From: Adrian Tymes (wingcat@pacbell.net)
Date: Mon Sep 17 2001 - 00:12:52 MDT
Harvey Newstrom wrote:
> Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote,
> > Eugene Leitl wrote:
> > > I'm absolutely exasperated at the amount of futuristic or plain wacko
> > > schemes proposed as solutions.
> >
> > Likewise.
> >
> > As an advocate of solving long-term social problems through enormously
> > powerful technology, I think it reflects badly on the field when people
> > are completely, totally unrealistic about the likelihood of solving
> > immediate social problems through weak technology.
>
> I have also been becoming very disillusioned by the level of technology and
> expertise on this list. Most of the people making suggestions are not
> experts in their field. This list seems to be populated mostly with
> arm-chair scientists and political pundits. Most members are merely
> role-playing the future and living in a fantasy world of what might be. I
> wonder how many people really have degrees, or have specialized their fields
> of study, or are actually working on bringing about the future. I would
> guess that it is less than 5% of the list. Most of the people who really
> are doing anything have left long ago.
I can personally testify that it is non-zero, from my academic
experience and degrees if nothing else. The particular implementations
I desire to pursue at this time require significant funding, though. I
am attempting to gather said funding, and map out what to do with said
funding (which, in itself, helps to gather said funding), but it is
taking a while.
(Specifically: I wish to develop them through a business, so as to make
them commercially available. The usual funding source for this,
venture capital, is difficult to obtain because the nature of these
technologies is "unproven", especially "unknown market", but more
importantly there can be no sales without product. Thus, product
development must proceed under extremely limited funding...but how does
one, for example, do "cheap" - under $10K/year - cybernetics or
rocketry that yield any useful data for developing a production model?
Using the money to get more money instead seems to be the only viable
option at this stage...)
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