JoshuaFox comments on Evaluating the feasibility of SI's plan - Less Wrong

25 Post author: JoshuaFox 10 January 2013 08:17AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (186)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: JoshuaFox 10 January 2013 09:19:02PM *  0 points [-]

Are you asking him to assume this?

Yes, I ask him about that. All other things equal, a project without a constraint will move faster than a project with a constraint (though 37Signals would say otherwise.)

But on the other hand, this post does ask about the converse, namely that SI's implementation approach will have a dev-speed advantage. That does not make sense to me, but I have heard it from SI-ers, and so asked about it here.

Comment author: hairyfigment 10 January 2013 11:44:34PM 1 point [-]

I may have been nitpicking to no purpose, since the chance of someone's bad idea working exceeds that of any given bad idea working. But I would certainly expect the strategy of 'understanding the problem' to produce Event-Horizon-level results faster than 'do stuff that seems like it might work'. And while we can imagine someone understanding intelligence but not Friendliness, that looks easier to solve through outreach and education.

Comment author: JoshuaFox 11 January 2013 09:26:45AM 1 point [-]

But I would certainly expect the strategy of 'understanding the problem' to produce Event-Horizon-level results faster than 'do stuff that seems like it might work'.

The two are not mutually exclusive. The smarter non-SI teams will most likely try to 'understand the problem ' as best they can, experimenting and plugging gaps with 'stuff that seems that it might work', for which they will likely have some degree of understanding as well.