From: Dan Fabulich (dfabulich@warpmail.net)
Date: Thu Nov 07 2002 - 18:13:47 MST
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
> Actually, Drexler is in my view one of the primary reasons *not* to take
> this detour. He played by all the rules and as far as I can tell it
> helped him not one bit. The people who made fun of nanotechnology without
> providing any numbers went on making fun of nanotechnology without
> providing any numbers. The people who were interested remained
> interested. The Foresight Institute stayed marginalized. One or two
> people who said they wanted to see a degree, and really meant it, may have
> switched. The other skeptics found something else to complain about.
What this argument overlooks, rather acutely, is the amount of money being
thrown at nanotechnology relative to the amount of money being thrown at
AI.
Sure, Drexler gets no respect. But I'll be damned if people aren't
interested in throwing money at plausible-looking nanotechnology
investments, and I think we largely have Drexler [and his degree!] to
thank for that.
To put it another way: a degree won't mean the difference between
widespread acceptance and marginalization. I agree, at best, it will make
a slight difference.
What a degree will get you is money, and considerably increased odds of
getting the funding you need to continue doing the work that needs doing.
> Yes, a doctorate would be more convenient, all else being equal. But it's
> not worth four or eight years. If a doctorate is useful, SIAI can recruit
> someone who already has a doctorate.
If it were that easy...
-Dan
-unless you love someone-
-nothing else makes any sense-
e.e. cummings
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