From: Mark Waser \(home\) (mwaser@cox.net)
Date: Sat Jan 15 2005 - 12:22:49 MST
> If Eliezer's discussions are not considered 'deep understanding' or at the
> very least detailed explanations then you haven't been reading SL4 or his
> documents very carefully.
In my not so humble opinion, Eliezer's documents demonstrate VERY deep
understanding of some things, relatively superficial understanding of some
things, and even a misunderstanding of a few things. Problematically too,
for various reasons, he has elected to either hide, not elucidate, or not
follow up on a number of issues that are key to a complete coverage of the
problem. My belief is that SIAI is spending far too much time and effort on
the bottom-most layer of the problem and totally ignoring the rest of the
problem (apparently expecting the solution to the rest to be either
immediately emergent or immediately obvious from the bottom most layer). As
an analogy, I would say that they are focussing on quantum mechanics and
expect to be able to predict the rest of the world to follow from there
(possibly true with infinite knowledge and resources but clearly impossible
in any real world). There's also very much the feel that the approach is
that of the ivory-tower scientist rather than the engineer who might make it
happen before someone else. I would strongly suggest that Stephen's
comments DO have some merit and shouldn't be dismissed so rapidly out of
hand (particularly since it seemed to me that you misunderstood the thrust
of much of his argument anyways).
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