Eliezer Yudkowsky
Eliezer Yudkowsky
Eliezer Shlomo Yudkowskyis an American artificial intelligence researcher known for popularizing the idea of friendly artificial intelligence. He is a co-founder and research fellow at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, a private research nonprofit based in Berkeley, California...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth11 September 1979
CountryUnited States of America
cute civilization trying
If you want to maximize your expected utility, you try to save the world and the future of intergalactic civilization instead of donating your money to the society for curing rare diseases and cute puppies.
profound important trying
The important graphs are the ones where some things are not connected to some other things. When the unenlightened ones try to be profound, they draw endless verbal comparisons between this topic, and that topic, which is like this, which is like that; until their graph is fully connected and also totally useless.
trying succeed full-potential
Remember, if you succeed in everything you try in life, you're living below your full potential and you should take up more difficult or daring things.
apply existing mostly people science successes
My successes already accomplished have mostly been taking existing science and getting people to apply it in their everyday lives.
death defeated fond future holds hope humanity research stop support
Transhumanists are not fond of death. We would stop it if we could. To this end, we support research that holds out hope of a future in which humanity has defeated death.
operate though
Though I have friends aplenty in academia, I don't operate within the academic system myself.
alike breathe discovered eat food humans newly reminds report
An anthropologist will not excitedly report of a newly discovered tribe: 'They eat food! They breathe air! They use tools! They tell each other stories!' We humans forget how alike we are, living in a world that only reminds us of our differences.
bees born electronic exists funds honey human imagined market mice money offer sell species wasps
The human species was not born into a market economy. Bees won't sell you honey if you offer them an electronic funds transfer. The human species imagined money into existence, and it exists - for us, not mice or wasps - because we go on believing in it.
biases cognitive errors global highly human known mental program relevant reveal systematic underlying
The systematic experimental study of reproducible errors of human reasoning, and what these errors reveal about underlying mental processes, is known as the heuristics and biases program in cognitive psychology. This program has made discoveries highly relevant to assessors of global catastrophic risks.
carry known pounds stuff
In our skulls, we carry around 3 pounds of slimy, wet, greyish tissue, corrugated like crumpled toilet paper. You wouldn't think, to look at the unappetizing lump, that it was some of the most powerful stuff in the known universe.
allow deed destroyed doers extinction horrified likely proceeds quite realizing slowly suggest taken therefore
If our extinction proceeds slowly enough to allow a moment of horrified realization, the doers of the deed will likely be quite taken aback on realizing that they have actually destroyed the world. Therefore I suggest that if the Earth is destroyed, it will probably be by mistake.
breaking cutting edge governing headlines latest longer planetary relativity remains reporting science solid theory thinks time worth
The media thinks that only the cutting edge of science, the very latest controversies, are worth reporting on. How often do you see headlines like 'General Relativity still governing planetary orbits' or 'Phlogiston theory remains false'? By the time anything is solid science, it is no longer a breaking headline.
granted universal
When something is universal enough in our everyday lives, we take it for granted to the point of forgetting it exists.
roof
I don't care where I live, so long as there's a roof to keep the rain off my books, and high-speed Internet access.