Will_Pearson comments on Trying to Try - Less Wrong

42 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 01 October 2008 08:58AM

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Comment author: Will_Pearson 01 October 2008 11:16:52AM 0 points [-]

I personally evaluate people saying they will try to do X, as if X is not always their highest priority, and other things might take precedence so the resources aren't always available to do X.

"I'm going to try to prove P != NP", means they might give up at some point and do something else when progress seems unlikely. With regards to FAI, I think the phrasing of your commitment to building it that would be most acceptable to the public without saying try would be "I'm going to figure out if building FAI is possible, and if it is build it".

I regard people saying, "I'm going to build a FAI that stably recursively self-improves," as somewhat similar to people saying, "I'm going to build a worm whole device".