I’ve been thinking that there are parallels between building FAI and Talmud—it’s an effort to manage an extremely dangerous, uncommunicative entity through deduction. (An FAI may be communicative to some extent. An FAI which hasn’t been built yet doesn’t communicate.)
Being an atheist doesn’t eliminate cultural influence. Survey for atheists: which God do you especially not believe in?
I was talking about FAI with Gene Treadwell, who’s black. He was quite concerned that the FAI would be sentient, but owned and controlled.
This doesn’t mean that either Eliezer or Gene are wrong (or right for that matter), but it suggests to me that culture gives defaults which might be strong attractors. [1]
He recommended recruiting Japanese members, since they’re more apt to like and trust robots.
I don’t know about explaining ourselves, but we may need more angles on the problem just to be able to do the work.
[1] See also Timothy Leary’s S.M.I.2L.E.-- Space Migration, Increased Intelligence, Life Extension. Robert Anton Wilson said that was match for Catholic hopes of going to heaven, being trajnsfigured, and living forever.
He recommended recruiting Japanese members, since they’re more apt to like and >trust robots.
He has a very good point. I was surprised more Japanese or Koreans hadn’t made their way to Lesswrong. This was my motivation for first proposing we recruit translators for Japanese and Chinese and to begin working towards a goal of making at least the sequences available in many languages.
Not being a native speaker of English proved a significant barrier for me in some respects. The first noticeable one was spelling, I however solved the problem by outsourcing this part of the system known as Konkvistador to the browser. ;) Other more insidious forms of miscommunication and cultural difficulties persist.
I’m not sure that it’s a language thing. I think many (most?) college-educated Japanese, Koreans, and Chinese can read and write in English. We also seem to have more Russian LWers than Japanese, Koreans, and Chinese combined.
According to a page gwern linked to in another branch of the thread, among those who got 5 on AP Physics C in 2008, 62.0% were White and 28.3% were Asian. But according to the LW survey, only 3.8% of respondents were Asian.
Maybe there is something about Asian cultures that makes them less overtly interested in rationality, but I don’t have any good ideas what it might be.
I’m not sure that it’s a language thing. I think many (most?) college-educated Japanese, Koreans, and Chinese can read and write in English. We also seem to have more Russian LWers than Japanese, Koreans, and Chinese combined.
All LW users display near-native control of English, which won’t be as universal, and typically requires years-long consumption of English content. English-speaking world is the default source of non-Russian content for Russians, but it might not be the case with native Asians (what’s your impression?)
My impression is that for most native Asians, the English-speaking world is also their default source of non-native-language content. I have some relatives in China, and to the extent they do consume non-Chinese content, they consume English content. None of them consume enough of it to obtain near-native control of English though.
I’m curious, what kind of English content did you consume before you came across OB/LW? How typical do you think that level of consumption is in Russia?
I’ve been thinking that there are parallels between building FAI and Talmud—it’s an effort to manage an extremely dangerous, uncommunicative entity through deduction. (An FAI may be communicative to some extent. An FAI which hasn’t been built yet doesn’t communicate.)
Being an atheist doesn’t eliminate cultural influence. Survey for atheists: which God do you especially not believe in?
I was talking about FAI with Gene Treadwell, who’s black. He was quite concerned that the FAI would be sentient, but owned and controlled.
This doesn’t mean that either Eliezer or Gene are wrong (or right for that matter), but it suggests to me that culture gives defaults which might be strong attractors. [1]
He recommended recruiting Japanese members, since they’re more apt to like and trust robots.
I don’t know about explaining ourselves, but we may need more angles on the problem just to be able to do the work.
[1] See also Timothy Leary’s S.M.I.2L.E.-- Space Migration, Increased Intelligence, Life Extension. Robert Anton Wilson said that was match for Catholic hopes of going to heaven, being trajnsfigured, and living forever.
He has a very good point. I was surprised more Japanese or Koreans hadn’t made their way to Lesswrong. This was my motivation for first proposing we recruit translators for Japanese and Chinese and to begin working towards a goal of making at least the sequences available in many languages.
Not being a native speaker of English proved a significant barrier for me in some respects. The first noticeable one was spelling, I however solved the problem by outsourcing this part of the system known as Konkvistador to the browser. ;) Other more insidious forms of miscommunication and cultural difficulties persist.
I’m not sure that it’s a language thing. I think many (most?) college-educated Japanese, Koreans, and Chinese can read and write in English. We also seem to have more Russian LWers than Japanese, Koreans, and Chinese combined.
According to a page gwern linked to in another branch of the thread, among those who got 5 on AP Physics C in 2008, 62.0% were White and 28.3% were Asian. But according to the LW survey, only 3.8% of respondents were Asian.
Maybe there is something about Asian cultures that makes them less overtly interested in rationality, but I don’t have any good ideas what it might be.
All LW users display near-native control of English, which won’t be as universal, and typically requires years-long consumption of English content. English-speaking world is the default source of non-Russian content for Russians, but it might not be the case with native Asians (what’s your impression?)
My impression is that for most native Asians, the English-speaking world is also their default source of non-native-language content. I have some relatives in China, and to the extent they do consume non-Chinese content, they consume English content. None of them consume enough of it to obtain near-native control of English though.
I’m curious, what kind of English content did you consume before you came across OB/LW? How typical do you think that level of consumption is in Russia?
Unfortunately, browser spell checkers usually can’t help you to spell your own name correctly. ;) That is one advantage to my choice of nym.
Right click, add to dictionary. If that doesn’t work then get a better browser.
Ehm, you do realize he was making a humorous remark about “Konkvistador” being my user name right?
Edit:
Well its all clearly Alicorn’s fault. ;)
Actually it was more about Konkivstador not being your name.
I do now. Sorry about that.