Greetings All.
I've been a Singularitan since my college years more than a decade ago. I still clearly remember the force with which that worldview and its attendant realizations colonized my mind.
At that time I was strongly enamored with a vision of computer graphics advancing to the point of pervasive, Matrix-like virtual reality and that medium becoming the creche from which superhuman artificial intelligence would arise. (the Matrix of Gibson's Neuromancer, as this was before the film of the same name). Actually, I still have that vision, and although it has naturally changed, we do appear finally to be on the brink of a major revolution in graphics and perhaps the attendant display tech to materialize said vision.
Anyway, I studied computer graphics, immersed myself in programming and figured making a video game startup would be a good first step to amassing some wealth so that I could then do the 'real work' of promoting the Singularity and doing AI research. I took a little investment, borrowed some money, and did consulting work on the side. After four years or so the main accomplishment was taking a runner up prize in a business plan competition and paying for a somewhat expensive education. That isn't as bad as it sounds though - I did learn a good deal of atypical knowledge.
Eventually I threw in the towel with the independent route and took a regular day job as a graphics programmer in the industry. After working so much on startups I had some fun with life for a change. I went to a couple of free 'workshops' at a strange house where some unusual guys with names like 'Mystery' and 'Style' taught the game, back before Style wrote his book and that community blew up. I found some interesting roommates (not affiliated with the above), and moved into a house in the Hollywood Hills. One of our neighbors had made a fortune from a website called Sextoy.com and threw regular pool parties, sometimes swinger parties. Another regular life in LA.
Over the years I had this mounting feeling that I was wasting my life, that there was something important I had forgotten. I still read and followed some of the Singularity related literature, but wasn't that active. But occasionally it would come back and occupy my mind, albeit temporarily. Kurzweil's TSIN reactivated my attention, and I attended the Singularity Summit in 2008, 2010. I already had a graphics blog and had written some articles for gaming publications, but in the last few years started reading more neuroscience and AI. I have a deep respect for the brain's complexity, but I'm still somewhat surprised at the paucity of large-scale research and the concomitant general lack of success in AGI. I'm not claiming (as of yet) to have some deep revolutionary new metamathical insight, but a graphics background gives one a particular visualizing intuition and toolbox for optimizing simulations that should come in handy.
All that being said, and even though I'm highly technical by trade, I actually think the engineering challenge is the easier part of the problem (only in relation), and I'm more concerned with the social engineering challenge. From my current reading, I gather that EY and the SIAI folks here believe that is all rolled up into the FAI task. I agree with the importance of the challenge, but I do not find the most likely hypothesis to be: SIAI develops FriendlyAI before anyone else in the world develops AI in general. I do not think that SIAI currently holds >50% of the lottery tickets, not even close.
However, I do think the movement can win regardless, if we can win on the social engineering front. To me now it seems that the most likely hypothesis is that the winning ticket will be some academic team or startup in this decade or the next, and thus the winning ticket (with future hindsght) is currently held by someone young. So it is a social engineering challenge.
The Singularity challenges everything: our social institutions, politics, religion, economic infrastructure, all of our current beliefs. I share the deep concern about existential risk and Hard Takeoff scenarios, although perhaps differing in particulars with typical viewpoints I've seen on this site.
How can we get the world to wake up?
I somehow went to two Singularity Summits without ever reading LessWrong or OverComingBias. I think I had read partly through EY's Seed AI doc at some point previously, but that was it. I went to school with some folks who are now part of LessWrong or SIAI: (Anna, Steve, Jennifer), and was pointed to this site through them. I've quite enjoyed reading through most of the material so far, and I don't think i'm half way through yet, although I don't see a completion meter anywhere.
I'm somewhat less interested in: raw 'Bayesianism' as enlightment, and Evo Psych. I used to be more into Evo Psych when I was into the game, but I equate that with my childish years. I do believe it has some utility in understanding the brain, but not nearly as much as neuroscience or AI themselves.
Also, as an aside, I'm curious about the note for theists. From what I gather, many LWers find the Simulation Argument to work. If so, that technically makes you a deist, and theism is just another potential hypothesis. Its actually even potentially a testable hypothesis. And even without the Simulation Argument, the Singularity seriously challenges strict atheism - most plausible Singluarity aware Eschatologies result in some black-hole diety spawning new universes - a god in every useful sense of the term at the end of our timeline.
I've always felt this great isolation imposed by my worldview: something one cannot discuss in polite company. Of course, that isolation was only ever self-imposed, and this site has opened my mind to the possibility that there's many now who have ventured along similar lines.
Welcome to LW!
I'm more concerned with the social engineering challenge. From my current reading, I gather that EY and the SIAI folks here believe that is all rolled up into the FAI task.
Not entirely. Less Wrong is about raising the sanity waterline, not just recruiting FAI theorists.
Also, as an aside, I'm curious about the note for theists.
Theists in the usual supernatural sense, not the (rare, and even more rarely called 'theism') simulation or future-'god' senses.
...I've always felt this great isolation imposed by my worldview: something one canno
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