[ExI] book

[Anders]

On 2016-07-05 19:54, William Flynn Wallace wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 4, 2016 at 3:47 PM, Anders <anders at aleph.se 
> <mailto:anders at aleph.se>> wrote:
>
>     Met the author, decided to buy when it came out. We had a very
>     nice conversation about stochastic gradient descent in everyday
>     life decisions.
>
>     Have the book in my office now.
>
>
> ​UhOh, that means that I won't be able to understand a word of it!  Rats!

Sorry, but I got annoyed by that (despite it being meant in jest, so 
take this mildly!). It both insults the author by suggesting the book 
would fail at explaining its topic, and involves a bit of coquetry of 
ignorance ("Haha, I cannot possibly understand that!").

At least on this list we should always add a "...yet." to any claim of 
ignorance or infeasibility. I don't know quantum field theory... yet. I 
am not immortal... yet. We do not live in space... yet.

By the way, the book is very readable and thoughtful.


-- 
Dr Anders Sandberg
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Oxford University

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