Hi everybody, first time here over from bloggingheads. At the start of the diavlog I thought I'd sympathize with Lanier but his circular reasoning really rankled me. The repeated appeals to his own expertise were really obnoxious.
Has Eliezer ever examined some the socio-ecological assumptions of his singularity model? It seems to me that it's pretty dependent on substantial funding for this type of research, which isn't likely in the event of large-scale energy/resource shortages or nuclear war. I'm looking through the "future" and "disaster...
I wasn't expecting such a swift response! Unfortunately I'm a little too tipsy to go through the whole paper right now (I'll get to it with the cold, godless Sunday morn), but I think I'd actually be more interested in the paper you reference at the start, about catastrophism bias. I completely agree that such a bias exists! But still, I don't think it's obvious that we'll develop an AGI that can solve the socio-ecological problems I mentioned earlier before they inhibit the research itself. As such I'm more concerned about the design of a benevolent agrar... (read more)