From: Ben Goertzel (ben@goertzel.org)
Date: Wed Apr 30 2003 - 21:23:04 MDT
> 4) You dismiss journals of an entire wing of science for some reason I'm
> not entirely sure of.
I believe the reason Eliezer dismisses the AI research journals is that, in
the field of AI today, talk about general intelligence, self-modifying AI
and other ambitious topics is shunned.
It's similar to how mention of consciousness was basically banned in
psychology journals until about 10 years ago, when suddenly somehow
consciousness came in vogue again. So in the 70's and early 80's, for sure,
if you were doing research on consciousness, you could forget about
publishing in mainstream psych journals, and you could figure it very
unlikely to find any relevant info in mainstream journal papers.
About PhD's -- I got my PhD because I wanted to be able to earn a living
doing my own research. I didn't get much out of most of the classes I took;
I learned 5 times more from independent reading and study, for sure. I see
why Eliezer thinks getting a PhD would involve some "waste of time". Of
course it does. I knew that when I was going through it. But sometimes it
pays to just follow the procedures of one's society and culture, flawed as
they are. And sometimes it pays to buck the procedures and create your own
path. I guess that when to do which is an individual decision!
-- Ben Goertzel
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