$100 off for Less Wrong: Singularity Summit 2011 on Oct 15 - 16 in New York

Louie

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13 $100 off for Less Wrong: Singularity Summit 2011 on Oct 15 - 16 in New York

by Louie

28th Sep 2011

2 min read

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Click to highlight new comments since: Today at 2:39 AM

[-]wedrifid14y230

Register now and use the $100 off Less Wrong discount code: LW2011. Hope to see you next month in New York!

What the? $100 discount code on a public blog? How does that make any se... oh, right. For humans. As you were.

[-]Louie14y60

Care to give your 50% confidence interval on how many registrants are using the above, "public", discount code?

[-]lukeprog14y190

Eliezer's talk is on Open Problems in Friendly Artificial Intelligence. People have been wanting something like that for ages.

[-]CronoDAS14y130

Even at $485 I still wouldn't be able to convince my family members to attend.

Weekend passes to an event like Comic-Con or Otakon usually run less than $100. Smaller fan conventions, such as Intervention also keep admissions prices below $100. NECSS, a seemingly similar event, charges $65 for full price tickets. What makes the Singularity Summit so much more expensive than all these other events?

[-]lukeprog14y60

What makes the Singularity Summit so much more expensive than all these other events?

Singularity Institute learns new things every year about cutting expenses from putting on a major conference, but we know enough that we're now heading into the 6th annual Singularity Summit and can attract big-name speakers. Why does it cost more? There isn't yet much corporate sponsorship or paid booths, as at Comic-Con, though we're working on that as we go into the future. And we have higher profile speakers than Intervention or NECSS. But I certainly want to talk to the people who put together NECSS; thanks for providing the link.

[-]shokwave14y50

Outside speculation, but surely some of the booths at Comic-con and the like have paid for the privilege of being there? In this way, the cost of entry is subsidised by vendors and stalls, I would suspect. The Singularity Summit, as far as I know, pays all of its presenters to be there, and has no vendors which might subsidise the costs.

[-]gwern14y50

The dealers' room is a major profit center for conventions which have them; at ICON this year (I was a volunteer), dealers were charged $15, not for any extra space, but for any additional folding tables. Some dealers did pay up, so you can imagine what it must have cost to gain actual entry... (One of the old ICONers told me that when the university kicked ICON out one year, it lost so many tens of thousands of dollars in revenue, they immediately asked ICON back.)

[-]khafra14y60

Perhaps the Summit should have a dealer's room with representatives from longevity supplement makers and wearable computing device companies, recruiters from AI-focused startups, etc.

[-]thomblake14y40

Yes, I was at Otakon a few years ago and the dealer's room spaces were something like $750 each - there were probably about 100 dealers and I think each had about 3 spaces on average. Also, $65 each for extra dealer's badges for employees. That said, I believe the money from the dealer's room mostly goes to cover the expense of having a dealer's room.

But remember that fan conventions tend to run at cost, while the Singularity Summit is a source of revenue for SIAI.

[-]lessdazed14y20

The ticket price isn't "$485". The ticket price is "$100 off", it says so in the post title.

[-]shokwave14y50

"Off" as it is used here is a two-place predicate, taking a number as x and an implied price as y and reducing y by x to produce the new price.

"Off" has other meanings, but we can tell they're not in use here because $100 is not a object with toggle-able states.

[-]lessdazed14y80

Conspicuously absent from the post is any mention of the actual ticket price. It's an exercise in framing. Humans aren't best described as having an objective preference for $485 instead of a ticket to the conference or vice versa. If the post had been a reminder of an old $485 ticket price, or announced the price as having risen from $385 or whatever to $485, it would have been less effective.

[-]shokwave14y10

Sure, but that's obviously not the problem for CronoDAS's family members. Their problem is that it's a big luxury purchase, not the equivalent of a nice meal out that is easier to justify.

My apologies for scoring points by making it look like you don't know what "$100 off" means, by the way.

[-]CronoDAS14y20

When I followed the link, the price without the discount was $585. With the $100 discount applied, it would be $485 a ticket.

[-]lessdazed14y70

I was stricken with a bad case of illusion of transparency. I was referring to the way the price was framed.

[-]PhilGoetz14y10

There should be a lot of people reading this who know better than me, but I thought that the Singularity Summit is what pays for many of SIAI's activities.

Also, how many names of speakers at the SSummit do you recognize, and how many at NECSS? I don't know if any of the famous people speak for free.

