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...yes? This seems like a quite reasonable epistemic state.
Aron, what makes you think otherwise?
Not sure whether I do think otherwise. But if Luke had written "smarter-than-human machine intelligence" instead, I probably wouldn't have reacted. In comparison, "machine superintelligence singleton" is much more specific, indicating both (i) that the machine intelligence will be vastly smarter than us, and (ii) that multipolar outcomes are very unlikely. Though perhaps there are very convincing arguments for both of these claims.
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A Proposed Adjustment to the Astronomical Waste Argument
Machine superintelligence appears to be a uniquely foreseeable and impactful source of stable trajectory change.
If you think (as I do) that a machine superintelligence is largely inevitable (Bostrom forthcoming), then it seems our effects on the far future must almost entirely pass through our effects on the development of machine superintelligence.
Someone once told me they thought that giving to the Against Malaria Foundation is, via a variety of ripple effects, more likely to positively affect the development of machine superintelligence than direct work on AI risk strategy and Friendly AI math. I must say I find this implausible, but I'll also admit that humanity's current understanding of ripple effects in general, and our understanding of how MIRI/FHI-style research in particular will affect the world, leaves much to be desired.
So I'm glad that Givewell, MIRI, FHI, Nick Beckstead, and others are investing resources to figure out how these things work.
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In response to
Privileging the Question
There's a Swedish word for this, "problemformuleringsprivilegiet," which roughly translates as "the privilege to formulate the problem."
The difference between languages and accents is largely a manner of degree. The boundary lines are completely arbitrary. You can pair mutually intelligible modes of speech together in a chain and have non-mutually-intelligible ends of the chain.
Indeed, my point was rather that if Scanian is included, so should ten or so other accents as well.
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Worth remembering (when comparing ‘the US’ to ‘Europe’)
The map of languages of Europe (as most such maps I've seen) has some very weird things. Why the hell would “Toscan” [sic] be considered a separate language from Italian and Neapolitan wouldn't? Describing most of Ireland as a “bilinguism [sic] situation” sounds like wishful thinking -- Irish might be official but very few people speak it regularly (not counting school classes and the like) except on the west coast.
Being from southern Sweden myself, I was also quite amused to see that Scanian – which is really just an accent – is marked as a separate language.
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http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1758-5899.12002/abstract (I want the publication version from this website, not the copy available free elsewhere.)
A few points:
- This year, spring has been much colder in most European countries than it typically is.
- FHI folks are not very representative: the fact that many of them spend late nights and weekends at the office isn't particularly strong evidence that other folks in the UK and in countries with a similar climate do the same.
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Nonfiction Books Thread
Just came across the book Behavior Modification in Applied Settings, which I don't think has been mentioned on Less Wrong previously. I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but it looks like it could be useful for those of us interested in boosting productivity and personal effectiveness.