I was there—I’m another one in the “didn’t watch talks because time was better spent meeting people, but glad I saw Robin Hanson’s and Jaan Tallinn’s talks” category. So most of this comment is about talking to people, not about the speakers.
Changed my mind on a couple of minor issues:
All the action in em-world being concentrated in a few city-like hotspots (from Hanson’s talk)
Making people smarter (e.g. through genetics) would advance brain-computer interfacing faster than other technologies such as AI
Things I still find questionable about Hanson’s em world vision: how long the assumptions would actually be valid for (after which he admits the model breaks down), and chances of meaty humans surviving and having property rights respected (to me there seem several reasons why em/human situation isn’t analogous to workers/retirees in current society).
Tallinn’s talk didn’t actually tell me anything new (except the idea about the depth-first search meaning most time is spent at the leaf nodes near where superintelligence emerges). I found his presentation style really enjoyable though—and it seemed to leave everyone buzzing and produced lots of opportunities for geeking about anthropic principles afterwards.
People I met mostly fell into three categories:
Business (investors and founders of tech startups)
People who live in the area and are just curious
The Less Wrong tribe, or people with that mindset—people either wanting to change the world or just with a love for big, important wild ideas
A good place to hang out was the [CFAR|http://appliedrationality.org/] table—it had chocolates, Anna Salamon, a flip chart with invitingly mysterious doodles and free copies of HPMoR(1-17) - so tended to attract good people. (An interesting suggestion emerged—there should be a flip chart and pens not just at the CFAR table but everywhere else as well).
I didn’t hear Kurzweil’s talk but many people seemed to feel he wasn’t saying anything they hadn’t heard from him before.
On the effective altruism front, out of the people I’d expect to, most had heard of [THINK|http://lesswrong.com/lw/dyj/the_high_impact_network_think_launching_now/] and were broadly positive about it. A theme that emerged a couple of times in discussions was the problem of “being too meta”—the tendency to over-strategize and not actually do anything (and cause others to lose interest).
As for the hard questions about how to evaluate xrisk orgs (and whether e.g. GiveWell would be competent at this task), and what I personally should be doing in my life to make the world better… no concrete answers. I very much got the impression that if anyone knew exactly how these things worked and what needed doing, it would already be being done—so that it’s up to me to figure something out and then go ahead and do it.
Next time I’ll see if I remember to print business cards.
I was there—I’m another one in the “didn’t watch talks because time was better spent meeting people, but glad I saw Robin Hanson’s and Jaan Tallinn’s talks” category. So most of this comment is about talking to people, not about the speakers.
Changed my mind on a couple of minor issues:
All the action in em-world being concentrated in a few city-like hotspots (from Hanson’s talk)
Making people smarter (e.g. through genetics) would advance brain-computer interfacing faster than other technologies such as AI
Things I still find questionable about Hanson’s em world vision: how long the assumptions would actually be valid for (after which he admits the model breaks down), and chances of meaty humans surviving and having property rights respected (to me there seem several reasons why em/human situation isn’t analogous to workers/retirees in current society).
Tallinn’s talk didn’t actually tell me anything new (except the idea about the depth-first search meaning most time is spent at the leaf nodes near where superintelligence emerges). I found his presentation style really enjoyable though—and it seemed to leave everyone buzzing and produced lots of opportunities for geeking about anthropic principles afterwards.
People I met mostly fell into three categories:
Business (investors and founders of tech startups)
People who live in the area and are just curious
The Less Wrong tribe, or people with that mindset—people either wanting to change the world or just with a love for big, important wild ideas
A good place to hang out was the [CFAR|http://appliedrationality.org/] table—it had chocolates, Anna Salamon, a flip chart with invitingly mysterious doodles and free copies of HPMoR(1-17) - so tended to attract good people. (An interesting suggestion emerged—there should be a flip chart and pens not just at the CFAR table but everywhere else as well).
I didn’t hear Kurzweil’s talk but many people seemed to feel he wasn’t saying anything they hadn’t heard from him before.
On the effective altruism front, out of the people I’d expect to, most had heard of [THINK|http://lesswrong.com/lw/dyj/the_high_impact_network_think_launching_now/] and were broadly positive about it. A theme that emerged a couple of times in discussions was the problem of “being too meta”—the tendency to over-strategize and not actually do anything (and cause others to lose interest).
As for the hard questions about how to evaluate xrisk orgs (and whether e.g. GiveWell would be competent at this task), and what I personally should be doing in my life to make the world better… no concrete answers. I very much got the impression that if anyone knew exactly how these things worked and what needed doing, it would already be being done—so that it’s up to me to figure something out and then go ahead and do it.
Next time I’ll see if I remember to print business cards.