gwern comments on Kurzweil's predictions: good accuracy, poor self-calibration - Less Wrong

33 Post author: Stuart_Armstrong 11 July 2012 09:55AM

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Comment author: gwern 12 July 2012 10:34:27PM 7 points [-]

A general point: given the time you spent on this, you could and should have graded more than 10 predictions.

Note: I did read Kurzweil's assessment of his own predictions, after I had conducted my own analysis. In that assessment, nearly every ambiguous clause is interpreted in Kurzweil's favour. This could be Kurzweil twisting the predictions in his direction; it could be a blatant example of hindsight bias; or it could be that what Kurzweil meant to say was different from what he wrote. Unfortunately, there is no way for us to tell, so we must make do with what was written and interpret it as best we can.

If it makes you feel better, back when he assessed his predictions, I downloaded the PDF and remarked that he was clearly favoring himself and was often quietly redefining anything which existed in the lab or as doomed commercial products as widespread successes per his overall mood (and occasionally specific wording, as in the howler of voice transcription dominating typing).