I think we are at cross purposes. I was mostly talking about a dislike button. You seem to be back to the whole concept of a reputation system.

Reputation systems seem to be just generally good to me. How else are you supposed to automatically deal with spammers, flamers and other lowlife?

You seem more concerned with group-think and yes-men. Sure, but no big deal.

More reputation system would be better. Non-anonymous votes. Separate up and down vote counts. "Meh" button. Reputations for the posters themselves (rather than the sum of their comments). Comment like and dislike lists that can be made public. Vote annotations - so people can say why they voted. Killfiles that can be made public - etc.

Oh, yes, and while I am on the topic, let's not be faceless - bring on the http://en.gravatar.com/

Now you and other tell me those conclusions are incorrect.

No, I didn't. In fact for the purposes of the comment you are replying to I clearly and explicitly assumed them to be true for the purposes of the argument.

Ben's publishing several books (well, he's already published several, but he's publishing the already written "Building Better Minds" early 2012 and a pop sci version shortly there after which are more current regarding OpenCog). I'll be writing a "practical" guide to OpenCog once we reach our 1.0 release at the end of 2012.

Ben actually does quite a lot of writing, theorizing and conferences. Whereas myself and a number of others are more concerned with the software development side of things.

We also have a wiki: http://wiki.opencog.org

Even if they don't want to discuss their insights "ad nauseum", I need some indication that they have new insights. Otherwise they won't be able to build AI.

Evolution managed to do that without any capacity for having insights. It's not out of the question that enough hard work without much understanding would suffice, particularly if you use the tools of mainstream AI (machine learning).

Also, just "success" is not something one would wish to support (success at exterminating humanity, say, is distinct from success in exterminating polio), so the query about which institution is more likely to succeed is seriously incomplete.

(nods) I see.

So, if you were simply skeptical about Yudkowsky/SIAI, you could dismiss them and walk away. But since you're emotionally involved and feel like you have to make it all go away in order to feel better, that's not an option for you.

The problem is, what you're doing isn't going to work for you either. You're just setting yourself up for a rather pointless and bitter conflict.

Surely this isn't a unique condition? I mean, there are plenty of groups out there who will tell you that there are various bad things that might happen if you don't read their book, donate to their organization, etc., etc., and you don't feel the emotional need to make them go away. You simply ignore them, or at least most of them.

How do you do that? Perhaps you can apply the same techniques here.

I feel that people here are way too emotional

And you have expressed that feeling most passionately. <pointed look/>

Less Wrong ought to be about reasoning, as per Common Interest of Many Causes. Like you (I presume), I would like to see more posts about reasoning and fewer, despite my transhumanist sympathies, about boxed AIs, hypothetical torture scenarios, and the optimality of donating to the Friendly AI cause: focusing our efforts that way is more interesting, more broadly appealing, and ultimately more effective for everyone involved including the SIAI.

And I'd hazard a guess that the SIAI representatives here know that. A lot of people benefit from knowing how to think and act more effectively unqualified, but a site about improving reasoning skills that's also an appendage to the SIAI party line limits its own effectiveness, and therefore its usefulness as a way of sharpening reasoning about AI (and, more cynically, as a source of smart and rational recruits), by being exclusionary. We're doing a fair-to-middling job in that respect; we could definitely be doing a better one, if the above is a fair description of the intended topic according to the people who actually call the shots around here. That's fine, and it does deserve further discussion.

But the topic of rationality isn't at all well served by flogging criticisms of the SIAI viewpoint that have nothing to do with rationality, especially when they're brought up out of the context of an existing SIAI discussion. Doing so might diminish perceived or actual groupthink re: galactic civilizations and your money, but it still lowers the signal-to-noise ratio, for the simple reason that the appealing qualities of this site are utterly indifferent to the pros and cons of dedicating your money to the Friendly AI cause except insofar as it serves as a case study in rational charity. Granted, there are signaling effects that might counter or overwhelm its usefulness as a case study, but the impression I get from talking to outsiders is that those are far from the most obvious or destructive signaling problems that the community exhibits.

Bottom line, I view the friendly AI topic as something between a historical quirk and a pet example among several of the higher-status people here, and I think you should too.