Someone asked me via PM, in reference to this post, “Do you have any specific recommendations on the most useful fields, ideas, or techniques thus far [for solving FAI-related philosophical problems]?” I figure I’d answer here publicly in case anyone else finds my answer helpful. This is a list of topics that I studied over the years that I think contributed most to what philosophical progress I managed to make. (The order given here is not very significant. It’s just roughly the order in which I encountered and started studying these topics.)
evolutionary biology and psychology
computer science (theory of computation, algorithms, data structures, OS, compiler, languages)
Someone asked me via PM, in reference to this post, “Do you have any specific recommendations on the most useful fields, ideas, or techniques thus far [for solving FAI-related philosophical problems]?” I figure I’d answer here publicly in case anyone else finds my answer helpful. This is a list of topics that I studied over the years that I think contributed most to what philosophical progress I managed to make. (The order given here is not very significant. It’s just roughly the order in which I encountered and started studying these topics.)
evolutionary biology and psychology
computer science (theory of computation, algorithms, data structures, OS, compiler, languages)
math (number theory, probability, statistics)
cryptography
game theory
anthropic reasoning / indexical uncertainty
Tegmark’s Ultimate Ensemble
algorithmic information theory, AIXI
logic, recusion theory
decision theory
philosophy of science, philosophy of math, ethics