[extropy-chat] what to do

[Eliezer S. Yudkowsky]

Robin Hanson wrote:
> Now that I have tenure, I'm tempted to spend the next few years on a new 
> post-tenure project.  Since I should choose carefully, I solicit your 
> advice.  No rush; it will be a month or two until I finish my current 
> tasks.
> 
> My goal is to make great things happen; getting personal credit can enable 
> me to do more things later, but is otherwise not the main goal.  By 
> temperament I most like to think deep thoughts, I least like to manage 
> other people, and explaining things is somewhere in the middle.
> 
> 1. Disagreement Book - Expand "Are Disagreements Honest" and related papers
>  into a book, adding new material on data about who is right in real 
> disagreements.  I've been telling people this is my plan.  This could 
> establish my reputation as a deep thinker on a big issue.  Fun, as there 
> are still things for me to learn on this topic.  No real competition on
> this topic (as least re the more technical angle), and it is nicely not
> aligned with an ideology.  But not clear this will really change much in
> the world.

What I would most advise you to do for yourself is the Disagreement Book.  As 
you learned the hard way, it's difficult to sell something that people don't 
want to buy.  I wish I could propound something as easy to accept as modesty, 
and I've sometimes considered writing a book on rationality for the same 
reason - just to get the benefits of tackling a tractable problem.  People are 
ready to be told that modesty is a good thing.  This is itself a bias, which 
is why I tend to disagree with you about how to handle disagreement - but if 
you pitch the book toward the popular-level, this book will probably sell 
better than anything else you're considering writing.  If you're planning a 
technical book or a book pitched at academia then you'd know better than I 
would what would best establish your reputation.

> 9. Mangled Worlds - Learn and apply enough physics theory to figure out if 
> my mangled worlds concept really is the solution the deep mystery of 
> quantum mechanics that it seems to me.  Maybe a 25% chance I'm right, but
> if I am, and I take the time to explain myself clearly, would establish a
> strong reputation as a deep thinker.  Should know one way or other in 3
> years. Would be fun, though not clear it has any practical implications.

This is the book I'm most interested in myself, in a purely selfish sense.  It 
is also the most difficult and the most risky.

 > 3. Upload Futures Papers and Book - Return to and finish my papers
 > analyzing the social implications of future technologies, particularly
 > uploads.  Then write a book summarizing this area.  I don't know of a more
 > important policy question, and no one else is doing this.  But it is not
 > clear that making more people aware of these issues will produce better
 > policy; future tech is usually treated symbolically, and this often makes
 > things worse.

Yeah.  Pretty much.  Probably the only real benefit to be derived from the 
book would be to pump generic academic respectability into advanced futurism.

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