Nornagest comments on Checking Kurzweil's track record - Less Wrong

12 Post author: Stuart_Armstrong 30 October 2012 11:07AM

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Comment author: selylindi 30 October 2012 01:12:39PM 8 points [-]

This will be done unblinded, because Kurzweil's predictions are so well known that it would be infeasible to find large numbers of people who are technologically aware but ignorant of them.

Is this true? It could be, or alternatively it could simply appear true from your perspective of familiarity. I'm only vaguely aware of Kurzweil and have never heard any mention of him among my group of largely grad student / geek friends.

Comment author: Nornagest 31 October 2012 12:24:33AM *  1 point [-]

I doubt it's true. I think it would be relatively easy to find technically sophisticated people who're unaware of Kurzweil's specific predictions; it'd be harder to find technically sophisticated people who're consistently unaware of his general thesis, but I'll bet you could still do it. You'd just need to look outside the transhumanist/singularitarian/AI enthusiast cluster.

Since those clusters are pretty tightly grouped in terms of conceptual underpinnings, it should be easy to filter them from a sample. Getting a good sample would be harder -- LW wouldn't do it, and personal blogs wouldn't either. Gwern's idea below looks promising but I have no idea how you'd go about it.