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knb comments on Eliezer's Sequences and Mainstream Academia - Less Wrong Discussion

99 Post author: lukeprog 15 September 2012 12:32AM

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Comment author: knb 15 September 2012 09:16:22AM 6 points [-]

FOOM (AKA Intelligence Explosion) was formulated by I.J. Good about 50 years ago.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 15 September 2012 02:12:54PM 4 points [-]

...and pre-formulated by John W. Campbell, a famous science-fiction editor.

Comment author: Thomas 15 September 2012 10:12:36AM *  -1 points [-]

Maybe it is just me. But as I understood I.J. Good's intelligence explosion is much more "Kurzweilian". Happens as a consequence of some large improvement all over the place. While for the Yudkowsky's FOOM, a right binary string in the RAM of the PC from 2000 would suffice to blow us away.

I think, that the computer may need to be from today, or even from tomorrow, but this does not change much.

Comment author: timtyler 16 September 2012 04:10:12PM *  -2 points [-]

You would need improvements in both software and hardware to compete with natural nanotechnology at its best.

Improvements in software would catalyse improvements in hardware - and visa versa. I think most of the parties involved are on the same page about all this.