Stupid Questions Open Thread Round 4

lukeprog

This is for anyone in the LessWrong community who has made at least some effort to read the sequences and follow along, but is still confused on some point, and is perhaps feeling a bit embarrassed. Here, newbies and not-so-newbies are free to ask very basic but still relevant questions with the understanding that the answers are probably somewhere in the sequences. Similarly, LessWrong tends to presume a rather high threshold for understanding science and technology. Relevant questions in those areas are welcome as well. Anyone who chooses to respond should respectfully guide the questioner to a helpful resource, and questioners should be appropriately grateful. Good faith should be presumed on both sides, unless and until it is shown to be absent. If a questioner is not sure whether a question is relevant, ask it, and also ask if it's relevant.

Ask away!

Previously: round 1, round 2, round 3

From the original thread:

This is for anyone in the LessWrong community who has made at least some effort to read the sequences and follow along, but is still confused on some point, and is perhaps feeling a bit embarrassed. Here, newbies and not-so-newbies are free to ask very basic but still relevant questions with the understanding that the answers are probably somewhere in the sequences. Similarly, LessWrong tends to presume a rather high threshold for understanding science and technology. Relevant questions in those areas are welcome as well. Anyone who chooses to respond should respectfully guide the questioner to a helpful resource, and questioners should be appropriately grateful. Good faith should be presumed on both sides, unless and until it is shown to be absent. If a questioner is not sure whether a question is relevant, ask it, and also ask if it's relevant.

Ask away!

I don't mean to minimize your concerns, though. Right now I expect to fail. I expect us all to get paperclipped (or turned off), though I'll be happy to update in favor of positive outcomes if (1) research shows the problem isn't as hard as I now think, (2) financial support for x-risk reduction increases, (3) etc.

I think you may have misunderstood my intent here. I'm not trying to make you more pessimistic about our overall prospects but arguing (i.e., trying to figure out) the absolute and relative importance of solving various strategic problems.

Another point was to suggest that perhaps SI ought to give higher priority to recruiting/training "hero strategists" as opposed to "hero mathematicians". For example your So You Want to Save the World says:

No, the world must be saved by mathematicians, computer scientists, and philosophers.

which fails to credit the importance of strategic contributions (even though later in the post there is a large section on strategic problems).

which fails to credit the importance of strategic contributions

Sorry if that was unclear; I mean to identify the strategists as "philosophers", like this. As you say, I went on to include a large section on strategy.

I certainly agree on the importance of strategy. Most of the research SI and FHI have done is strategic, after all — and most of the work in progress is strategic, too.

I do tend to talk a lot about "hero mathematicians," though. Maybe that's because "hero mathematician" is more concrete (to me) than "hero ... (read more)

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Stupid Questions Open Thread Round 4

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Stupid Questions Open Thread Round 4

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