In a few years, you will be as embarrassed of these posts as you are today of your former claims of being an Algernon, or that a logical paradox would make an AI go gaga, the tMoL argumentation you mentioned the last days, the Workarounds for the Laws of Physics, Love and Life Just Before the Singularity and so on and so forth. Ask yourself: Will I have to delete this, too ?
And the person who told you to go to college was probably well-meaning, and not too far from the truth. Was it Ben Goertzel ?
Despite all fallibility of memory, I would be shocked to learn that I had ever claimed that a logical paradox would make an AI go gaga. Where are you getting this from?
Ben's never said anything like that to me. The comment about going to college was from an earnest ordinary person, not acquainted with me. And no, I didn't snap at them, or laugh out loud; it was well-intentioned advice. Going to college is a big choice for a lot of people, and this was someone who met me, and saw that I was smart, and thought that I seemed to have the potential to go to college.
Which is to imply that if there's a level above Jaynes, it may be that I won't understand it until I reach Jaynes's level - to me it will all just look like "going to college". If I recall my timeline correctly, I didn't comprehend Jaynes's level until I had achieved the level of thinking naturalistically; before that time, to achieve a reductionist view of intelligence was my whole aspiration.
Although I've never communicated with you in any form, and hence don't know what it's like for you to answer a question of mine, or correct a misconception (you have, but gradually), or outright refute a strongly held belief...or dissolve a Wrong Question...
...You're still definitely the person who strikes me as inhumanly genius - above all else.
Unfortunately for my peace of mind and ego, people who say to me "You're the brightest person I know" are noticeably more common than people who say to me "You're the brightest person I know, and I know John Conway". Maybe someday I'll hit that level. Maybe not.
Until then... I do thank you, because when people tell me that sort of thing, it gives me the courage to keep going and keep trying to reach that higher level.
Seriously, that's how it feels.
You are the brightest person I know. And I know Dan Dennett, Max Tegmark, Robert Trivers, Marcello, Minsky, Pinker and Omohundro.
Unfortunately, those are non-math geniuses, so that speaks for only some sub-areas of cognition which, less strictly categorizable than the clearly scalable domain of math, are not subject to your proposed rule of "one standard deviation above you they blurr"
I have had classes with them, asked questions. and met them personally. I should have anticipated disbelief. And yes, I didn't notice that I categorized Marcello as non-math, sorry Marcello!
Oh. Cool! Less disbelief, more illusion of transparency.
If a randomly selected person says, "I know X (academically) famous people." I myself usually assume through impersonal means.
Update'd. Carry on :D
For what it's worth, I've worked on a project and had lunch with Conway, and your ideas seem more prescient than his. But being a mathematician, I know people who are in turn far above Conway's level.
So how does it work, in your opinion? Because “I may not be as brilliant as Jaynes or Conway, but that doesn't mean I can't do important things in my chosen field,” sounds suspiciously similar to how Hamming asserts that it works in “You and Your Research.” I guess you have a different belief about how doing important things in your chosen field works, but I don't see that you've explained that belief here or anywhere else that I've seen.
I don't suppose Marcello is related to Nadja and Josh Herreshoff?
I don't know if it helps, but while I've appreciated the things I've learned from you, my limited interaction with you hasn't made me think you're the brightest person I know. I think of you as more or less at my level — maybe a couple of standard deviations above or below, I can’t really tell. Certainly you're sharp enough that I'd enjoy hanging out with you. (Let me know the next time you're in Argentina.)
P.S. the impugnment of your notability has now been removed from your Wikipedia page, apparently as a result of people citing you in their papers.
Wait wait wait wait. Eliezer...are you saying that you DON'T know everything????
~runs off and weeps in a corner in a fetal position~
CatAI (1998): "Precautions"/"The Prime Directive of AI"/"Inconsistency problem".
