"When two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly halfway between them. It is possible for one side to be simply wrong." -- Richard Dawkins

@ EY: I feel a bit awful about saying this, because it feels like I'm telling philosophers that their life's work has been a waste of time

Well, your buddy Robin Hanson has proved mathematically that my life has been a waste of time in his Doctors kill series of posts. I accept the numbers. Screw the philosophers; now it's their turn. It's all chemical neurotransmitters. Next: the lawyers.

EY: email me. I have a donor in mind.

EY:Give me $5 million/year to spend on 10 promising researchers and 10 promising students, and maybe $5 million/year to spend on outside projects that might help, and then go away. If you're lucky we'll be ready to start coding in less than a decade."

I am contacting the SIAI today to see whether they have some role I can play. If my math is correct, you need $100 million dollars, and 20 selected individuals. If the money became available, do you have the individuals in mind? Would they do it?

I'll be 72 in 10 years when the coding starts; how long will that take? Altruism be damned, remember my favorite quote: "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying. (W. Allen)

Disclaimer: perhaps the long-standing members of this blog understand the following question and may consider it impertinent. Sincerely, I am just confused (as I think anyone going to the Singularity site would be).

When I visit this page describing the "team" at the Singularity Institute, it states that Ben Goertzel is the "Director of Research", and Eliezer Yudkowsky is the "Research Fellow". EY states (above); "I was not working with Ben on AI, then or now." What actually goes on at SIAI?

@EY: If I have words to emit that I don't necessarily mean, for the sake of provoking reactions, I put them into a dialogue, short story, or parable - I don't say them in my own voice.

That's what I meant when I wrote: "By making his posts quirky and difficult to understand". Sorry. Should have been more precise.

@HA: perhaps you know the parties far better than I. I'm still looking.

Jess Riedel,

I don't know Eliezer Yudkowsky, but I have lots of spare time, and I have laboriously read his works for the past few months. I don't think much gets past him, within his knowledge base, and I don't think he cares about the significance of blog opinions, except as they illustrate predictable responses to certain stimuli. By making his posts quirky and difficult to understand, he weeds out the readers who are more comfortable at Roissy in DC, leaving him with study subjects of greater value to his project. His posts don't ask for suggestions; they teach, seeking clues to the best methods for communicating core data. Some are specifically aimed at producing controversy, especially in particular readers. Some are intentionally in conflict with his previously stated positions, to observe the response. The comparison I've previously made is that of Jane Goodall trying to understand chimps by observing their behavior and their reactions to stimuli, and to challenges requiring innovation, but even better because EY is more than an pure observer: he manipulates the environment to suit his interest. We'll see the results in the FAI, one day, I hope. If rudeness is part of that, right on.

@quasi-anonymous; This is exactly the kind of BS conflict that Eliezer is searching for in this blog, in order to help with his catalogue of human characteristics. Congratulations. Unfortunately, you won't get any extra pay when the FAI emerges.

Ever notice how heated and personal the discussion gets when one person tries to explain to a third person what the second person said, especially with such complicated topics? Perhaps this should be a green button that the AI never pushes.

Thanks, Tim Tyler, for the insight. I am trying to learn how to think differently (more effectively), since my education and profession actually did not include any courses, or even any experience, in clear thinking, sad to say. As you can see from some of my previous comments, I don't always see the rationale of your thoughts, to the point of discarding some of them out of hand, e.g., your series of observations on this topic, in which you dismiss possibly the best-referenced work on the diet subject *without reading it*, because you felt that some of the author's previous work was inadequate, yet your own references were lame.

I know there is a strong bias on this board about the arrogance of doctors, especially given their rather well-documented failure to make a positive impact on *overall* health care in the USA. I abhor the "doctor arrogance" as well. Any arrogance seen in my posts is unintentional, and comes not from being a "arrogant doctor", but from the failing of being an "arrogant person", a quality that seems widespread in many of the OB commenters. The more I learn about how such "ninja-brained" people think, the less I have to be arrogant about. I'm here to learn.