Wei_Dai comments on Course recommendations for Friendliness researchers - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (113)
I was a CS major but I haven't taken most of the CS courses listed here, including Numerical Analysis, Parallel Computing, Quantum Computing, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Functional Programming, and Automated Program Verification. I think it's probably not necessary to have more than a cursory understanding of most these topics at the current stage of Friendliness research.
I would suggest swapping one or more of these courses out for a course in cryptography. Cryptography, besides possibly having direct applications, is good for giving a sense of the limits of human intelligence and mathematical reasoning. You can see how far "provable security" (which seems like the closest analogue we have to "provable Friendliness") as well as "heuristical security" got after thousands of mathematician-years worth of effort.