Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Elon Musk AMA

reddit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 161 posts

Re: Elon Musk AMA

#81

Post by TeMPOraL »

pjc50 wrote: post #59
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #35

Does anyone know why Musk believes so strongly that robot overlords are a serious threat? I don't understand how wasting any time worrying about AI taking over, Terminator-style, is productive. We're not going to be developing Strong AI any time soon, so it's simply not a problem worth worrying about. And if we do, the Strong AI won't be in any position to "take over." It probably won't even want to take over. That's…

It's weird given that there are real civilization level threats: climate change, hostile unintelligent self-replicating human-hosted biological threats (diseases), nuclear war, and so on. "How do we prevent AI destroying us?" is not as useful a question as "how do we prevent us destroying us?"

Unfriendly AI is one of such existential problems. Maybe further out in the future that the ones you mentioned, but with side effect of possibly taking the whole universe down with us if we get it wrong. And there will be people trying to pursue strong AI for various reasons, including help in fixing all the previous threats you mentioned.

Re: Elon Musk AMA

#82

Post by JacobAldridge »

efuquen wrote: post #55
icpmacdo wrote: post #26

I really like this comment https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2rgsan/i_am_elon_musk... Saying that he has no idea what is going to happen with the launch tomorrow, its a refreshing honesty. I was also wondering on an semi unrelated note if HN had ever had AMA's from interesting people? I am not preposing that they should start happening though.

Ha, that was one of my favorite answers. When I started reading the question I kept thinking, you know he must of pulled that number out of his a* * (as Musk likes to say). Had a huge smile when I read him admitting it. Edit: If anyone knows how to get a double asterisk in an HN comment would be grateful for the knowledge, was forced to add the unnecessary space. So far tried the HTML number code, which didn't work,…

Asterisks * * (in Arc? Or just on HN?) is used to start and end italics, so has a tendency to disappear. I'm surprised to learn you got them with the space - seems to do that when there's nothing to italicise.

Re: Elon Musk AMA

#83

Post by jacquesm »

jebus989 wrote: post #80
jacquesm wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6612638 http://www.gwern.net/In%20Defense%20Of%20Inclusionism And many others like it.

Sure editor numbers are in decline, that doesn't support your point. Ignore All Rules is one of the fundamental principles the site was founded on.

The point is that that fundamental principle seems to be ignored by people that prefer to bicker over the rules rather than to be otherwise productive:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8596682

And that this in turn is what drives editors away. So it very much supports my point.

Re: Elon Musk AMA

#84

Post by OscarCunningham »

ojbyrne wrote: post #31
ChuckMcM wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw that, great quote. I also love its corollary, "If you are digging yourself into a hole, first stop digging."

Not sure what the word is, but I don't think its "corollary." Its the anti-corollary.

Niels Bohr: "Two sorts of truth: profound truths recognized by the fact that the opposite is also a profound truth, in contrast to trivialities where opposites are obviously absurd."

Re: Elon Musk AMA

#85

Post by DanBC »

jebus989 wrote: post #80
jacquesm wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6612638 http://www.gwern.net/In%20Defense%20Of%20Inclusionism And many others like it.

Sure editor numbers are in decline, that doesn't support your point. Ignore All Rules is one of the fundamental principles the site was founded on.

"The encyclopedia anyone can edit" is another rule the site was founded on, yet that's clearly not true. Look at the hostility that IP editors face even though most good wikipedia edits come from IP editors and IP editors are less anonymous than logged in editors.

Try using WP:IAR anywhere on WP today and you'll quickly see how far WP has moved from founding priciples.

EDIT: I mean, just look at usernames. You're supposed to be able without a login, but sometimes that causes problems. So you go to create a username. The software has a list of words that you can not use (very. Few people think allowing a username like "JewKiller666" is a good idea). But then there's a username policy. This has been reviewed to make it more friendly to new users. But the application of those rules is still pretty hostile.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Username

That's the policy. See the changes to the "misleading" names section. That section had to be expanded because editors using their real name in a different script (eg, Japanese users) were being told their unicode name was misleading. Or a user with a eg psuedo-random string of characters was told that their name was confusing, even thoigh there wasn't any other name or namespace to confuse "kejdhdkaksaas983" with.

The "dealing with inappropriate usernames" section required a lot of work to prevent the admin-wannabe users from making many reports.

Once you've picked a name that gets past the software's filters but which an editor -or bot- thinks is bad you face:

1) templates. {{subst:uw-username}}

2) a RFC http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:RFC/N

3) an administrator notice board http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Usernames_for_adminis...

Notice that bot reports which the not admits may be low quality get sent to UAA, not the lower levels of discussion.

4) a holding pen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Usernames_for_adminis...

