Wei, you and others here interested in my opinions on this topic would benefit from understanding more about where I’m coming from, which you can mainly do by reading my old essays (especially the three philosophy essays I’ve just linked to on Unenumerated). It’s a very different world view than the typical “Less Wrong” worldview: based far more on accumulated knowledge and far less on superficial hyper-rationality. You can ask any questions that you have of me there, as I don’t typically hang out here. As for your questions on this topic:
(1) There is insufficient evidence to distinguish it from an arbitrarily low probability.
(2) To state a probability would be an exercise in false precision, but at least it’s a clearly stated goal that one can start gathering evidence for and against.
(3) It depends on how clearly and formally the goal is stated, including the design of observatons and/or experiments that can be done to accurately (not just precisely) measure progress towards and attainment or non-attainment of that goal.
As for what I’m currently working on, my blog Unenumerated is a good indication of my publicly accessible work. Also feel free to ask any follow-up questions or comments you have stemming from this thread there.
I’ve actually already read those essays (which I really enjoyed, BTW), but still often cannot see how you’ve arrived at your conclusions on the topics we’ve been talking about recently.
For the rest of your comment, you seem to have misunderstood my grandparent comment. I was asking you to respond to my arguments on each of the threads we were discussing, not just to tell me how you would answer each of my questions. (I was using the questions to refer to our discussions, not literally asking them. Sorry if I didn’t make that clear.)
Nick, do you see a fault in how I’ve been carrying on our discussions as well? Because you’ve also left several of our threads dangling, including:
How likely is it that an AGI will be created before all of its potential economic niches have been filled by more specialized algorithms?
How much hope is there for “security against malware as strong as we can achieve for symmetric key cryptography”?
Does “hopelessly anthropomorphic and vague” really apply to “goals”?
(Of course it’s understandable if you’re just too busy. If that’s the case, what kind of projects are you working on these days?)
Wei, you and others here interested in my opinions on this topic would benefit from understanding more about where I’m coming from, which you can mainly do by reading my old essays (especially the three philosophy essays I’ve just linked to on Unenumerated). It’s a very different world view than the typical “Less Wrong” worldview: based far more on accumulated knowledge and far less on superficial hyper-rationality. You can ask any questions that you have of me there, as I don’t typically hang out here. As for your questions on this topic:
(1) There is insufficient evidence to distinguish it from an arbitrarily low probability.
(2) To state a probability would be an exercise in false precision, but at least it’s a clearly stated goal that one can start gathering evidence for and against.
(3) It depends on how clearly and formally the goal is stated, including the design of observatons and/or experiments that can be done to accurately (not just precisely) measure progress towards and attainment or non-attainment of that goal.
As for what I’m currently working on, my blog Unenumerated is a good indication of my publicly accessible work. Also feel free to ask any follow-up questions or comments you have stemming from this thread there.
I’ve actually already read those essays (which I really enjoyed, BTW), but still often cannot see how you’ve arrived at your conclusions on the topics we’ve been talking about recently.
For the rest of your comment, you seem to have misunderstood my grandparent comment. I was asking you to respond to my arguments on each of the threads we were discussing, not just to tell me how you would answer each of my questions. (I was using the questions to refer to our discussions, not literally asking them. Sorry if I didn’t make that clear.)