“someone who’s never heard of X (in this case the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics and the anthropic principle) isn’t going to have a clue what the hell you’re talking about.”
Yeah, that must be why I didn’t understand anything. But I got the tolkien reference!
I passed along the story that alien message to a friend of mine, and he thought it was an interesting story but completely failed to notice the AI connection, even though he was a little familiar with those ideas. I didn’t disparage him for that, and I could see how unless you were familiar with Eliezer talking about AI boxes it wouldn’t be be obvious, but here I really shared his experience. I actually thought for a bit “is Eliezer practicing for a side career in fantasy writing?” I know a little about the anthropic principle though, so when the concept was referenced most of the pieces fell together in a very felicitous way. Maybe that’s actually an overall better effect, having the whole thing hit you ’”at once”?
By the way, though I was able to scrounge up the Knuth UpArrow notatation, if it’s convenient could someone point me to something explaining the scariest thing imaginable? I’ve yet to realize the soul-gnawing horror of 3^^^^3 dust specks going into Eliezer’s eye.
“someone who’s never heard of X (in this case the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics and the anthropic principle) isn’t going to have a clue what the hell you’re talking about.”
Yeah, that must be why I didn’t understand anything. But I got the tolkien reference!
I passed along the story that alien message to a friend of mine, and he thought it was an interesting story but completely failed to notice the AI connection, even though he was a little familiar with those ideas. I didn’t disparage him for that, and I could see how unless you were familiar with Eliezer talking about AI boxes it wouldn’t be be obvious, but here I really shared his experience. I actually thought for a bit “is Eliezer practicing for a side career in fantasy writing?” I know a little about the anthropic principle though, so when the concept was referenced most of the pieces fell together in a very felicitous way. Maybe that’s actually an overall better effect, having the whole thing hit you ’”at once”?
By the way, though I was able to scrounge up the Knuth UpArrow notatation, if it’s convenient could someone point me to something explaining the scariest thing imaginable? I’ve yet to realize the soul-gnawing horror of 3^^^^3 dust specks going into Eliezer’s eye.
Click on the photo.