59 Comments

mjgeddes,best of success with your switzerland plan. Amazing that in a world of 6 billion you're such a rare bird.

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Except now, in FF 3.x on the Mac, the sidebar background color in Rebecca's post now extends over all the comments. Sigh. Typepad seems very intolerant of poorly-formed HTML.

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Z.M.'s intuition was right. It seems when Rebecca copied text into TypePad's editor a paragraph of non-printing Microsoft mishmash came along. I just deleted that and we are back to normal.

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Eliezer and I figure its another Typepad bug that may go away if we ignore it.

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We have no clue why this is happening.

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I see the same, and it's quite annoying.

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Is the formatting of the main page looking weird to anyone else? On my system (OS X 10.4.11, Safari 3.1.2), all the links (including post titles and those in the sidebar) are showing up with underlines, and the non-post-title links are showing up in the web-standard blue/purple color scheme, rather than our normal dark blue. Is there a missing close-tag in the "Animal experimentation" post?

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After reading much about artificial intelligence in this blog, I am reminded of a little-know fact I found out a while ago. We humans are not the first AI-builders, actually we are - as far as I know - the first succesful AI experiment: cats invented humans(1). Of course, before they invented us, they gave much thought to the issue of friendly AI: that's why we feed them, take care of them and build houses for them. It's obvious the experiment turned out well. However, cats are not *that* smart. They forgot to program us to hate dogs. That's why we also feed, take care of and build houses for dogs. It's not that this is a big deal for cats, as long as they are fed, housed and taken care of themselves. But it irritates the hell out of them.

When we build the first superhuman intelligence, I wonder what we will leave out (since we are not *that* smart) and whether it will be merely irritating or catastrophic. (2)

(1) I guess you're wondering how I found out. OK, I'll tell you: A few days ago, I found my cat reviewing what seemed to be some kind of academic paper written in what seemed to be some kind of undecipherable cat-speak. I thought there was no way that I could find out what the paper said, until I realized that it was written in German (later I found out most cats are fluent in German). So I had it translated: it told the whole story of how cats invented humans.

(2) We are not the only AI experiment in the animal kingdom. Dogs, who were jealous of the cats' success, invented toads. You might ask how toads are useful for dogs. So do I...

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In late spring EY challenged anyone who thought Intrade and the like were ineffecient to step up and collect their free money. I gave a link to a poker pro over at the 2+2 forums who had done just that, to the tune of 10k, and loosely chronicled the endeavor since then. Oddly enough, a comment in an OB post actually led to a NY Times story on Serge "Adanthar" Ravitch. The final results are in and he quadrupled his money.

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In the interest of track records for pundits, let me note that so far in the '08 election it seems the most accurate pundits were Nate Silver of 538 on the percentage of popular vote, Mark Halperin of Time magazine for the electoral vote, and the most accurate major poll was the Rasmussen.

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Ian, I've made a comparison of Intrade versus polls over several months here.

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Why would I want to associate with **anyone** who would want to associate with someone who acted that stupidly.

If they have power over you.

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"Yes it is costly to maintain beliefs you at some level know to be false, keeping them from polluting all your other beliefs. But that cost can be the reason for such beliefs, as a credible signal of commitment to your associates."

This reminds of the old advice about how a girl should not act intelligently so as to catch a husband.

Why would I want to associate with **anyone** who would want to associate with someone who acted that stupidly. That is actually even more insulting to the believers than just admitting that they are not all that bright.

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Ian Maxwell,intrade saves the old data. just click on "show expired." For example, here's Florida. (Note that IN, MO, and NC have not closed.)

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I notice some discussion of cryonics in one of the threads.

Just note that there are legal problems in the United States. Waiting until after 'legal death' for freezing is just too risky for my liking (too many things can go wrong before your body even gets suspended).

That's why I strongly recommend Switzerland for those who are serious about the cryonics option. It's one of the very few places in the world where assisted suicide is legal, which means you could in theory option on a 'live freeze' (deciding to get suspended while still alive).

Switzerland is also a wonderfully laid-back, reasonable country (social democratic, people very low-key, few extremists).

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There is no cryo facility in Switzerland yet (at least as far as I know).Readers note, that I'm right now en route to Europe (no kidding, I now have my EU passport, and am moving to Europe next month - going to the UK first). I estimate that I have 20 good years left to make sufficient money to set up in Switzerland.

I judge that stroke/cancer/heart disease will likely kill me long long before unfriendly AI does). We are biased to 'over-rate' exotic risks, whereas it is much more likely that banal, common things (stroke, cancer, heart disease) will be our demise.

Every one is welcome to make their way to Switzerland and hopefully, my eventual health centre there. I won't turn anyone down (be they friends or enemies - if Nick, Eliezer or Robin show up I'm perfectly willing to lop off their heads and stick 'em in the freezer too). Every-one gets frozen, no one gets left behind.

I intend to survive friends, and I've judged that a 'live freeze' will likely prove to be the only option. Survival rates plummet after age 60, and I just can't run the risk of aging past that (Too many things can go wrong).

So readres, if you're serious about seeing Singularity, and old you have become, remember Switzerland!

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@Ian

Masse has a huge thing on this.

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