[-]FAWS14y00

In addition to the other issues mentioned I also expect that there is much less demand elasticity for the singularity summit due to different demographics.

[-]Matt_Simpson14y30

Will any of these talks be recorded and/or posted online?

[-]Douglas_Knight14y60

History says yes

[-]Matt_Simpson14y00

Thanks!

(Unless I shirk and watch every single one of these videos before I accomplish anything else....)

[-]MichaelAnissimov14y00

They will.

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[-]MichaelAnissimov14y20

Yes

[-][anonymous]14y20

Who will be attending to this event? I will most likely be present on the Saturday October 15th program. It would be interesting to discuss some experimental hypothesis/concept in Statistical, Mathematical logic and psychophysics model I am currently constructing for strengthening machine vision/learning and perception(on the hobby side/ philosophical conjecture)- for the possible future application in Strong Ai.

The one I am now researching has to do with human perception(sensory) and memory; artificial intelligence would be an interesting topic to touch upon- given that machine "memory" and "computation" levels could well bring astonishing levels of intellect, automation capacity, projection, abstraction and reflexes; bringing about the idea that strong AI could never reach human intelligence, mental processes or behavior- (because our mental faculties are constructed in a way to only retain certain things from cognitive experience, forget certain feelings to maintain parallelism and project at a basic form with little to poor decision reasoning timeframe and large margins of errors); A machine mental faculty would vastly surpass and adjust/limit itself to interact from a programmed inter-dependancy level (in a sense, it would jump from absurdism("A.I now") into progressing 'limited' absolutism the moment it reaches human mental compatibility in terms of communication and abstraction.

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[-]PhilGoetz14y00

You can attend for just 1 day for $350 ($290 off with the given discount code).

(For another 20 minutes.)

Moderation Log

13 $100 off for Less Wrong: Singularity Summit 2011 on Oct 15 - 16 in New York

by Louie

28th Sep 2011

2 min read

13

Personal Blog

13

New Comment

24 comments, sorted by

top scoring

Click to highlight new comments since: Today at 2:39 AM

[-]wedrifid14y230

Register now and use the $100 off Less Wrong discount code: LW2011. Hope to see you next month in New York!

What the? $100 discount code on a public blog? How does that make any se... oh, right. For humans. As you were.

[-]Louie14y60

Care to give your 50% confidence interval on how many registrants are using the above, "public", discount code?

[-]lukeprog14y190

Eliezer's talk is on Open Problems in Friendly Artificial Intelligence. People have been wanting something like that for ages.

[-]CronoDAS14y130

Even at $485 I still wouldn't be able to convince my family members to attend.

[-]lukeprog14y60

What makes the Singularity Summit so much more expensive than all these other events?

[-]shokwave14y50

[-]gwern14y50

[-]khafra14y60

Perhaps the Summit should have a dealer's room with representatives from longevity supplement makers and wearable computing device companies, recruiters from AI-focused startups, etc.

[-]thomblake14y40

But remember that fan conventions tend to run at cost, while the Singularity Summit is a source of revenue for SIAI.

[-]lessdazed14y20

The ticket price isn't "$485". The ticket price is "$100 off", it says so in the post title.

[-]shokwave14y50

"Off" as it is used here is a two-place predicate, taking a number as x and an implied price as y and reducing y by x to produce the new price.

"Off" has other meanings, but we can tell they're not in use here because $100 is not a object with toggle-able states.

[-]lessdazed14y80

[-]shokwave14y10

Sure, but that's obviously not the problem for CronoDAS's family members. Their problem is that it's a big luxury purchase, not the equivalent of a nice meal out that is easier to justify.

My apologies for scoring points by making it look like you don't know what "$100 off" means, by the way.

[-]CronoDAS14y20

When I followed the link, the price without the discount was $585. With the $100 discount applied, it would be $485 a ticket.

[-]lessdazed14y70

I was stricken with a bad case of illusion of transparency. I was referring to the way the price was framed.

[-]PhilGoetz14y10

There should be a lot of people reading this who know better than me, but I thought that the Singularity Summit is what pays for many of SIAI's activities.

Also, how many names of speakers at the SSummit do you recognize, and how many at NECSS? I don't know if any of the famous people speak for free.

[-]FAWS14y00

In addition to the other issues mentioned I also expect that there is much less demand elasticity for the singularity summit due to different demographics.