[ExI] Eliezer S. Yudkowsky, Singularitarian Principles. Update?

[Samantha Atkins]

On Nov 13, 2010, at 5:16 AM, John Grigg wrote:

> Richard Loosemore wrote:
> You have no idea how entertaining it is to hear professionally qualified
> cognitive psychologists, complex systems theorists or philosophers of
> science commenting on Eliezer's level of competence in these areas.  Not
> many of them do, of course, because they can't be bothered.  But among
> the few who have actually taken the trouble, I am afraid the poor guy is
> generally scorned as a narcissistic, juvenile amateur.
>>>> 
> 
> 
> Eliezer (I once called him Eli in a post and he responded with, "only
> friends get to call me that") is in my view a very bright fellow, but
> I find it a tragedy that he did not attend college and get an advanced
> degree in something along the lines of artificial
> intelligence/neuro-computation.
> 
> 
> I feel he has doomed himself to not being a "heavy hitter" like Robin
> Hanson, James Hughes, Max More, or Nick Bostrom, due to his lacking
> in this regard.  I realize he has his loyal pals and many friends within
> transhumanism, but I suspect his success in the much larger world has
> been greatly blunted due to his stubborn refusal to earn academic credentials.
> And I have to chuckle at his notion that the Singularity would be right around
> the corner and so why should he even bother? LOL

I really don't think being a "heavy hitter" is a matter of degrees one has accumulated.  There are too many very heavy hitters without such credentials for this to be so.  There are also many heavies in fields that have nothing to do with the degree or degrees that they do have.   There is no directly relevant degree for FAI.   There are many fields of knowledge that are relevant.  Which would you pick to specialize enough in to get a relevant higher degree?  

This is not to say I have anything against such credentials.  If I were younger I might be more tempted to pick up such myself.  The education system unfortunately does not make it easy to do that.   There are too many irrelevant hoops and too much incompressible time required in most current US programs.  

If you have a sense of mission as Eliezer has from a very young age it can be very difficult to justify years spent on some subsection of the relevant material just to get a credential that may or may not make you any more likely to succeed.  

- samantha