Indeed. On the other hand, humans frequently use intelligence to do much stupider things than they could have done without that degree of intelligence. Previous brilliance means that future strange ideas should be taken seriously, but not that the future ideas must be even more brilliant because they look so stupid. Ray Kurzweil is an excellent example—an undoubted genius of real achievements, but also now undoubtedly completely off the rails and well into pseudoscience. (Alkaline water!)
I don’t think that’s credible. Eliezer has focused much of his intelligence on avoiding “brilliant stupidity”, orders of magnitude more so than any Kurzweil-esque example.
Indeed. On the other hand, humans frequently use intelligence to do much stupider things than they could have done without that degree of intelligence. Previous brilliance means that future strange ideas should be taken seriously, but not that the future ideas must be even more brilliant because they look so stupid. Ray Kurzweil is an excellent example—an undoubted genius of real achievements, but also now undoubtedly completely off the rails and well into pseudoscience. (Alkaline water!)
Ray on alkaline water:
http://glowing-health.com/alkaline-water/ray-kurzweil-alkaine-water.html
See, RationalWiki is a silly wiki full of rude people. But one thing we know a lot about, is woo. That reads like a parody of woo.
Scary.
I don’t think that’s credible. Eliezer has focused much of his intelligence on avoiding “brilliant stupidity”, orders of magnitude more so than any Kurzweil-esque example.
So the thing to do in this situation is to ask them: “excuse me wtf are you doin?” And this has been done.
So far there’s been no explanation, nor even acknowledgement of how profoundly stupid this looks. This does nothing to make them look smarter.
Of course, as I noted, a truly amazing Xanatos retcon is indeed not impossible.