Quite a good website, though I expect that when one first glances at it, it looks suspicious how much there is talk of "perfect reasoning", "knowing exactly how to weigh the relevant evidence" etc.
Gives the impression that you think your methods produce perfection. One might have to delve surprisingly deep into the website before one realizes that that's not actually among the claims made.
How 'bout now? (May need to load then refresh once.)
Many of the reference sections have URLs that aren't links.
Fixing in progress.
The keep up with the latest developments here box on the front page should be have some indication that it is an email field.
Fixing in progress.
Especially from each tech summary up to the tech summary intro
Fixed.
The Media and updates looks a little bit like a blog archive with some external coverage mixed in: it might be nice if internal and external links were more distinct.
Fixing in progress.
"What is the Singularity?" link on Our Mission has eaten extra HTML and so 404's
Fixed.
"Complex Value Systems are Required to Realize Valuable Futures" link on the Research page
Fixed.
The summary appears to have had some encoding issues (or something): ?? throughout the page.
Fixing in progress.
The whole of Get Involved is a link to Opportunities.
I don't understand.
I don't understand.
The same thing as I described in my previous comment as the situation for http://singularity.org/about/ (except that the destination page is different).
Works for me...
My guess is that it's currently broken for some browsers but not others.
I'm using Firefox (Windows), and currently ALL the links on http://singularity.org/about/ take me to http://singularity.org/visiting-fellows/
Was working fine earlier, though.
(And actually, the six links in the Donate-WhatWeDo-etc bar are exceptions in that they work on that page also. But all the others take me to see the Visiting Fellows, including the link to the blog, to Facebook, to Less Wrong...)
Also, 'twould be odd for clip art factories to make clip art with the Singularity Institute logo in it. :)
To me, when I first saw them, they definitely looked like clip art, except that in some cases the SI logo had been edited in.
I wish I could upvote what Raemon said several times: "the whole reason clip-art is bad is not because it actually is clip-art, but because it looks like something you got off the shelf."
Yes, I have to say that the unprofessional vibe given off feels absolutely horrible to me. I'm surprised that the designers of the site appear to be the same as previously, since the previous style and vibe felt very good to me, and this feels so much like the opposite.
The current crop of clip-art would really need to go, I'd say. Nothing looks as hasty and unprofessional as stereotypical clip-art. You especially shouldn't with your clip-art choices communicate that you're a very formal, ordinary and uncreative men-in-suits organisation, since you're really not (and if you were, who would think you competent or even sincere in undertaking such an unusual mission? Stereotypical and ordinary men-in-suits are the antithesis of creativity, exceptionality and thinking-something-that-isn't-a-politically-correct-cliche).
The current site design could perhaps be made to rock if all the clip-art was changed out to a new theme that was creative and original (and you) and wouldn't really look like clip-art. Some associated changes to color scheme and fonts might be required, but perhaps not a complete redesign.
Btw, am I hallucinating, or did you already change the colors slightly?
Anyway, I'd like to say that I currently like how the colors look. (Though doesn't have much to do with the points that I was critical on.)
The content seems more useful and directs me towards specific actions. And I particularly like the media page. (Hiding and showing the pictures is sort of gimmicky but for some reason I like the gimmick. Having the picture show up felt like a "pleasant" surprise)
But the vibe of the website feels less professional to me than the old website. Part of the issue is the gratuitous use of clip-art, part of it is font choice and color scheme. (Your logo doesn't stand out very well against the dull blue background, and there are several different random fonts getting used, few of which seem to match the feel of either of the sleeker fonts used in "Singularity Institute" title.)
Yes, I have to say that the unprofessional vibe given off feels absolutely horrible to me. I'm surprised that the designers of the site appear to be the same as previously, since the previous style and vibe felt very good to me, and this feels so much like the opposite.
The current crop of clip-art would really need to go, I'd say. Nothing looks as hasty and unprofessional as stereotypical clip-art. You especially shouldn't with your clip-art choices communicate that you're a very formal, ordinary and uncreative men-in-suits organisation, since you're really not (and if you were, who would think you competent or even sincere in undertaking such an unusual mission? Stereotypical and ordinary men-in-suits are the antithesis of creativity, exceptionality and thinking-something-that-isn't-a-politically-correct-cliche).
The current site design could perhaps be made to rock if all the clip-art was changed out to a new theme that was creative and original (and you) and wouldn't really look like clip-art. Some associated changes to color scheme and fonts might be required, but perhaps not a complete redesign.
Best I've come up with so far:
The Institute for Advanced Sanity
I like this. Or more generally, I like having "Advanced Sanity" in the name.
So, I have a few questions:
- What are the most egregious examples of SI's arrogance?
Since you explicitly ask a question phrased thus, I feel obligated to mention that last April I witnessed a certain email incident that I thought was somewhat extremely bad in some ways.
I do believe that lessons have been learned since then, though. Probably there's no need to bring the matter up again, and I only mention it since according to my ethics it's the required thing to do when asked such an explicit question as above.
(Some readers may wonder why I'm not providing details here. That's because after some thought, I for my part decided against making the incident public, since I expect it might subsequently get misrepresented to look worse than what's fair. (There might be value in showing records of the incident to new SIAI employees as an example of how not to do things, though.))
Curse me for presenting myself as someone having interesting secret knowledge. Now I get several PMs asking for details.
In short, this "incident" was about one or two SIAI folks making a couple of obvious errors of judgment, and in the case of the error that sparked the whole thing, getting heatedly defensive about it for a moment. Other SIAI folks however recognized the obvious mistakes as such, so the issue was resolved, even though unprofessional conduct was observed for a moment.
The actual mistakes were rather minor, nothing dramatic. The surprising thing was that heated defensiveness took place on the way to those mistakes getting corrected.
(And since Eliezer is the SIAI guy most often accused of arrogance, I'll additionally state that here that is not the case. Eliezer was very professional in the email exchange in question.)
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Though it's possible the reporter has twisted your words more than I manage to suspect, I'll say:
Wow, some of the people involved really suck at thinking (or caring to think) about how they make the scene look. I think I'm able to pretty well correct for the discrepancy between what's reported and what's the reality behind it, but even after the correction, this window into what the scene has become has further lowered my interest in flying over there to the States to hang out with you, since it seems I might end up banging my head against the wall in frustration for all the silliness that's required for this sort of reporting to get it's source material.
(Though I do also think that it's inevitable that once the scene has grown to be large and successful enough, typical members will be sufficiently ordinary human beings that I'd find their company very frustrating. Sorry, I'm a dick that way, and in a sense my negative reaction is only a sign of success, though I didn't expect quite this level of success to be reached yet.)
(By the previous I however do not mean to imply that things would have been saner 10 years ago (I certainly had significant shortcomings of my own), but back when nobody had figured much anything out yet or written Sequences about stuff, the expected level of insanity would have been partly higher for such reasons.)