Re: Singularitarian Activism (was: Trans Guide.)

From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Fri May 03 2002 - 15:09:51 MDT


Michael Anissimov wrote:
>
> Brian Phillips wrote:
> >
> >Not to be a prick but "memetic engineering"
> >and "PR" is a fine excuse not to work your ass off, at least for most
> >folks.
>
> There's a horrible lack of material on the Singularity out there - we
> need more web pages, we need more papers, we need more interviews, we
> need more spreading of the meme(s), we need to greatly expand the
> current pool of Singularitarians, and do so intelligently and
> carefully. These are huge, extremely important tasks for anyone who
> can't work on AI or move to Atlanta at the moment. They are not easy,
> either. What's more worthwhile, spending your time, on, say, watching
> a couple of hours of TV, or practicing your Singularity writing
> skills? Which would humanity appreciate more?

Brian Phillips has a point.

I do spend time on memetic engineering and would desperately like someone
else to take over, so I think "memetic engineering" in the sense of spending
a serious number of hours each week trying and failing to write Singularity
pages (Singularity writing is no easier than any other kind of writing) is a
real contribution to the Singularity. But what is definitely true is that
if you're still going on doing whatever you were doing and hoping that it
contributes to the Singularity somehow, then it's certainly much easier to
mistake something you're already doing for "Singularity PR" than it is to
mistake it for "AI design" or "Singularity funding".

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



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