It might be worth going to a sleep doctor; sleep apnea can really fuck up your metabolism, not to mention causing unbelievable akrasia. I would say sleep tests are a GOOD THING, something everyone should do. I had sleep apnea for years. It was like some eldritch monster was sucking away my willpower and I wasn’t even aware. Within a few months of getting my mouth guard, which keeps my tongue from blocking my airway while in REM, I lost thirty pounds and gained an enormous well of mental stamina. A small minority of the “metabolically challenged” may just have undiagnosed sleep problems.
Halfwit
Karma: 193
He was an adviser. But I see he no longer is. Retracted.
He killed himself; this is true. He faced 35 years of confinement and the very-real prospect of rape. This, too, is true. He was criminalized for his intent to freely distribute scientific knowledge. This makes him a hero. He broke, but only storybook heroes are unbreakable. It’s depressing how society seems to persecute those most able to improve it; that the broken machine slays those very engineers who’ve dedicated their lives to its repair.
In terms of minimizing the status loss for academics affiliating with SIAI, a banal minimally-descriptive name may be superior. People often overestimate the value of the piquant. Beige may not excite, but it doesn’t offend. Any term which has the potential to become a buzzword, or acquire alternative definitions, should be avoided. The more exciting the term, the higher the chance of appropriation.
This was the point I was trying to make; on rereading it after posting, I realized it was remarkably poorly written and wasn’t even clearly conveying what I was thinking when I wrote it. I didn’t have time to edit it then, so I retracted.
When a heuristic AI is creating a successor that shares its goals, does it insist on formally-verified self improvements? Does it try understanding its mushy, hazy goal system so as to avoid reifying something it would regret given its current goals? It seems to me like some mind eventually will have to confront the FAI issue, why not humans then?
I highly support changing your name—there’s all sorts of bad juju associated with the term “singularity”. My advice, keep the new name as bland as possible, avoiding anything with even a remote chance of entering the popular lexicon. The term “singularity” has suffered the same fate as “cybernetics”.
I thought this was rather tasteful media coverage: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/8691489/Robert-Ettinger-the-father-of-cryonics-is-gone-for-now.html
How much money would you need magicked to allow you to shed fundraising and infrastructure, etc, and just hire and hole up with a dream team of hyper-competent maths wonks? Restated, at which set amount would SIAI be comfortably able to aggressively pursue its long-term research?
The quantum lottery is my retirement plan, my messy messy retirement plan.
del
I just looked it up. That’s odd that there was little interest. There are so many advantages to a high-IQ child. Said child would likely need less years of child care, would require less attention academically and maybe attend college a few years earlier, likely with a full or partial scholarship. And in terms of maternal pride (i.e., signaling your own competence as a mother by talking about your child’s success) high-IQ sperm is a goldmine. Any single (or reproductively duplicitous) mother would be crazy not to select physicist or mathematician sperm, especially taking into account regression to the mean.
If sperm banks advertised high-IQ sperm, we would already have the beginnings of a eugenics program. If we found a way to clone eggs very cheaply, an average couple could have two children, each of whom would have half the DNA of a genius and half the DNA of one of their average parents. The advantage of this, in terms of social mobility, could be enough to avoid the need for coercive eugenics.
Regardless, I’m sure such a thing would be outlawed for various stupid reasons.
And remember, living in a world in which the average person is as smart as an upper-level computer programmer still isn’t nearly as humbling as the fact that a well-organized cubic centimeter of carbon could be millions of times smarter than anyone.
I figure this to be a good general rule on these matters: unless you designed your own brain, you should not be proud of your own brain.
SRI’s Shakey would be justified in its dualism.
Untangling the Knot: A Users Guide to the Human Mind
Your Brain, an Owner’s Manual
Less than One, Greater than Zero: The Sequences, 2006–2009
Approximating Omega (badly, of course)
Sharpening the Mace
Uncountable Infinite Shades of Grey (my apologies)
Stop Tripping Yourself: A Users Guide to the Human Mind
Marshaling the Mind: An Introduction to the Informed Art of Rationality
Motes and Meaning: The Less Wrong Archives
Of Motes and Meaning
Theory, in Practice
Thinking, in Practice
Thinking in Circles:Avoiding the Known Bugs in Human Reasoning.