= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
lukeprog comments on Muehlhauser-Wang Dialogue - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (284)
Um... but these are statements I agreed with.
I wish Pei had taken the time to read the articles I repeatedly linked to, for they were written precisely to explain why his position is misguided.
I think you should have listed a couple of the most important articles at the beginning as necessary background reading to understand your positions and terminology (like Pei did with his papers), and then only used links very sparingly afterwards. Unless you already know your conversation partner takes you very seriously, you can't put 5 hyperlinks in an email and expect the other person to read them all. When they see that many links, they'll probably just ignore all of them. (Not to mention the signaling issues that others already pointed out.)
Hmm, maybe it is possible to summarize them in a language that an AI expert would find both meaningful and convincing. How is your mental model of Dr Wang?
Nitpick, but it's Professor Wang, not Doctor Wang.
The page linked at the top of the article says Dr. Wang. And his CV says he's a Ph.D.
The title of Professor supersedes the title of Doctor, at least in the case of a PhD (I'm not sure about MD, but would assume similarly). His CV indicates pretty clearly that he is an Associate Professor at temple university, so the correct title is Professor.
Again, I am being somewhat super-pedantic here, and I apologize for any annoyance this causes. But hopefully it will help you in your future signalling endeavors.
Also, in most situations it is okay to just go by first name, or full name (without any titles); I have I think exclusively referred to Pei as Pei.
ETA: Although also yes, his homepage suggests that he may be okay with being addressed as Doctor. I still advocate the general strategy of avoiding titles altogether, and if you do use titles, refer to Professors as Professors (failure to do so will not offend anyone, but may make you look silly).
...Not in my experience. Do you have some particular reason to believe this is the case in Philadelphia?
The situation in the US and Canada is quite relaxed, actually, nothing like in, say, Germany. Dr is a perfectly valid form of address to any faculty member.
Well, at least in my experience the Professors who don't actually have doctorates tend not to appreciate having to correct you on that point. But yeah.
When I received the proofs for my IJMC papers, the e-mail addressed me as "dear professor Sotala" (for those who aren't aware, I don't even have a Master's degree, let alone a professorship). When I mentioned this on Facebook, some people mentioned that there are countries where it's a huge faux pas to address a professor as anything else than a professor. So since "professor" is the highest form of address, everyone tends to get called that in academic communication, just to make sure that nobody'll be offended - even if the sender is 95% sure that the other isn't actually a professor.
I really would not have guessed that it would be considered polite or appropriate to call someone a "higher" form of address than they're entitled to, especially when it actually refers to something concrete. Learn something new every day, I guess.
The reactions I got (from a cognitive scientist and another researcher) is that Bostrom is a "sloppy thinker" (original words) and that SI's understanding of AGI is naive.
Michael Littman told me he is going to read some of the stuff too. I haven't got an answer yet though.
Yeah, it was pretty easy for me to nod my head along with most of it, pointing to my "SI failure mode" bucket.
Please clarify.
I think AI is dangerous, that making safe AI is difficult, and that SI will likely fail in their mission. I donate to them in the hopes that this improves their chances.