Did he give a reason? Just wondering if you’re “not famous enough” for him to risk losing to you.
Wilka
Karma: 162
That reminds me of http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/dennett06/dennett06_index.html
“To whom, then, do I owe a debt of gratitude? To the cardiologist who has kept me alive and ticking for years, and who swiftly and confidently rejected the original diagnosis of nothing worse than pneumonia. To the surgeons, neurologists, anesthesiologists, and the perfusionist, who kept my systems going for many hours under daunting circumstances. To the dozen or so physician assistants, and to nurses and physical therapists and x-ray technicians and a small army of phlebotomists so deft that you hardly know they are drawing your blood, and the people who brought the meals, kept my room clean, did the mountains of laundry generated by such a messy case, wheel-chaired me to x-ray, and so forth. These people came from Uganda, Kenya, Liberia, Haiti, the Philippines, Croatia, Russia, China, Korea, India—and the United States, of course—and I have never seen more impressive mutual respect, as they helped each other out and checked each other’s work. But for all their teamwork, this local gang could not have done their jobs without the huge background of contributions from others. I remember with gratitude my late friend and Tufts colleague, physicist Allan Cormack, who shared the Nobel Prize for his invention of the c-t scanner. Allan—you have posthumously saved yet another life, but who’s counting? The world is better for the work you did. Thank goodness. Then there is the whole system of medicine, both the science and the technology, without which the best-intentioned efforts of individuals would be roughly useless. So I am grateful to the editorial boards and referees, past and present, of Science, Nature, Journal of the American Medical Association, Lancet, and all the other institutions of science and medicine that keep churning out improvements, detecting and correcting flaws. ”
What are some examples of recent progress in AI?
In several of Elizer’s talks, such as this one, he’s mentioned that AI research has been progressing at around the expected rate for problems of similar difficultly. He also mentioned that we’ve reached around the intelligence level of a lizard so far.
Ideally I’d like to have some examples I can give to people when they say things like “AI is never going to work”—the only examples I’ve been able to come up with so far have been AI in games, but they don’t seem to think that counts because “it’s just a game”.
The Roomba is an example that seems to get a bit more respect (although it seems like a much simpler problem than many game AIs to me), but after that I pretty much run out of examples. Maybe I’m just not thinking hard enough because a lot of AI isn’t called AI when it becomes mainstream?
Examples that are more ‘geeky’ would also be good for me, even if they would be dismissed by non-geeky people I meet.
Text is faster than speech, but if the video isn’t important (e.g. with BHTV) you can listen to them during times that you couldn’t read. Such as driving, or walking.
I listen to a lot of podcasts on my way to and from work, and it effectively doesn’t use extra time in my day—I’d be travelling anyway, so I might as well make good use of the time.
When choosing my beliefs, I use a more important criterion than mere truth. I’d rather believe, quite simply, in whatever I need to believe in order to be happiest. I maximize utility, not truth.
Have you ever the experience of learning something true that you would rather not have learned? The only type of examples I can think of here (of the top of my head) would be finding out you had an unfaithful lover, or that you were really adopted. But in both case, it seems like the ‘unhappiness’ you get from learning it would pass and you’d be happy that you found out in the long wrong.
I’ve heard people say similar things about losing the belief in God—because it could lead to losing (or at least drifting away from) people you hold close, if their belief in God had been an import thing in their relationship to you.
The Red Cross made this same point in a blog post recently: http://blogs.redcross.org.uk/emergencies/2010/01/help-not-hinder-haiti/ - I think it’s the first time I’ve seen a charity make the point so explicitly and publicly.
Seeking to make good arguments might be a better goal than always thinking about the ends like whether homeopathy is true in the end.
This feels backwards to me, so I suspect I’m misunderstanding this point.
I’d say it’s better to test homeopathy to see if it’s true, and then try to work out why that’s the case. There doesn’t seem to be much point in spending time figuring out how something works unless you already believe it does work.
there is good evidence that lack of fitness is a far more significant risk factor for morbidity and mortality than BMI (in adults)
I’ve never heard this before, can you provide some links/references for more info please?
I’ve been using Swype for a while, and was very impressed with it. It did make a big improvement when I got the hang of it.
SwiftKey is also very good when you’re writing a lot of text on your phone. I currently switch between the two of them, depending on what I’m going to be writing.
Here’s a longer (1h 16m) version of his TED talk he gave at Google: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrA-8rTxXf0
The more polished TED version is kind of a summary of this talk.
Fear of failure. (Fail at something and make no excuses).
This reminds me of an idea to try failing on purpose to overcome this.
And I’ve just found a similar idea with Rejection Therapy via the Marginal Revolution blog.
I was reminded of this post by a blog article I’ve just read: http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/10/27/procrastination/ - it covers the same topic, but I think it presents it in an easier-to-grasp way for folks who aren’t actively trying to be more rational.
To save folks from Googling it: https://mises.org/journals/qjae/pdf/qjae5_3_3.pdf (PDF file, 15 pages)
I agree with other commenters that suggest getting a new place be your top priority.
You could try geting somewhere close enough to work that you can jog (or cycle) there and back each day. That should get you your exercise and appreciate-the-outdoors-warm-fuzzies, as well as saving you the cost of a gym membership.
For those who haven’t heard the whole thing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujUQn0HhGEk
Over-correct your opinion by reading propaganda
You could also try creating your own propaganda (also useful for Akrasia). You should have a good idea of the types of things that motivate you, so you can use that knowledge to make very focused adverts (e.g. basic posters) for yourself.
There’s more on this kind of thing, advertising to yourself, over at http://www.takebackyourbrain.com/ - but it looks like it hasn’t been updated in a while.
I liked the original joke, and have told it many times in the past. I also find this sentence quite funny:
Like asking someone in a suit how come he’s wearing a suit and he answers “because I bought one and put it on”.
Since I started listening to interesting and/or entertaining things, I really enjoy my commute. I usually get through two books each month (I have an Audible subscription) and several podcasts, along with other talks etc. that I stumble across on the interwebs.
Last time I moved home I made sure my new place wouldn’t be too close to work (either by walking, or cycling). Granted, there’s probably other ways I could achieve the same result, but this is nice way of combining regular mild exercises with learning that also means I get to save money on rent by not living right in the middle of the city.
We could create a group on http://friendfeed.com for that. That’s how groups on there tend to be used. e.g. http://friendfeed.com/googlebits and http://friendfeed.com/dslr