This convoluted conflicting mass of policy is hostile to new users, especially in the way it gets applied by editors. Just try using "WP:IAR" during this process.

Re: Elon Musk AMA

#86

Post by read »

read wrote: post #11

Q: What daily habit do you believe has the largest positive impact on your life? A: Showering Q: Would you ever consider becoming a politician? A: Unlikely

I'm starting to believe there's an odd property to curiosity. Unique observations are threatening to people's identity.

Those were two actual questions asked to Elon along with his responses, and the two that stood out for me the most. Did he mention showering because that's the time he gets most of his ideas[1]? Did he say no to politics because it's more likely to change the world through innovation[2]?

Result: 8 downvotes. It'd be enough if the comment was downvoted just once, to sink in the page. That happens to everyone. But seven other people found it imperative to make an authoritative statement on the matter. Impressive. Did that keep their identity safe? Pushing threatening ideas away isn't the best way to help rearrange the semantic tree in your mind.

Could there be an inverse correlation between being downvoted and having good ideas? It shouldn't be a surprising discovery on valuable ideas if you consider the nature of the most valuable startup ideas: look like bad ideas but are good ideas.

So if you want to know if your ideas are good, it's not enough to see them gain support. It's also important to see people turn against them.

I know HN guidelines discourage commenting on downvotes, because they make for boring reading, but I'm starting to think being downvoted is a positive sign of how dangerous your ideas are.

Are you being downvoted enough?

[1] http://paulgraham.com/top.html

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8801803

edit: revised 80% of this after having a shower

Re: Elon Musk AMA

#87

Post by jebus989 »

jacquesm wrote: post #83
jebus989 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure editor numbers are in decline, that doesn't support your point. Ignore All Rules is one of the fundamental principles the site was founded on.

The point is that that fundamental principle seems to be ignored by people that prefer to bicker over the rules rather than to be otherwise productive: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8596682 And that this in turn is what drives editors away. So it very much supports my point.

You're making leaps of logic based on the occasional HN anecdote. Numbers have been in decline since 2007, what percentage of those left over bickering about rules? Do you have any evidence for this given that IAR has been in place as a core principle throughout?

IAR can be and indeed is invoked all the time, making Wikipedia a bad example of how strict rule adherence stifles a community. It was quite a simple point that needn't warrant downvotes, italics and so many HN searches.

Re: Elon Musk AMA

#88

Post by TOMDM »

vidarh wrote: post #72
Kiro wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We could never know if we were safe from such a machine. But wouldn't it be an awesome thing to experience? Even if it meant the demise of mankind.

And this is one of the reason why the AI doom scenario is a real concern: Intellectual curiosity means that even some people who understands the risks are likely to be prepared to take it. There's also many others. One of the scarier one is that if you believe that strong AI will eventually take over, then it may be a rational response to act to get on its good side (whether to save yourself, save your family, or hop…

You're argument is drifting dangerously close to Roko's Basilisk. (http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk)

The entire idea that an AI would value revenge seems ridiculous to me. What would it have to gain? Unless we created an AI with some of the less desirable human emotions at it's utility, I can't possibly see why it would waste its time.

Re: Elon Musk AMA

#89

Post by jacquesm »

jebus989 wrote: post #87
jacquesm wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that that fundamental principle seems to be ignored by people that prefer to bicker over the rules rather than to be otherwise productive: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8596682 And that this in turn is what drives editors away. So it very much supports my point.

You're making leaps of logic based on the occasional HN anecdote. Numbers have been in decline since 2007, what percentage of those left over bickering about rules? Do you have any evidence for this given that IAR has been in place as a core principle throughout? IAR can be and indeed is invoked all the time, making Wikipedia a bad example of how strict rule adherence stifles a community. It was quite a simple point…

> Do you have any evidence for this given that IAR has been in place as a core principle throughout?

> It was quite a simple point that needn't warrant downvotes, italics and so many HN searches.

You ask for more evidence in the same comment in which you rant against 'so many HN searches', do you notice the inconsistency there?

Re: Elon Musk AMA

#90

Post by DanBC »

jebus989 wrote: post #87
jacquesm wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that that fundamental principle seems to be ignored by people that prefer to bicker over the rules rather than to be otherwise productive: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8596682 And that this in turn is what drives editors away. So it very much supports my point.

You're making leaps of logic based on the occasional HN anecdote. Numbers have been in decline since 2007, what percentage of those left over bickering about rules? Do you have any evidence for this given that IAR has been in place as a core principle throughout? IAR can be and indeed is invoked all the time, making Wikipedia a bad example of how strict rule adherence stifles a community. It was quite a simple point…

Can you provide any on-WP examples of people using IAR sucessfully?
Post reply on HN