This reminds me of I believe it was Robin's post which cautioned us about interesting writing styles and anecdotes since it seems to subtract from how accurately people recall the main points of a piece of writing. From reading your blog, and others, I have been inspired to take the interesting and informal writing approach when talking about high-level concepts.
I think that perhaps in any one piece it may be a negative factor, especially if the anecdotes and cliches aren't completely pertinent to the topic. Nevertheless, I think on a larger scale that it ...
Sexual Weirdtopia: Double-blind Sexocracy .... you get the idea.
Governmental Weirdtopia: Double-blind democracy. Yearly presidents are chosen at random. (couldn't be worse than our current system) The catch is that the person chosen to be the leader has absolutely no idea that they are the leader. They are followed around and monitored, and anything uttered resembling a decree is put into action if it doesn't violate the constitution. The decrees are only put into place after their term expires so they don't catch on. Quick decision-making such as treaties are wars are left up to a streamlined unicameral legislative body.
A lot of this post hinges on storytelling, which as we all seem to agree is different than actually living life. Perhaps the reason people are interested in tragic stories and news is related to Prospect Theory. We are more interested in curing and preventing tragedy than increasing from 10,000 to 20,000 hedons.
Of course people to this day read all sorts of self-help books even if they don't have much tragedy in their lives. They just don't read them as you would a "masterpiece." I suppose people in the future may do the same, hoping to glean som...
Tiiba,
There is a difference between science and technology. Science is just empirical knowledge and the process of acquiring it. Technology is applied science. It shows hubris to actually think you can build something smarter than yourself in a way that has a reasonable chance of avoiding terrible unforeseen consequences.
That doesn't mean he is wrong when he argues AGI is just on the horizon and it is better that someone who cares about friendliness implements it first. I don't know enough to say one way or another.
Hubris is probably one of the traits that... (read more)