[extropy-chat] Approaching the end of Today and Tomorrow

[Eliezer Yudkowsky]

SIAI's 72-hour lightning campaign ends in eight hours - 5AM Eastern time on 
Sunday morning.  It's down to the last ninth.

I'm sorry I wasn't able to answer all the questions asked in the time 
available.  Hopefully people chose a sensible criterion in which they 
realize I can't answer everything, but reasonable answers to some questions 
are a good sign for those not yet answered.  I hope to answer more, but 
that won't happen until after Today and Tomorrow.

I think that transhumanism has some ways yet to go before we can compete 
with flying-saucer cults, but people still donated despite the naysaying, 
choosing to be strong without certainty.  It looks to me like the stream of 
donations slowed substantially after people began sharing their 
justifications for not donating, and did not quite gain back the momentum 
even after donors also began speaking up.  But the campaign had a fair run 
before the naysaying started.

The right to disagree is both morally and pragmatically necessary.  A bias 
in which thoughts we choose to communicate is a bias in collective 
reasoning.  Still, just because our ethics mandate an act doesn't mean the 
act is without consequences.  We've learned to show our disagreements with 
one another.  I don't think we're quite as good at consciously choosing 
that it is possible to act coherently despite disagreements, even 
disagreements that seem important; or consciously correcting for the peer 
pressure felt when disagreement is more likely to be publicly aired than 
agreement.  It takes work.  It isn't natural to us.  But I think we can do 
it if we try.

Some of the justification for not donating to the Singularity Institute 
took the form, "Why aren't you further along / doing more?"  Well, that's 
rather a Catch-22, isn't it?  If you think the Singularity Institute should 
be doing XYZ... go ahead, don't let me stop you.  It's your planet too. 
No, seriously, it's your planet too.  We took responsibility.  We didn't 
take responsibility away from you.

The Singularity Institute is a banner planted in the ground, a line drawn 
in the sands of time:  This is where humanity stops being a victim and 
starts fighting back.  Sometimes humans wander up to the banner, see that 
not much of an army has gathered, and then wander away.  It can be hard to 
get the party rolling, if people only want to join after the room is 
already crowded.  No matter who else comes and goes, you will find Eliezer 
Yudkowsky standing by that banner, gnawing steadily away at the challenge 
of Friendly AI, which is one of the things that humanity needs to be doing 
at this point.  For SIAI to grow another step we need three things: enough 
steady funding to pay one more person, one more person to pay, and a 
worthwhile job that person can do.  It's the second requirement that's the 
most difficult, and what makes the second requirement difficult is the 
third requirement.  It isn't easy to find people who can do worthwhile 
jobs.  SIAI doesn't want to invent make-work, token efforts to show we're 
doing something.  But even if there were *no* active workers yet present at 
the banner, not even Eliezer Yudkowsky, there would still need to be a 
Singularity Institute.  There would still have to be a rallying point, a 
banner planted in the ground, a gathering place for the people who wanted 
to make it happen.  It would have to begin somewhere, and how else would it 
ever begin?

One year ago we didn't have Tyler Emerson or Michael Wilson or Michael 
Anissimov.  Progress is being made.  If it's too slow to suit you, get out 
and push.  It's your planet and your problem.  We took responsibility but 
we didn't take it from you.

Those who still haven't donated anything at all - ask yourself whether the 
Singularity Institute has been worth more to you, and to the transhumanist 
community, than the price of a movie ticket.  Our suggested donation was a 
hundred dollars, but if you can't afford that, ten dollars is better than 
nothing.

http://singinst.org/donate.html

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence