Is it really useful to debate such a difficult and completely unintuitive concept in 90 minutes? It took me at least 20 hours pure reading time to finish the AI-foom debate, which consists of over 50 blog-posts.
Hanson uses simpler analogies than Yudkowsky and tries to explain basic concepts, whereas Yudkowsky’s information-dense arguments often aim too high, especially considering the short time.
The primary impact appears to have been to increase the undecided votes which (assuming a high quality audience) implies to me that many members of the audience were somewhat irrationally polarized to begin with (as might be reasonable) and many people heard things from “the other side” during the debate that they had never heard before and updated towards 50⁄50 ignorance based on the debate. (Perhaps there is some wishful thinking in this model? Hard to tell.)
If this model of the debate and audience is right, it suggests that no one (neither Hanson nor Eli nor anyone else I know of), has a clearly correct model for singularity issues with slots for evidence that has been tracked down and dropped into place to give a clean and clear answer. Basically, it sound to me like most very smart people who’ve thought about the singularity are still confused, and more of them are beginning to notice their confusion.
My two cents:
Is it really useful to debate such a difficult and completely unintuitive concept in 90 minutes? It took me at least 20 hours pure reading time to finish the AI-foom debate, which consists of over 50 blog-posts.
Hanson uses simpler analogies than Yudkowsky and tries to explain basic concepts, whereas Yudkowsky’s information-dense arguments often aim too high, especially considering the short time.
If anybody can understand this after 90 minutes, it’s the guys at Jane Street.
The primary impact appears to have been to increase the undecided votes which (assuming a high quality audience) implies to me that many members of the audience were somewhat irrationally polarized to begin with (as might be reasonable) and many people heard things from “the other side” during the debate that they had never heard before and updated towards 50⁄50 ignorance based on the debate. (Perhaps there is some wishful thinking in this model? Hard to tell.)
If this model of the debate and audience is right, it suggests that no one (neither Hanson nor Eli nor anyone else I know of), has a clearly correct model for singularity issues with slots for evidence that has been tracked down and dropped into place to give a clean and clear answer. Basically, it sound to me like most very smart people who’ve thought about the singularity are still confused, and more of them are beginning to notice their confusion.
Some people read really fast :)