I’ve been lurking on LW for a couple of months, trying to work through all of the major sequences. I don’t remember how I discovered it; it might have been a link in the BadAstronomy blog. I studied astronomy in school and grad school and end up becoming a software engineer, which I’ve done for almost 30 years now. Most of the content here resonates powerfully with the intellectual searching I’ve been doing my whole life, and I’m finding it both stimulating and humbling. Spurred by what I’ve read here, I’ve just acquired Judea Pearl’s “Causality” and Barbour’s “The End of Time”, and I’m working through the Jaynes book on bayesian probability (though the study group seems pretty inactive). There’s a lot of synchronicity going on in my life; much of my software work over the last decade has involved causality graphs and Bayesian belief networks, but I hadn’t taken the time to delve very deeply into understanding the underlying fundamentals. I recently read Lee Smolin’s “The Trouble With Physics”, and he mentioned Barbour’s work as a possibly promising new direction, so reading Eliezer’s comments on it struck a chord. Finally, I’m becoming increasingly aware of transformative change in society (though I wouldn’t go so far as to anticipate the Singularity any time soon) and trying on new ideas and concepts that might make me more successfully adaptive, like those found in Seth Godin’s blog and books or Pamela Slim’s “Escape from Cubicle Nation”. I recognize a similar leap facing me here: if I come to believe that the Singularity/AI are “real”, can I stop lurking and take meaningful action?
I’ve been lurking on LW for a couple of months, trying to work through all of the major sequences. I don’t remember how I discovered it; it might have been a link in the BadAstronomy blog. I studied astronomy in school and grad school and end up becoming a software engineer, which I’ve done for almost 30 years now. Most of the content here resonates powerfully with the intellectual searching I’ve been doing my whole life, and I’m finding it both stimulating and humbling. Spurred by what I’ve read here, I’ve just acquired Judea Pearl’s “Causality” and Barbour’s “The End of Time”, and I’m working through the Jaynes book on bayesian probability (though the study group seems pretty inactive). There’s a lot of synchronicity going on in my life; much of my software work over the last decade has involved causality graphs and Bayesian belief networks, but I hadn’t taken the time to delve very deeply into understanding the underlying fundamentals. I recently read Lee Smolin’s “The Trouble With Physics”, and he mentioned Barbour’s work as a possibly promising new direction, so reading Eliezer’s comments on it struck a chord. Finally, I’m becoming increasingly aware of transformative change in society (though I wouldn’t go so far as to anticipate the Singularity any time soon) and trying on new ideas and concepts that might make me more successfully adaptive, like those found in Seth Godin’s blog and books or Pamela Slim’s “Escape from Cubicle Nation”. I recognize a similar leap facing me here: if I come to believe that the Singularity/AI are “real”, can I stop lurking and take meaningful action?
You look to be very capable of using correct reasoning, based on your extensive software experience and familiarity with causal nets!
I recently asked question here about timeless physics, but no one seems to want to answer it… I think you might have some good insight on that matter.