My memory may fail me, and the relevant archives don't go back that far, but I recall Ben (and/or possibly other people) suggesting you going to college, or at least enroll for a grad program in AI, on the Extropy chat list around 1999/2000. I think these suggestions were related to, but not solely based on, your financial situation at that time (which ultimately led to the creation of the SIAI, so maybe we should be glad it turned out the way it did, even if, in my opinion, following the advice would have been beneficial to you and your work.)
I definitely see the "levels" phenomenon very often. Most people I meet who see me play a musical instrument (or 5 or 10 different ones) think I must be a genius at music - unless they're a musician, then they recognize me as an amateur with enough money to buy interesting instruments and enough skill to get a basic proficiency at them quickly.
And even with standard measures of intellect like rationality or math... I don't know that many of my friends who have read any of this blog would recognize you as being smarter than me, despite the fact that you're enough levels above me that my opinion of you is pretty much what "Not You" said above.
I can keep up with most of your posts, but to be able to keep up with a good teacher, and to be that good teacher, is a gap of at least a few levels. But aspiring to your level (though I may not reach it) has probably been the biggest motivator for me to practice the art. I certainly won't be the one who zips by you, but you've at least pulled me up to a level where I might be able to guide one who will down a useful path.
Up to now there never seemed to be a reason to say this, but now that there is:
Eliezer Yudkowsky, afaict you're the most intelligent person I know. I don't know John Conway.
Your faith in math is misplaced. The sort of math smarts you are obsessed with just isn't that correlated with intellectual accomplishment. For accomplishment outside of math, you must sacrifice time that could be spent honing your math skills, to actually think about other things. You could be nearly the smartest math type guy anyone you meet know, and still not accomplish if math is not the key to your chosen subject.
It's interesting, actually. You're motivated by other peoples' low opinions of you -- this pressure you feel in your gut to prove Caledonian et al wrong -- so you've taken that is probably fairly standard human machinery and tried to do something remarkable with it.
My question is, are you still motivated by the doubt you feel about your native abilities, or have you passed into being compelled purely by your work?
Perhaps the truly refulgent (before they had so become) reached a progression tipping point at which they realized (right or wrong, ironically) that they were essentially beyond comparison, and hence stopped comparing.
Then they could allocate the scarce resources of time and thought exclusively to the problems they were addressing, thus actually attaining a level that truly was beyond comparison.
Jaynes was a really smart guy, but no one can be a genius all the time. He did make at least one notable blunder in Bayesian probability theory -- a blunder he could have avoided if only he'd followed his own rules for careful probability analysis.
You come across as very intelligent when you stick to your areas of expertise, like probability theory, AI and cognitive biases, but some of your more tangential stuff can seem a little naive. Compared to the other major poster on this blog, Robin, I'd say you come across as smarter but less "wise", if that means anything to you. I'm not even a huge fan of the notion of "wisdom", but if there's something you're missing, I think that's it.
If you haven't read it, Simonton's Origins of Genius draws a nice distinction between mental agility and long-term intellectual significance, and explores the correlation between the two. Not a terribly well-written book, but certainly thought-provoking.
@EY: We are the cards we are dealt, and intelligence is the unfairest of all those cards. More unfair than wealth or health or home country, unfairer than your happiness set-point. People have difficulty accepting that life can be that unfair, it's not a happy thought. "Intelligence isn't as important as X" is one way of turning away from the unfairness, refusing to deal with it, thinking a happier thought instead. It's a temptation, both to those dealt poor cards, and to those dealt good ones. Just as downplaying the importance of money is ...
Eliezer, I've been watching you with interest since 1996 due to your obvious intelligence and "altruism." From my background as a smart individual with over twenty years managing teams of Ph.D.s (and others with similar non-degreed qualifications) solving technical problems in the real world, you've always struck me as near but not at the top in terms of intelligence. Your "discoveries" and developmental trajectory fit easily within the bounds of my experience of myself and a few others of similar aptitudes, but your (sheltered) arrogance has always stood out. I wish you continued progress, not so much in ever-sharper analysis, but in ever more effective synthesis of the leading-edge subjects you pursue.
