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perpetualpeace1 comments on A question about Eliezer - Less Wrong Discussion
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My understanding is that for the most part SI prefers not to publish the results of their AI research, for reasons akin to those discussed here. However they have published on decision theory, presumably because it seems safer than publishing on other stuff and they're interested in attracting people with technical chops to work on FAI:
http://singinst.org/blog/2010/11/12/timeless-decision-theory-paper-released/
I would guess EY sees himself as more of a researcher than a forecaster, so you shouldn't be surprised if he doesn't make as many predictions as Paul Krugman.
Also, here's a quote from his paper on cognitive biases affecting judgment of global risks:
So he wasn't born a rationalist. (I've been critical of him in the past, but I give him a lot of credit for realizing the importance of cognitive biases for what he was doing and popularizing them for such a wide audience.) My understanding was that one of the primary purposes of the sequences was to get people to realize the importance of cognitive biases at a younger age than he did.
Obviously I don't speak for SI or Eliezer, so take this with a grain of salt.
OK. If that is the case, then I think that a fair question to ask is what have his major achievements in research been?
But secondly, a lot of the discussion on LW and most of EY's research presupposes certain things happening in the future. If AI is actually impossible, then trying to design a friendly AI is a waste of time (or, alternately, if AI won't be developed for 10,000 years, then developing a friendly AI is not an urgent matter). What evidence can EY offer that he's not wasting his time, to put it bluntly?
No, if our current evidence suggests that AI is impossible, and does so sufficiently strongly to outweigh the large downside of a negative singularity, then trying to design a freindly AI is a waste of time.
Even if it turns out that your house doesn't burn down, buying insurance wasn't necessarily a bad idea. What is important is how likely it looked beforehand, and the relative costs of the outcomes.
Claiming AI constructed in a world of physics is impossible is equivalent to saying intelligence in a world of physics is impossible. This would require humans to work by dualism.
Of course, this is entirely separate from feasibility.
I would think that anyone claiming that AI is impossible would have the burden pretty strongly on their shoulders. However, if one was instead saying that a fast-take off was impossible or extremely unlikely there would be more of a valid issue.