I knew, in the same moment, what I had been carefully not-doing for the last six years. I hadn't been updating. And I knew I had to finally update. To actually change what I planned to do, to change what I was doing now, to do something different instead. I knew I had to stop. Halt, melt, and catch fire. Say, "I'm not ready." Say, "I don't know how to do this yet.

I had to utter those words a few years ago, swallow my pride, drop the rat race - and inevitably my standard of living. I wasn't making progress that I could believe in, that I was willing to bet my entire future on.

An appropriate rebuttal to the "show me the code", "show me the math" -folk here pestering you about your lack of visible results. The real action happens in the brain. Rarely does one get a glimpse of it as thorough as the one you provide. In fact, so good you are in communicating the state of your nervous system that I'd bet my future on Eliezer2008 achieving or contributing something lasting and non-lethal than any other single individual in the field of AGI.