I believe that scientists can change fields easily and sometimes make bigger impact in the new fields they enter. I think it’s because people who move do not look at the same problem from the traditional point-of-view. This enables us to come up with unique solutions. We are not trapped by dogma and if we are bold we can rise quickly.
-- Aubrey de Grey
I don't see how this reveals his motive at all. He could easily be a person motivated to make the best contributions to science as he can, for entirely altruistic reasons. His reasoning was that he could make better contributions elsewhere, and it's entirely plausible for him to have left the field for ultimately altruistic, purely non-selfish reasons.
And what is it about selfishness exactly that is so bad?
He may have, for his own reasons, not been happy with the ease with which he achieved something great. His selfishness at this point is not for the fact that he may still be able to contribute to the field and yet he chooses not to but for the fact that he will be happier if he had to work harder on something before achieving greatness. That is his value system. I think his choice is justifiable.
The second advantage claimed for naturalism is that it is equivalent to rationality, because it assumes a model of reality in which all events are in principle accessible to scientific investigation.
So few of us really think. What we do is rearrange our prejudices.
-- George Vincent
The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.
-- Albert Einstein
"Never give up" is bad advice?
Probability of success if you continue: small. Probability of success if you give up: zero.
Small is better than zero, am I right?
On the other hand, this analysis only matters if the cost of failure is no worse than the cost of giving up. The "rational" thing to do would be to give up if and only if (probability of success * utility of success) + (probability of failure * utility of failure) < (utility of giving up).
There are a lot of things that one can achieve through sheer persistence, but there are others that, well, you can't do, period. The trick is to be able to tell the difference. I suspect that I'm not going to be a star athlete no matter how much I practice, but I just might qualify for the Pro Tour some day.
The point of this post was to show that persisting at something while being irrational can only cause harm. Of course, "Never give up" is not bad advice, but Eliezer's advice is be rational and accept defeat when you need to.
I must stress here the point that I appreciate clarity, order, meaning, structure, rationality: they are necessary to whatever provisional stability we have, and they can be the agents of gradual and successful change.
-- A. R. Ammons
This post seems almost totally wrong to me. For one thing, its central claim - that without human values the future would, with high probability be dull is not even properly defined.
To be a little clearer, one would need to say something like: if you consider a specified enumeration over the space of possibile utility functions, a random small sample from that space would be "dull" (it might help to say a bit more about what dullness means too, but that is a side issue for now).
That claim might well be true for typical "shortest-first" enumerations in sensible languages - but it is not a very interesting claim - since the dull utility functions would be those which led to an attainable goal - such as "count up to 10 and then stop".
The "open-ended" utilility functions - the ones that resulted in systems that would spread out - would almost inevitably lead to rich complexity. You can't turn the galaxy into paper-clips (or whatever) without extensively mastering science, technology, intergalactic flight, nanotechnology - and so on. So, you need scientists and engineers - and other complicated and interesting things. This conclusion seems so obvious as to hardly be worth discussing to me.
I've explained all this to Eleizer before. After reading this post I still have very little idea about what it is that he isn't getting. He seems to think that making paper clips are boring. However, they are not any more boring than making DNA sequences, and that's the current aim of most living systems.
A prime-seeking civilisation has a competitive disadvantage over one that doesn't have silly, arbitrary bits tacked on to its utility function. It is more likely to be wiped out in a battle with an alien race - and it's more likely to suffer from a mutiny from within. However, that is about all. They are unlikely to lack science, technology, or other interesting stuff.
However, they are not any more boring than making DNA sequences, and that's the current aim of most living systems.
Making a DNA sequence will count as (an extremely low level activity) [http://lesswrong.com/lw/xr/in_praise_of_boredom/] which is necessary to support non-boring activities. It is a very simple argument that these are the very activity we stop thinking about and concentrate on novel activities.
Its a seed AGI in the process of growing. Whether "Smarter than Yudkowski" => "Can resolve own problems" is still an open problem 8-).
"Uhh.."
"You might want to get some coffee."
I find this the most humorous bit in the post. Smarter than Yudokowsky? May be.
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That is a very good point, I must appreciate that you noticed it. I would say that one of the reasons that happens is because people resist change. In health, any action would mean there could be something wrong that can happen. Thus, it is made a mandate that every possible wrong be checked before such an action takes place. Hence, the inherent danger in action.
Where as in case of economics, actions are usually taken to stop a change from happening (Stimulus package, bailing out car companies, president goes shopping, etc.). Thus, inaction would be accepting change which people always oppose. Hence, the inherent danger in inaction.