I certainly agree that had you set more difficult goals, lower confidence that we can achieve them at all is appropriate. I’m not as confident as you sound that we can plausibly rely on continuing unbounded improvements in narrow AI, robotics, economics, politics, space exploration, genetic engineering, etc., though it would certainly be nice. And, sure, if we’re confident enough in our understanding of underlying theory that we have some reasonable notion of how to safely do “one step at a time and make sure we get it right,” that’s a fine strategy. I’m not sure such confidence is justified, though.
It’s not so much that I have confidence that we can have unbounded improvements in any one of those fields, like genetic engineering for example; it’s more that I would say there are at least 5 or 6 major research paths right now that could conceivably cure aging, all of which seem promising and all of which are areas where significant progress is being made right now, so that even if one or two of them prove impossible or impractical I think the odds of at least some of them eventually working are quite high.
I certainly agree that had you set more difficult goals, lower confidence that we can achieve them at all is appropriate.
I’m not as confident as you sound that we can plausibly rely on continuing unbounded improvements in narrow AI, robotics, economics, politics, space exploration, genetic engineering, etc., though it would certainly be nice.
And, sure, if we’re confident enough in our understanding of underlying theory that we have some reasonable notion of how to safely do “one step at a time and make sure we get it right,” that’s a fine strategy. I’m not sure such confidence is justified, though.
It’s not so much that I have confidence that we can have unbounded improvements in any one of those fields, like genetic engineering for example; it’s more that I would say there are at least 5 or 6 major research paths right now that could conceivably cure aging, all of which seem promising and all of which are areas where significant progress is being made right now, so that even if one or two of them prove impossible or impractical I think the odds of at least some of them eventually working are quite high.
(nods) Correction noted.