Eliezer: If you are a level below Jaynes, Evolution is at least a hundred levels below the average engineer. What happened to the small gap between Village Idiot and Einstein?

I was thinking, "Can one human engineer put forth an effort equivalent to a billion years of optimization by an evolution in one year? Doesn't seem like it. Million years? Sounds about right." So I said, "six levels". This isn't the same sort of level I use to compare myself to Jaynes, but then you couldn't expect that of a comparison between humans and evolutions.

When experienced celebrated AI researchers consistently say human-level AI looks a long way off you say that means little - how could they know. And then you feel you have the sorting-hat vision to just chat with someone for a few minutes and know they couldn't possibly contribute to such progress.

One of these judgment problems is vastly easier than the other, and the easier one isn't timing the arrival of AI.

And I didn't say "can't contribute", I said they couldn't have cracked it.