From: Mitch Howe (mitch@iconfound.com)
Date: Wed Nov 03 2004 - 23:27:20 MST
Marc Geddes wrote:
> --- Eliezer Yudkowsky <sentience@pobox.com> wrote:
>
> >
> > 56 people donated a total of $8,071 during the Today
> > and Tomorrow campaign.
> > That's more people than donated during all of
> > 2003.
> >
> > The country of Denmark is now represented on the
> > monument. A toast to Denmark!
> >
> > Finland continued its steady march toward galactic
> > domination.
> >
>
> Sitting around fantasizing about building monuments
> post-Singularity won't get us anywhere. We're
> currently stuck on the other side of the Singularity -
> and what a banal, brutish existence it is!
Geez, man. It's ok to cheer on the good guys. Even
victories that seem small over the long haul are
important. [Insert wisdom about long journeys and
small steps here] Donating money is the converse
of "sitting around fantasizing about building
monuments", so I hope that you will consider
refraining from belittling people like myself for
making actual sacrifices to the cause.
> I estimate that any serious AGI project (including
> Sing Inst) needs an income level of at least $US 300
> 000 per year to 'ramp up' to full-scale operations.
> 6-8 full-time team members, who would need to be paid
> at least the 'entry level' salary of $US 25 000 per
> year. That's $US 150 000 per year for a team of 6.
> Then about the same amount for office space, hardware
> etc. So at least $US 300 000 per year. I'm glad
> progress is being made, but I still see no sign that
> Sing Inst is yet near that sort of cash flow.
Since I've seen no evidence that you yourself have a
workable AGI design, I will accept your estimations as
the wild guesses they would have to be. People are
notoriously bad at estimating costs even when they
think they know exactly what they are doing.
--snip--
> Incidentally, assuming a successful Singularity,
> post-humans are right now poring over the SL4
> archives. They are no doubt of great interest to
> post-human historians. Interesting really. Either
> I'll go down in the history of the galaxy as a total
> clown, or I'll be remembered forever as the guy that
> actually challenged the great Yudkowsky and made
> several key conjectures that were later proven
> correct. Moral of the story: post to SL4 and the
> post-humans are watching. The whole galaxy is reading
> these archives. (Assuming a successful Singularity of
> course).
Excuse me, but I believe you just scrawled "Hi Mom!"
on the monument you told us not to fantasize about.
--snipped various additional predictions and guesses--
> So: Only a small band of dedicated Singulatarians
> know what's going on, long odds, certain death if we
> fail fate of the universe at stake. I love it :D
Gee... you make this undertaking sound almost...
monumental!
____________________
--Mitch Howe
Proud Supporter of the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
http://intelligence.org/
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