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Ask PG: What Is The Most Frighteningly Ambitious Idea You Have Been Pitched On?

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Re: Ask PG: What Is The Most Frighteningly Ambitious Idea You Have Been Pitched On?

#161

Post by PeterisP »

tel wrote: post #64
Eliezer wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you say where the scariest and most ambitious convincing pitch was on the following scale? 1) We're going to build the next Facebook! 2) We're going to found the next Apple! 3) Our product will create sweeping political change! This will produce a major economic revolution in at least one country! (Seasteading would be change on this level if it worked; creating a new country successfully is around the same level…

I don't think this scale applies so well in the healthcare vertical. Any major healthcare breakthrough is going to hit the latter half of 6 at least a bit, but I'm not sure that those all induce changes that scale above 5.

"Hitting a bit" doesn't count, you'd have to think outside of established verticals - curing cancer would be a major healthcare breakthrough, but it's something like a 3 on that scale, no more.

For that, you'd have to think seriously big - doubling our expected lifespan is important, but it wouldn't bring that much of a change in our planet. A significantly improved homo sapiens species may qualify. Or a way to keep us going on forever - permanently fixing or replacing our bodies. Or a way to "upload" skills to brains, matrix-style.

6 is not making the current condition slightly more bearable - it's transferring us to a radically different state.

Re: Ask PG: What Is The Most Frighteningly Ambitious Idea You Have Been Pitched On?

#162

Post by [deleted] »

jayturley wrote: post #158
Eliezer wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holy schmaloly, that actually is a 3 if it works. Anyone else got 3 or higher?

A mobile-based distributed trust system that reflects what other people think of you and your skills, is resistant to gaming, and doesn't start with the premise of lots of Bitcoins.

[deleted]

Re: Ask PG: What Is The Most Frighteningly Ambitious Idea You Have Been Pitched On?

#163

Post by rdl »

stcredzero wrote: post #85
Eliezer wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holy schmaloly, that actually is a 3 if it works. Anyone else got 3 or higher?

Go after "Railroad Baron Money." That is to say, to invest in a fundamentally new kind of very useful infrastructure, like a subset network of computers where DRM actually works. If not absolutely, then well enough in practice. That would mean it would take something like 2 to 3 years for people to jailbreak new hardware, and almost a year to break revisions to old devices that fix an earlier jailbreak. (We're gettin…

Yeah, some kind of trustworthy computing would be around a 4-5 on the scale. Maybe 6.

Re: Ask PG: What Is The Most Frighteningly Ambitious Idea You Have Been Pitched On?

#164

Post by reinhardt »

Eliezer wrote: post #41

We never pitched him on the Singularity Institute ( http://singularity.org/research/ ), but I doubt he's ever been seriously pitched on anything more ambitious than "build a recursively self-improving Artificial Intelligence with a stable, specifiable goal system so that it can improve into a superintelligence and do world optimization." If he's been pitched on anything more frightening than that, I'd really like to…

After PG's response, chance are you'd be filed under "unconvincingly pitched frighteningly ambitious ideas".

Re: Ask PG: What Is The Most Frighteningly Ambitious Idea You Have Been Pitched On?

#165

Post by vhf »

FF8C69 wrote: post #132
Alex3917 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Anyone else got 3 or higher?" I have a drug that could massively raise the IQ of the world's population, in total more than the power of all the world's computers combined. And it costs only a couple pennies per person per year. Iodine.

source please

« According to WHO, in 2007, nearly 2 billion individuals had insufficient iodine intake, a third being of school age. Iodine deficiency can have serious consequences, causing abnormal neuronal development, mental retardation, congenital abnormalities, spontaneous abortion and miscarriage, congenital hypothyroidism, and infertility. Later in life, intellectual impairment reduces employment prospects and productivity. »

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140673...

Re: Ask PG: What Is The Most Frighteningly Ambitious Idea You Have Been Pitched On?

#166

Post by fleitz »

jayturley wrote: post #158
Eliezer wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holy schmaloly, that actually is a 3 if it works. Anyone else got 3 or higher?

A mobile-based distributed trust system that reflects what other people think of you and your skills, is resistant to gaming, and doesn't start with the premise of lots of Bitcoins.

People thinking and resistant to gaming are pretty much mutually exclusive.

Re: Ask PG: What Is The Most Frighteningly Ambitious Idea You Have Been Pitched On?

#167

Post by mahyarm »

Eliezer wrote: post #50
ph0rque wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eliezer, I believe you just created the Yudkowsky Ambition scale. My startup, http://automicrofarm.com/ , rates between a 3 and a 5, depending on how successful it becomes, in my opinion.

Holy schmaloly, that actually is a 3 if it works. Anyone else got 3 or higher?

The Bear Group is doing something similar to automicrofarm, but with biofuels:

http://www.innovationnewsdaily.com/767-robot-grows-biofuel-f...

Re: Ask PG: What Is The Most Frighteningly Ambitious Idea You Have Been Pitched On?

#168

Post by swombat »

powertower wrote: post #130
dusklight wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I downvoted you because you added nothing to the conversation by claiming you have a 6 but then adding no details to it. Hey I can do that too. I have an idea that ranks a 7! I am cooler than you! But I am not going to tell you what it is because I think having a good idea is harder than executing well and I don't have many good ideas and I am afraid you are going to steal mine.

> Edit: It's not a drug - but it will, imho, produce a change in the basic human condition, if/when implemented. He's probably talking about an idea similar to the H+ neural implant ( http://www.youtube.com/user/HplusDigitalSeries ). It's a nano device that is injected into or around your spine/brain, and after a week it learns how to interface with your body. Then it links out to the network and you can do all the t…

Nope. Fair enough on the downvotes, btw, you're right - I didn't add much to the conversation. I don't feel ready to share/discuss that idea yet.

Funny, considering I'm a strong proponent of "ideas are nothing, execution is everything"...

Re: Ask PG: What Is The Most Frighteningly Ambitious Idea You Have Been Pitched On?

#169

Post by michaelt »

rdl wrote: post #163
stcredzero wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go after "Railroad Baron Money." That is to say, to invest in a fundamentally new kind of very useful infrastructure, like a subset network of computers where DRM actually works. If not absolutely, then well enough in practice. That would mean it would take something like 2 to 3 years for people to jailbreak new hardware, and almost a year to break revisions to old devices that fix an earlier jailbreak. (We're gettin…

Yeah, some kind of trustworthy computing would be around a 4-5 on the scale. Maybe 6.

We already have a subset network of computers where DRM lasted from 2006 to 2010 - the PlayStation 3.

Now, it's a console with some good games, but I wouldn't rate it as equivalent in social impact to electricity or nuclear weapons.

Re: Ask PG: What Is The Most Frighteningly Ambitious Idea You Have Been Pitched On?

#170

Post by rdl »

michaelt wrote: post #169
rdl wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, some kind of trustworthy computing would be around a 4-5 on the scale. Maybe 6.

We already have a subset network of computers where DRM lasted from 2006 to 2010 - the PlayStation 3. Now, it's a console with some good games, but I wouldn't rate it as equivalent in social impact to electricity or nuclear weapons.

Right, it was a game console, and not even a particularly good one.

A real computing device (I'd accept tablets, but really, enterprise desktops and especially servers) would be entirely different.

What I really care about is servers which can be trusted to be "fair" by all parties -- server operators, software operators, and end users. There is absolutely nothing like that today, and it's impossible without trusted computing. It's unclear if trusted computing itself is feasible (it's theoretically possible).

If it works, we end up with Vernor Vinge's _True Names_

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