I see Singularity Institute and Future of Humanity Institute as quite nicely complementary:
FHI is part of Oxford, and thus can add great credibility and funding to existential risk reduction. Resulting output: lots of peer-reviewed papers, books from OUP like Global Catastrophic Risks, conferences, media appearances, etc.
SI is independent and is less constrained by conservatism or the university system. Resulting output: Foundational works on Friendly AI (e.g., CFAI was just so much more advanced than anything else in machine ethics in 2001 it’s not even funny), and the ability to do weird things that are nevertheless quite effective at creating tons of new people interested in rationality and existential risk reduction: (1) The Sequences, the best tool I know for creating rational transhumanists, (2) Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, now the most-reviewed fan fiction work of all time on FanFiction.net, (3) Less Wrong in general, a growing online and meatspace community of people who care about rationality and x-risk reduction, (4) Singularity Summit, a mainstream-aimed conference that nevertheless brings in people who end up making significant academic contributions like David Chalmers, along with a broader support base for transhumanism in general, (5) lots of behind-the-scenes work with Giving What We Can and 80,000 Hours that has encouraged the optimal philanthropy community in general to take existential risk reduction seriously.
FHI is in Britain, SI is in the USA.
FHI and SI have different but overlapping goals. FHI investigates a much broader range of transhumanist topics, whereas SI is more focused on AI risks and the rationality skills needed to think correctly about them.
I’m currently glad I work for the org with greater flexibility (SI), but I am quite happy with FHI’s rather incredible productivity. I don’t know any other philosophy research institute that has published so much original and important work in such a short time, ever.
edit 12/01/2011: Added point (5) in the list above, about optimal philanthropy.
Small correction: HP:MoR is the most reviewed Harry Potter fanfiction of all time. I did a quick search for Twilight fanfiction and found a story with 14,822 reviews compared with 14,710 reviews for HP:MoR. I wouldn’t be surprised if that were the number to beat (twilight is a very popular fanfiction topic as far as I know) but due to the disorganization of fanfiction.net, it’s hard to say.
So MoR is now past both Parachutes and Fridays at Noon. Still needs to pass Unexpected Circumstances (now at 24,163). When will it pass? Well:
MoR: 18911 02-28-10; 992 days ago: 18911/992=19.1 reviews per day Status: In Progress
UC: 24163 11-22-10; 725 days ago: 24163/725=33.3 reviews per day Status: Complete
Obviously if UC doesn’t see its review rate decline, it’ll never be passed by MoR; let’s assume it goes to zero (not too unrealistic since UC is finished and MoR is not), how many days will it take MoR to catch up? (24163-18911) / (18911/992) = 275.5.
So barring a major acceleration in MoR reviews, we can’t expect MoR to pass UC within much less than a year, but it’s not too unlikely to pass in a full year (November 2013) and in 2 years I’d consider it likely to highly-likely to pass.
One measure of a multi-chapter fanfic quality is reviews/chapter, and I don’t think that HPMOR is likely to catch up to UC in the near future by that metric.
Well, one can argue that reviews/chapter isn’t necessarily the best metric, but you’re right: since UC is currently less than half the length of MoR and still has more reviews, it will be a long time before reviews/chapter catches up if ever.
I see Singularity Institute and Future of Humanity Institute as quite nicely complementary:
FHI is part of Oxford, and thus can add great credibility and funding to existential risk reduction. Resulting output: lots of peer-reviewed papers, books from OUP like Global Catastrophic Risks, conferences, media appearances, etc.
SI is independent and is less constrained by conservatism or the university system. Resulting output: Foundational works on Friendly AI (e.g., CFAI was just so much more advanced than anything else in machine ethics in 2001 it’s not even funny), and the ability to do weird things that are nevertheless quite effective at creating tons of new people interested in rationality and existential risk reduction: (1) The Sequences, the best tool I know for creating rational transhumanists, (2) Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, now the most-reviewed fan fiction work of all time on FanFiction.net, (3) Less Wrong in general, a growing online and meatspace community of people who care about rationality and x-risk reduction, (4) Singularity Summit, a mainstream-aimed conference that nevertheless brings in people who end up making significant academic contributions like David Chalmers, along with a broader support base for transhumanism in general, (5) lots of behind-the-scenes work with Giving What We Can and 80,000 Hours that has encouraged the optimal philanthropy community in general to take existential risk reduction seriously.
FHI is in Britain, SI is in the USA.
FHI and SI have different but overlapping goals. FHI investigates a much broader range of transhumanist topics, whereas SI is more focused on AI risks and the rationality skills needed to think correctly about them.
I’m currently glad I work for the org with greater flexibility (SI), but I am quite happy with FHI’s rather incredible productivity. I don’t know any other philosophy research institute that has published so much original and important work in such a short time, ever.
edit 12/01/2011: Added point (5) in the list above, about optimal philanthropy.
Small correction: HP:MoR is the most reviewed Harry Potter fanfiction of all time. I did a quick search for Twilight fanfiction and found a story with 14,822 reviews compared with 14,710 reviews for HP:MoR. I wouldn’t be surprised if that were the number to beat (twilight is a very popular fanfiction topic as far as I know) but due to the disorganization of fanfiction.net, it’s hard to say.
Unexpected Circumstances—Reviews: 23,004.
Parachute—Reviews: 16,633.
Fridays at Noon—Reviews 15,162.
I found these using this search.
So MoR is now past both Parachutes and Fridays at Noon. Still needs to pass Unexpected Circumstances (now at 24,163). When will it pass? Well:
MoR: 18911 02-28-10; 992 days ago:
18911/992=19.1
reviews per day Status: In ProgressUC: 24163 11-22-10; 725 days ago:
24163/725=33.3
reviews per day Status: CompleteObviously if UC doesn’t see its review rate decline, it’ll never be passed by MoR; let’s assume it goes to zero (not too unrealistic since UC is finished and MoR is not), how many days will it take MoR to catch up?
(24163-18911) / (18911/992) = 275.5
.So barring a major acceleration in MoR reviews, we can’t expect MoR to pass UC within much less than a year, but it’s not too unlikely to pass in a full year (November 2013) and in 2 years I’d consider it likely to highly-likely to pass.
One measure of a multi-chapter fanfic quality is reviews/chapter, and I don’t think that HPMOR is likely to catch up to UC in the near future by that metric.
Well, one can argue that reviews/chapter isn’t necessarily the best metric, but you’re right: since UC is currently less than half the length of MoR and still has more reviews, it will be a long time before reviews/chapter catches up if ever.
After substantial additional work ( http://www.gwern.net/hpmor#the-review-race-unexpected-circumstances-versus-mor ), I’ve concluded that omitting UC’s reviews is a drastic simplification and when one takes into account the slow accretion, MoR is more likely to catch up in <5 years than <2 years.
I’m sure Eliezer is writing Twilight fanfiction as we speak. It’s an untapped market and would help with the demographics!
Any suggestions for the title?
...how about Luminosity?