idea he calls the "Persistent Problems Group" or PPG. The idea is to assemble a blue-ribbon panel of recognizable experts to make sense of the academic literature on very applicable, popular, but poorly understood topics such as diet/nutrition. This would have obvious benefits for helping people understand what the literature has and hasn't established on important topics; it would also be a demonstration that there is such a thing as "skill at making sense of the world."

My comment:

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.

unless I'm missing some distinguishing feature.

I think (at least part of) the idea is to have young skilled rationalists work with experienced scientists in expectation that their powers combined will be more effective at making sense of some topic than either of them separately.

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