Comments on: This Week’s Finds (Week 311)

By: Alexander Kruel · Why you should be wary of the Singularity Institute

Alexander Kruel · Why you should be wary of the Singularity Institute — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 12:29:07 +0000

[...] Eliezer Yudkowsky in an interview with John [...]

By: Alexander Kruel · Is criticism of the Singularity Institute a result of hostility?

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 11:35:41 +0000

“[...] and run the AI, at which point, if all goes well, we Win.)” — Eliezer Yudkowsky in an interview with John Baez

By: Thomas Too

Thomas Too — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 02:21:30 +0000

Hey, you’re right. I assumed attendee were donors. Well, I’ve got to go now, I just found a list of people to whom I wish to sell my absolutely effective perpetual motion machines.

By: John Baez

John Baez — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 02:10:40 +0000

Thomas Too wrote:

Look at the lists of attendees of singularity conferences. There are many people from universities and defense contractors.

Okay, those people are attending the conferences---but now you've got me curious to know which kinds of people are donating money to the Singularity Institute. It's not too hard to find out: just look at the list of top donors and use Google to find out what they do. I only had time now to look at the top five donors, and they are not people who work at universities. They're a foundation, an "Estonian programmer who participated in the development of Skype and FastTrack/Kazaa", a person who works on "Proximiant building technology to beam receipts straight to your phone", an investment group, and a millionaire who "retired seven years ago after a successful career in Silicon Valley". This matches what I expected. Perhaps you could go through the list and see what the typical contributor is like.

By: Thomas Too

Thomas Too — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 01:52:19 +0000

Look at the lists of attendees of singularity conferences. There are many people from universities and defense contractors. I have read the self deluded ramblings of the risks of AI.

The risks of AI supposes that it might exist. There is no evidence that it will. A symposium on the risks of discovering the philosphers stone would have been as useful. The emperor has no clothes, but people who want to get money from the emperor stand in line to say how spendid is his raiment.

By: John Baez

John Baez — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 01:16:07 +0000

I never made any claims of rapid progress toward intelligent machines, so I have no position to defend and don't feel like discussing this question now. But Alexander Kruel has been interviewing researchers about this, and you might be interested in what they say: • Alexander Kruel, Interview series on risks from AI. By the way, you write:

Oh, I don’t doubt that if a person is naive enough to persuaded by the singularity arguments, that they are naive enough to give money, but a substantial portion of their money is coming from institutions like universities...

What's the evidence for this claim, please?

By: Thomas Too

Thomas Too — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 00:29:16 +0000

Oh, I don’t doubt that if a person is naive enough to persuaded by the singularity arguments, that they are naive enough to give money, but a substantial portion of their money is coming from institutions like universities, so, I guess you could say it is in large part, state money, but a major portion of state education funding comes from federal state grants, or work at companies that get federal funding, because the most gullible are federal employees.
Singularity “research” has some similarities to a multi level marketing scheme. Get in at the beginning, donate money for seminars to get a credential as an expert, then teach a similar course to other people who want to scam the next greedy sucker behind them.
Singularity has little in common with either science or philosoply. Science only occurs if you can do an experiment with a control, which has never happened in singularity research. Philosophy is a search for basic understanding that is open to all who are prepared to advance and defend their concepts, but for singularity, unless you have accepted the basic premise that it is coming, you are excluded as “naive.”
Singularity has more in common with the self help and actualization movement, homeopathy, and alchemy. I If you don’t agree with the premise, then you “just don’t get it.” You “just don’t get it,” is an example of the special pleading logical fallacy, such as described by Carl Sagan.
As I have written before, the singularity is the new philosphoer’s stone.
So , While you have only responded to half my post, I respond in 4 parts to yours.
It is not all private money.
Singularity donations are like a ponzi scheme.
Singularity is not science or philosphy.
The singularity is the new philosophers stone.
I was expecting a dismissive “just dont get it response,” so am a little surprised you made a fact argument. But as you dismiss my 4 parts in your response, please also address (to dismiss) the second part of my prior post, that there is no progress , real or expected, in intelligent machines. I will be counting how many times I “just dont get it.”

By: John Baez

John Baez — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 22:43:02 +0000

It's perhaps a side point, but I think most singularitarians who are trying to raise money are seeking private donations, not federal funding. For example, in this video Eliezer Yudkowsky said:

I would be asking for more people to make as much money as possible if they’re the sorts of people who can make a lot of money and donating a substantial amount fraction, never mind all the minimal living expenses, to the Singularity Institute.

More to the point, I can't help but feel that the singularitarians who are donating money to the Singularity Institute and other such organizations really are concerned about the future!

By: Thomas Too

Thomas Too — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 22:15:11 +0000

“[what I ] like most about singularitarians is that they care about the future” The only evidence for that comes from their own statements about how much they care. It is much more likely that they care about getting federal funding from easily impressed federal administrators with more grant money than brains.

After a hundred years of making better computers, we are not any closer to making intelligence than before. To make a faster computer, we make faster relays, the building block of math computations. Not only do we not know how to make a building block of intelligence, we don’t even know what it would be. All the computers every made in the world, but together, could not out smart a gerbil. If the programmers did not think of it before, the computer can not do it. A gerbil can think. There is not only no step down the path towards a thinking machine, there is no direction to go, and we don’t even know how to make the metaphorical feet to start down such a path. The singularity is a scam. The singularity is a federally funded scam. The singularity is a federally funded scam like the esp warriors of the 1970′s.

By: Alexander Kruel · Possible reasons for a perception of lesswrong/SIAI as a cult

Sun, 29 Jul 2012 14:57:28 +0000

[...] The Sequences have been written with the goal in mind of convincing people of the importance of taking risks from AI seriously and therefore donate to SI: “…after a few years of beating my head against the wall trying to get other people involved, I realized that I really did have to go back to the beginning, start over, and explain all the basics that people needed to know before they could follow the advanced arguments. Saving the world via AI research simply can’t compete against the Society for Treating Rare Diseases in Cute Kittens unless your audience knows about things like scope insensitivity…” (Reference: An interview with Eliezer Yudkowsky). [...]