Help Fund Lukeprog at SIAI

Eliezer Yudkowsky

Singularity Institute desperately needs someone who is not me who can write cognitive-science-based material. Someone smart, energetic, able to speak to popular audiences, and with an excellent command of the science. If you’ve been reading Less Wrong for the last few months, you probably just thought the same thing I did: “SIAI should hire Lukeprog!” To support Luke Muelhauser becoming a full-time Singularity Institute employee, please donate and mention Luke (e.g. “Yay for Luke!”) in the check memo or the comment field of your donation - or if you donate by a method that doesn’t allow you to leave a comment, tell Louie Helm (louie@intelligence.org) your donation was to help fund Luke.

Note that the Summer Challenge that doubles all donations will run until August 31st. (We're currently at $31,000 of $125,000.)

During his stint as a Singularity Institute Visiting Fellow, Luke has already:

Co-organized and taught sessions for a well-received one-week Rationality Minicamp, and taught sessions for the nine-week Rationality Boot Camp.
Written many helpful and well-researched articles for Less Wrong on metaethics, rationality theory, and rationality practice, including the 20-page tutorial A Crash Course in the Neuroscience of Human Motivation.
Written a new Singularity FAQ.
Published an intelligence explosion website for academics.
...and completed many smaller projects.

As a full-time Singularity Institute employee, Luke could:

Author and co-author research papers and outreach papers, including
- A chapter already accepted to Springer’s The Singularity Hypothesis volume (co-authored with Louie Helm).
- A paper on existential risk and optimal philanthropy, co-authored with a Columbia University researcher.
Continue to write articles for Less Wrong on the theory and practice of rationality.
Write a report that summarizes unsolved problems related to Friendly AI.
Continue to develop his metaethics sequence, the conclusion of which will be a sort of Polymath Project for collaboratively solving open problems in metaethics relevant to FAI development.
Teach courses on rationality and social effectiveness, as he has been doing for the Singularity Institute’s Rationality Minicamp and Rationality Boot Camp.
Produce introductory materials to help bridge inferential gaps, as he did with the Singularity FAQ.
Raise awareness of AI risk and the uses of rationality by giving talks at universities and technology companies, as he recently did at Halcyon Molecular.

If you’d like to help us fund Luke Muehlhauser to do all that and probably more, please donate now and include the word “Luke” in the comment field. And if you donate before August 31st, your donation will be doubled as part of the 2011 Summer Singularity Challenge.

Note that the Summer Challenge that doubles all donations will run until August 31st. (We're currently at $31,000 of $125,000.)

During his stint as a Singularity Institute Visiting Fellow, Luke has already:

Co-organized and taught sessions for a well-received one-week Rationality Minicamp, and taught sessions for the nine-week Rationality Boot Camp.
Written many helpful and well-researched articles for Less Wrong on metaethics, rationality theory, and rationality practice, including the 20-page tutorial A Crash Course in the Neuroscience of Human Motivation.
Written a new Singularity FAQ.
Published an intelligence explosion website for academics.
...and completed many smaller projects.

As a full-time Singularity Institute employee, Luke could:

Author and co-author research papers and outreach papers, including
- A chapter already accepted to Springer’s The Singularity Hypothesis volume (co-authored with Louie Helm).
- A paper on existential risk and optimal philanthropy, co-authored with a Columbia University researcher.
Continue to write articles for Less Wrong on the theory and practice of rationality.
Write a report that summarizes unsolved problems related to Friendly AI.
Continue to develop his metaethics sequence, the conclusion of which will be a sort of Polymath Project for collaboratively solving open problems in metaethics relevant to FAI development.
Teach courses on rationality and social effectiveness, as he has been doing for the Singularity Institute’s Rationality Minicamp and Rationality Boot Camp.
Produce introductory materials to help bridge inferential gaps, as he did with the Singularity FAQ.
Raise awareness of AI risk and the uses of rationality by giving talks at universities and technology companies, as he recently did at Halcyon Molecular.

Great, so did I! Now communicate that evidence. If it can't be communicated, I don't think you should be so confident in it.

Here:

Surprisingly positive reviews in both qualitative and quantitative forms on our exit surveys.
Follow-ups with many individual minicampers who report that several of the things we taught have stuck with them and improved their lives.
People telling me to my face during minicamp that they were getting lots of value out of it.
Enthusiastic testimonials.

It may take time for the participants to report back, but not for you to tabulate the results.

No, it definitely takes time to tabluate the results and write a presentable post about the results. I've personally spent 3 hours on it already but the project is unfinished.

Do you want your audience to be people who just take your word on something like this?

Ah. I may not have communicate this clearly: I think your skepticism concerning the success of the minicamp is warranted because almost no evidence is available to you. You're welcome to not take my word for it. When I have another 5-10 hours to finish putting together the results and write a post with more details about minicamp, I will, but I'm mostly waiting to invest that time until I can do it most profitably, for example when we've gathered more 'after minicamp' data.

Then why don't you mention this in your "how to be happy" post, which is also being used as evidence of your productivity?

I don't understand. The 'How to Be Happy' post was written before I helped run minicamp. And, there are tons of things not mentioned in that post. That post barely scratches the surface of my thoughts on happiness, let alone research on happiness in general.

Do you know a single person who has improved fashion to an acceptable level as a result of those magazines?

I doubt magazines is ever the sole input on someone's fashion sense, but yes I know people who have improved their fashion as a result of following magazines (or fashion blogs; same thing basically). Ask Peter Scheyer about this, for example.

Given the large amount of effort it took to get to the miny camps, all four of these could be easily explained by cognitive dissonance.

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