How much do you worry about age 40? Is that just based on your father? Conway passed 40 before Marcello was born.
If not, why aren't you in the camp of those who wish to improve human intelligence?
I'll take this one because I'm almost certain Eliezer would answer the same way.
Working on AI is a more effective way of increasing the intelligence of the space and matter around us than increasing human intelligence is. The probability of making substantial progress is higher.
Wow, chill out, Eliezer. You're probably among the top 10, certainly in the top 20, most-intelligent people I've met. That's good enough for anything you could want to do. You are ranked high enough that luck, money, and contacts will all be more important factors for you than some marginal increase in intelligence.
First, same question as Douglas: what is it with the brick wall at 40?
Second: This is another great post, its rare for people to expose their thoughts about theirselves in such an open way. Congratulations!
Regarding your ability, I'm just a regular guy(studied Math in college) but your writings are the most inspiring I've ever read. So much self-reflection about intelligence and the thinking process. The insight about how certain mental processes feel is totally new to me. You have helped me a lot to identify my own blind spots and mistakes. Now I can look...
I second Robin's comment.
A friend of mine, Steve Jordan, once asked me just how smart I thought he and I were. I answered that I think that no-one is really as smart as the two of us both think we are. You see, for many many people it is possible to choose a weighting scheme among a dozen or so factors contribute to intellectual work such that they are the best. You simply define the vector to their point on the "efficient aptitude frontier" as "real intelligence". A dozen or so people associated with this blog and/or with SIAI and a smaller number who aren't appear to me to be on points of the "known to Michael Vassar efficient aptitude frontier", though not necessarily equally mission-critical points. For my "save the world dream team" I would pick a 25-year-old Steve Jobs over a 25-year-old Terrance Tao, though I'd like both of course.
Manuel, "enroll in a grad program for AI" != "you're smart, you should go to college".
Kragen, the short answer is, "It's easy to talk about the importance of effort if you happen to be Hamming." If you can make the ante for the high-stakes table, then you can talk about how little the ante counts for, and the importance of playing your cards well. But if you can't make the ante...
Robin, it's not blind faith in math or math for the sake of impressiveness, but a specific sense that the specific next problems I have to solve, will require more math than I've used up to this point. Not Andrew J. Wiles math, but Jaynes doesn't use Wiles-math either. I quite share your prejudice against math for the sake of looking impressive, because that gets you the wrong math. (Formality isn't about Precision?)
Ken, it's exclusively my work that gives me the motivation to keep working on something for years, but things like pride can give me the motivation to keep working on something for the next minute. I'll take whatever sources of motivation I can get (er, that aren't outright evil, of course).
Douglas, yes, my father changed at 40. But one of my primary sources...
(At this point, I fear that I must recurse into a subsequence; but if all goes as planned, it really will be short.)
I once lent Xiaoguang "Mike" Li my copy of "Probability Theory: The Logic of Science". Mike Li read some of it, and then came back and said:
Then Mike said, "No, wait, let me explain that—" and I said, "No, I know exactly what you mean." It's a convention in fantasy literature that the older a vampire gets, the more powerful they become.
I'd enjoyed math proofs before I encountered Jaynes. But E.T. Jaynes was the first time I picked up a sense of formidability from mathematical arguments. Maybe because Jaynes was lining up "paradoxes" that had been used to object to Bayesianism, and then blasting them to pieces with overwhelming firepower—power being used to overcome others. Or maybe the sense of formidability came from Jaynes not treating his math as a game of aesthetics; Jaynes cared about probability theory, it was bound up with other considerations that mattered, to him and to me too.
For whatever reason, the sense I get of Jaynes is one of terrifying swift perfection—something that would arrive at the correct answer by the shortest possible route, tearing all surrounding mistakes to shreds in the same motion. Of course, when you write a book, you get a chance to show only your best side. But still.
