= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Sewing-Machine comments on Funding Good Research - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (44)
What if the researchers reach conclusions you don't expect, or disagree with? Do you have a plan for what happens to the money if, after a few months of working on it, Briggs informs you she no longer believes the TDT ideas are workable?
It's complicated, but here's one thought...
Notice that one of my example papers was a paper of objections to CEV. Right now we're at the stage of making the arguments and concepts in play formalized enough that they can be defended or attacked rigorously. If somebody formalizes and clarifies an argument well enough to properly attack, they've done at least half our work for us.
Have you looked into how other private agencies (Sloan, Templeton, Pioneer) go about purchasing research? This seems like a new model to me, and might be more fraught than you think.
Also, there are standard euphemisms such as "supporting" and "funding" rather than "purchasing."
Changed to "Funding" in the title.
Seems quite reasonable. But I don't have a clear picture of your general strategy. Do you have a path (read: a likely conjunction of paths) to getting a world-class mathematician to take an interest in forming a new decision theory? Talking about the details of CEV seems premature to me if we don't know that certain kinds of extrapolation are theoretically possible.
We have many plans, as this is something we strategize about alot. I do actually plan to write up an explanation of more of our plans within the next month.
If anything, that would be the most bang for the buck. There is a non-zero chance that the TDT is a blind avenue, and if so, discovering it early would save the SI's mission of preventing x-risk from AGI lots of time and money. Litany of Tarsky and such.
If the folks at SIAI respect Briggs enough to reason "well, if she can't do it, no one can" and move on to the next thing, that could be bang for buck.
That seems incredibly unlikely. There's a rather huge prior improbably of the latter that needs to be overcome.
Yes if their respect were misplaced, it would not be bang for buck.