From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Mon May 01 2006 - 20:30:58 MDT
Kaj Sotala wrote:
>
> My criticism was not meant to encourage people to draw up exact
> accurate-to-the-hundredth-of-a-second estimates about when specific
> technologies will become available. Instead it was commenting on the
> fact that often, any estimates are either drawn up on an entirely
> arbitrary basis ("in 20 years" and "in 50 years" seem to be popular,
> good-sounding guesses) or just plain non-existent. It may be impossible
> to predict the arrival date of a certain technology to a year or even a
> decade, but that's hardly a valid excuse for not even *trying* to draw
> up rough estimates.
But what evidence is there that anyone *can* draw up such rough
estimates, accurately? It would be nice to have them, yes; but what
makes you think they're available?
-- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://intelligence.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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