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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?

#111

Post by tesseractive »

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.

A major healthcare breakthrough that improved the quality of life for a large number of people would qualify as a solid 3 -- a major political-level change. I'd save 6 for things like defeating the aging process -- something that, like raising the IQ of the population at large, would also fundamentally change the human condition. I'm not really sure how many medical breakthroughs of this magnitude there are.

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

#112

Post by swombat »

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?

I have one idea I'm still incubating in the back of my head that's a 6. It's achievable technologically, but I'm not yet in the right place in my life to be the one to achieve it.

Edit: It's not a drug - but it will, imho, produce a change in the basic human condition, if/when implemented.

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

#113

Post by davidgerard »

Eliezer wrote: post #47
pg wrote: post #42

I'm sorry if this is an unsatisfying answer, but if you mean convincingly pitched, I couldn't answer a question like that without disclosing the long-term plans of startups that would prefer to keep them secret. If you mean unconvincingly pitched, it would probably be the applications we get from people who've discovered new power sources that violate the laws of physics.

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…

Where would the World Wide Web be on this scale? It would look below 4, but one instance of it, Wikileaks, arguably sparked several revolutions and is a 3 by itself.

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

#114

Post by decode »

seiji wrote: post #79
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…

Honest question: Does SI actually do anything other than hold conferences and take donations so smart people don't have to get real jobs?

A cynic would say that the main activity of SI's Research Fellows is to type up their Science Fiction and Philosophy musings and upload them as PDFs to their website. Someone less cynical would say that these musings are fundamental research in the area of self-replicating AIs that will enable other people to build said AIs in the future.

I tend to lean toward the cynical interpretation.

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

#116

Post by its_so_on »

pg wrote: post #42

I'm sorry if this is an unsatisfying answer, but if you mean convincingly pitched, I couldn't answer a question like that without disclosing the long-term plans of startups that would prefer to keep them secret. If you mean unconvincingly pitched, it would probably be the applications we get from people who've discovered new power sources that violate the laws of physics.

Thank you very much for taking this step. (Not disclosing long-term plans just because they're frighteningly ambitious). Hopefully this goes double for ideas you chose not to take 7% of for a couple of grand :)

(As that adds real injury to mere insult.)

I genuinely appreciate it.

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

#117

Post by nooneelse »

untog wrote: post #95
martindale wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've got a solid 5 with what we're building at LocalSense: https://localsense.com -- but it contains elements of #9 which is strangely high on the list.

A local, social offers app is going to be "equivalent of the invention of electricity"? I don't mean to sound down on the idea- I'm sure it could work out great. But come on.

Only way I can read that comment as anything but shameless self-promotion (or, more generously, over the line entrepreneurial-delusion) is if they intend to morph their using of social status to get things into being whuffies.

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

#118

Post by zem »

T_S_ wrote: post #65
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 think I am at 0.25 on this scale.

still puts you ahead of all the "$currently_hot_company, but for $slightly_different_domain" ideas

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

#119

Post by killpg »

brackin wrote: post #98
seiji wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: Does SI actually do anything other than hold conferences and take donations so smart people don't have to get real jobs?

Totally agree. Ambitious is not the same as pompous, people forget that. For example: We are building a social platform that will change the way the upper class communicates with a chat-site exclusively for the rich as We are building technology that gets removes the need for cars and allows people to get around faster and safer.

I'm sorry, which of those is pompous?

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

#120

Post by [deleted] »

Eliezer wrote: post #47
pg wrote: post #42

I'm sorry if this is an unsatisfying answer, but if you mean convincingly pitched, I couldn't answer a question like that without disclosing the long-term plans of startups that would prefer to keep them secret. If you mean unconvincingly pitched, it would probably be the applications we get from people who've discovered new power sources that violate the laws of physics.

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…

[deleted]
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