I think the evolution is towards a democratization of the academic process. One could say the cost of academia was so high in the middle ages that the smart move was filtering the heck out of participants to at least have a chance of maximizing utility of those scarce resources. And now those costs have been driven to nearly zero, with the largest cost being the sigal-to-noise problem: how does a smart person choose what to look at.
I think putting your signal into locations where the type of person you would like to attract gather is the best bet. Web publication of papers is one. Scientific meetings is another. I don’t think you can find an existing institution more chock full of people you would like to be involved with than the Math-Science-Engineering academic institutions. Market in them.
If there is no one who can write an academic math paper that is interested enough in EY’s work to translate it into something somewhat recognizable as valuable by his peers, than the emperor is wearing no clothes.
As a PhD calltech applied physicist who has worked with optical interferometers both in real life and in QM calculations (published in journals), EY’s stuff on interferometer is incomprehensible to me. I would venture to say “wrong” but I wouldn’t go that far without discussing it in person with someone.
Robin Hanson’s endorsement of EY is the best credential he has for me. I am a caltech grad and I love Hanson’s “freakonomics of the future” approach, but his success at being associated wtih great institutions is not a trivial factor in my thinking I am right to respect him.
Get EY or lukeprog or Anna or someone else from SIAI on Russ Roberts’ podcast. Robin has done it.
Overall, SIAI serves my purposes pretty well as is. But I tend to view SIAI as pushing a radical position about some sort of existential risk and beliefs about AI, where the real value is probably not quite as radical as what they push. An example from history would be BF Skinner and behaviorism. No doubt behavioral concepts and findings have been very valuable, but the extreme “behaviorism is the only thing, there are no internal states” behaviorism of its genius pusher BF Skinner is way less valuable than an eclectic theory that includes behaviorism as one piece.
This is a core dump since you ask. I don’t claim to be the best person to evaluate EY’s interformetry claims as my work was all single-photon (or linear anyway) stuff and I have worked only a small bit with two-photon formalisms. And I am unsophisticated enough to think MWI doesn’t pass the smell test no matter how much lesswrong I’ve read.
I think the evolution is towards a democratization of the academic process. One could say the cost of academia was so high in the middle ages that the smart move was filtering the heck out of participants to at least have a chance of maximizing utility of those scarce resources. And now those costs have been driven to nearly zero, with the largest cost being the sigal-to-noise problem: how does a smart person choose what to look at.
I think putting your signal into locations where the type of person you would like to attract gather is the best bet. Web publication of papers is one. Scientific meetings is another. I don’t think you can find an existing institution more chock full of people you would like to be involved with than the Math-Science-Engineering academic institutions. Market in them.
If there is no one who can write an academic math paper that is interested enough in EY’s work to translate it into something somewhat recognizable as valuable by his peers, than the emperor is wearing no clothes.
As a PhD calltech applied physicist who has worked with optical interferometers both in real life and in QM calculations (published in journals), EY’s stuff on interferometer is incomprehensible to me. I would venture to say “wrong” but I wouldn’t go that far without discussing it in person with someone.
Robin Hanson’s endorsement of EY is the best credential he has for me. I am a caltech grad and I love Hanson’s “freakonomics of the future” approach, but his success at being associated wtih great institutions is not a trivial factor in my thinking I am right to respect him.
Get EY or lukeprog or Anna or someone else from SIAI on Russ Roberts’ podcast. Robin has done it.
Overall, SIAI serves my purposes pretty well as is. But I tend to view SIAI as pushing a radical position about some sort of existential risk and beliefs about AI, where the real value is probably not quite as radical as what they push. An example from history would be BF Skinner and behaviorism. No doubt behavioral concepts and findings have been very valuable, but the extreme “behaviorism is the only thing, there are no internal states” behaviorism of its genius pusher BF Skinner is way less valuable than an eclectic theory that includes behaviorism as one piece.
This is a core dump since you ask. I don’t claim to be the best person to evaluate EY’s interformetry claims as my work was all single-photon (or linear anyway) stuff and I have worked only a small bit with two-photon formalisms. And I am unsophisticated enough to think MWI doesn’t pass the smell test no matter how much lesswrong I’ve read.
Similarly, the fact that Scott Aaronson and John Baez seem to take him seriously are significant credentials he has for me.