Eliezer Yudkowsky
Eliezer Yudkowsky
Eliezer Shlomo Yudkowskyis an American artificial intelligence researcher known for popularizing the idea of friendly artificial intelligence. He is a co-founder and research fellow at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, a private research nonprofit based in Berkeley, California...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth11 September 1979
CountryUnited States of America
technology years historical
Since the rise of Homo sapiens, human beings have been the smartest minds around. But very shortly - on a historical scale, that is - we can expect technology to break the upper bound on intelligence that has held for the last few tens of thousands of years.
fall years choices
You couldn't changed history. But you could get it right to start with. Do something differently the FIRST time around. This whole business with seeking Slytherin's secrets... seemed an awful lot like the sort of thing where, years later, you would look back and say, 'And THAT was where it all started to go wrong.' And he would wish desperately for the ability to fall back through time and make a different choice. Wish granted. Now what?
school years brain
Physiologically adult humans are not meant to spend an additional 10 years in a school system; their brains map that onto "I have been assigned low tribal status". And so, of course, they plot rebellion accuse the existing tribal overlords of corruption plot perhaps to split off their own little tribe in the savanna, not realizing that this is impossible in the Modern World.
reality years names
Reality has been around since long before you showed up. Don't go calling it nasty names like 'bizarre' or 'incredible'. The universe was propagating complex amplitudes through configuration space for ten billion years before life ever emerged on Earth. Quantum physics is not 'weird'. You are weird.
humble modesty rationality
To confess your fallibility and then do nothing about it is not humble; it is boasting of your modesty.
cancer thinking dying
If you've been cryocrastinating, putting off signing up for cryonics "until later", don't think that you've "gotten away with it so far". Many worlds, remember? There are branched versions of you that are dying of cancer, and not signed up for cryonics, and it's too late for them to get life insurance.
smart book skills
There's a popular concept of 'intelligence' as book smarts, like calculus or chess, as opposed to, say, social skills. So people say that 'it takes more than intelligence to succeed in human society.' But social skills reside in the brain, not the kidneys.
thinking differences individual
We tend to see individual differences instead of human universals. Thus, when someone says the word 'intelligence,' we think of Einstein instead of humans.
machines research charity
I am a full-time Research Fellow at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, a small 501(c)(3) public charity supported primarily by individual donations.
annoyed suffering world
Existential depression has always annoyed me; it is one of the world's most pointless forms of suffering.
cute civilization trying
If you want to maximize your expected utility, you try to save the world and the future of intergalactic civilization instead of donating your money to the society for curing rare diseases and cute puppies.
thinking want organised
I don't want to rule the universe. I just think it could be more sensibly organised.
book want i-can
I only want power so I can get books.
dark shining fool
This is one of theprimary mechanisms whereby, if a fool says the sun is shining, we do notcorrectly discard this as irrelevant nonevidence, but rather find ourselvesimpelled to say that it must be dark outside.