It spoke well of Mike Li that he was able to sense the aura of formidability surrounding Jaynes. It's a general rule, I've observed, that you can't discriminate between levels too far above your own. E.g., someone once earnestly told me that I was really bright, and "ought to go to college". Maybe anything more than around one standard deviation above you starts to blur together, though that's just a cool-sounding wild guess.
So, having heard Mike Li compare Jaynes to a thousand-year-old vampire, one question immediately popped into my mind:
"Do you get the same sense off me?" I asked.
Mike shook his head. "Sorry," he said, sounding somewhat awkward, "it's just that Jaynes is..."
"No, I know," I said. I hadn't thought I'd reached Jaynes's level. I'd only been curious about how I came across to other people.
I aspire to Jaynes's level. I aspire to become as much the master of Artificial Intelligence / reflectivity, as Jaynes was master of Bayesian probability theory. I can even plead that the art I'm trying to master is more difficult than Jaynes's, making a mockery of deference. Even so, and embarrassingly, there is no art of which I am as much the master now, as Jaynes was of probability theory.
This is not, necessarily, to place myself beneath Jaynes as a person—to say that Jaynes had a magical aura of destiny, and I don't.
Rather I recognize in Jaynes a level of expertise, of sheer formidability, which I have not yet achieved. I can argue forcefully in my chosen subject, but that is not the same as writing out the equations and saying: DONE.
For so long as I have not yet achieved that level, I must acknowledge the possibility that I can never achieve it, that my native talent is not sufficient. When Marcello Herreshoff had known me for long enough, I asked him if he knew of anyone who struck him as substantially more natively intelligent than myself. Marcello thought for a moment and said "John Conway—I met him at a summer math camp." Darn, I thought, he thought of someone, and worse, it's some ultra-famous old guy I can't grab. I inquired how Marcello had arrived at the judgment. Marcello said, "He just struck me as having a tremendous amount of mental horsepower," and started to explain a math problem he'd had a chance to work on with Conway.
Not what I wanted to hear.
Perhaps, relative to Marcello's experience of Conway and his experience of me, I haven't had a chance to show off on any subject that I've mastered as thoroughly as Conway had mastered his many fields of mathematics.
Or it might be that Conway's brain is specialized off in a different direction from mine, and that I could never approach Conway's level on math, yet Conway wouldn't do so well on AI research.
Or...
...or I'm strictly dumber than Conway, dominated by him along all dimensions. Maybe, if I could find a young proto-Conway and tell them the basics, they would blaze right past me, solve the problems that have weighed on me for years, and zip off to places I can't follow.
Is it damaging to my ego to confess that last possibility? Yes. It would be futile to deny that.
Have I really accepted that awful possibility, or am I only pretending to myself to have accepted it? Here I will say: "No, I think I have accepted it." Why do I dare give myself so much credit? Because I've invested specific effort into that awful possibility. I am blogging here for many reasons, but a major one is the vision of some younger mind reading these words and zipping off past me. It might happen, it might not.
Or sadder: Maybe I just wasted too much time on setting up the resources to support me, instead of studying math full-time through my whole youth; or I wasted too much youth on non-mathy ideas. And this choice, my past, is irrevocable. I'll hit a brick wall at 40, and there won't be anything left but to pass on the resources to another mind with the potential I wasted, still young enough to learn. So to save them time, I should leave a trail to my successes, and post warning signs on my mistakes.
Such specific efforts predicated on an ego-damaging possibility—that's the only kind of humility that seems real enough for me to dare credit myself. Or giving up my precious theories, when I realized that they didn't meet the standard Jaynes had shown me—that was hard, and it was real. Modest demeanors are cheap. Humble admissions of doubt are cheap. I've known too many people who, presented with a counterargument, say "I am but a fallible mortal, of course I could be wrong" and then go on to do exactly what they planned to do previously.
You'll note that I don't try to modestly say anything like, "Well, I may not be as brilliant as Jaynes or Conway, but that doesn't mean I can't do important things in my chosen field."
Because I do know... that's not how it works.