Wikipedia says the Singularity institute was founded in 2000, but the 1996 essay mentions it a few times. What's the prehistory of the organization?
The earliest version of 'Staring at the Singularity' I can find was updated in 2000, after Singularity Institute was founded. The document was updated with, among other things, links to the new organization's website.
Thanks for posting these! Reading Eliezer's early work is very interesting, and it sheds a little more light on the Coming of Age sequence. It's obvious that the Eliezer of today has a much greater understanding of his own understanding, and is better than his previous self (and pretty much everyone else I know) at untangling cognitive confusions.
It's also amusing to see that Eliezer_17 was apparently an avid Calvin and Hobbes fan.
Sheesh, the internet holds memories like an embarrassing aunt.
Choose one of the following:
a) the memories are like an embarrassing aunt.
b) the internet's memory is like that of an embarrassing aunt.
c) the internet holds memories like it holds an embarrassing aunt.
Giving the internet the ability to hold my embarrassing aunt the way it currently holds memories might make family reunions a lot more pleasant. Conversely, it might make the rest of my life significantly less so.
Wow. Reading that story now. You can see how Eliezer's writing style has changed. But his ability to come up with amazingly clever modifications of existing works is already there.
Edit: And there's only one chapter? Really? That's sort of sad. Hmm,
V qb unir gb jbaqre vs gur Thneqvna Ornfg vf fhccbfrq gb or Uboorf.
You don't include Three Worlds Collide on this list. That's understandable, I suppose, but it stood out to me.
I may have seen this before, but it just hit me how useful it is. It needs to get a prominent link somewhere, or added to the wiki, or something.
Many of your links don't work, even through web archive. You should link to the original singinst.org versions. Here's General Intelligence and Seed AI through web archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20020605220403/http://www.singinst.org/GISAI/index.html
Where is "BARNEY VS. THE FEDERATION" age 14?!
That was written by another person with the same name.
Edit: I was mistaken, it is the same person. I read his attempt to distance himself from his youthful indiscretions overly literally.
Huh. I'll retract it for now, but I inferred it from the 6th footnote here, taking the fact that it was put up in 1993 by an Eliezer Shlomo Yudkowsky (when Eliezer was "like 13") on that very same message board... are you sure that comment wasn't just an indirect way of saying "Eliezer_1993 did it and Eliezer_2011 bears little resemblance to Eliezer_1993"? The comment you've linked to doesn't seem to bear out what you seem to be asserting (that some other Eliezer Shlomo Yudkowsy, genetically distinct from the one we all know and love, had written on that very same message board a post that looks like it was written by a 13/14 year old sci fi fan in 1993). Even if your assertion is true, there still remains the task of finding the writings that the 6th footnote was referring to!
are you sure that comment wasn't just an indirect way of saying "Eliezer1993 did it and Eliezer2011 bears little resemblance to Eliezer_1993"
You're right - that is what it was. I got wooshed. I'm surprised that you retracted when you have so much evidence to back it up (the date, the middle name, and even a mention in something else written by Eliezer). Does the site let you unretract?
Does the site let you unretract?
Unfortunately not. Maybe that would be a good feature to add.
Below is a timeline of major Eliezer Yudkowsky publications. Note that, to my knowledge, everything on AI before 2006 is now obsolete. That's the nature of a quickly-moving field!