Hi Eliezer/Ben/all,
Well if the Breaking AIXI-tl discussion
was the warm up then the
discussion of the hard stuff on AGI friendliness is going to be really
something! Bring it on! :)
----
Just a couple of suggestions about
the methodology of the discussion -
could we complement email based discussion with the use of the web?
What I find in these very long (and at times highly technical)
discussions is that the conclusions get lost along the way.
I was a member of Government commission
on the timber industry
some years back and the commission members were chosen to
represent the various sides in the industry/conservation conflict. The
parties had been engaged in almost total warfare for the last 20 years
and the idea was to see if we could find any common ground on which
to build a new win-win strategic direction for the industry.
One of the techniques we used informally
was to let each side record
what they saw the issues as, including commenting on each other's
positions, and then recording consensus as it emerged.
What this meant was that each 'side'
kept an updated summary of the
key 'facts', arguments and conclusions - as they saw them. Then the
facilitator worked with the group to collect key 'facts', arguments and
conclusions that both sides could agree on.
At the end of the process we developed
strategies for taking action on
the areas of agreement and we developed a process for continuing to
grapple with the on-going areas of disagreement.
So in our case with the discussion
of how to ensure AGI friendliness or
community-mindedness, we could let any party to the discussion who
feels they have a distinct point of view that is not well represented by
anyone else to keep a rolling summary of the key 'facts', arguments
and conclusions as they see them. These summaries could be kept on
separate webpages, maintained by each party to the discussion.
Everyone would have access to the summaries and the discussion
would be carried out via email through the list.
At some stage when the discussion
has taken form on at least some
key issue we might try to see if the group as a whole can agree on
anything - and someone needs to write thouse outputs up in a rolling
consolidated form on another web page.
This might sound like a lot of work
and excess structure but I think it
helps to draw something solid out of the swirl of discussion and allows
us to move on when a solid foundation has been built.
...
And on another issue, if people are
using highly technical arguments,
and if those arguments are meant to have higher order implications
could each person include a commentary in plain English along with
their technical discussion, so that everyone can follow at least the
higher order aspects of the discussion as it unfolds.
Right at the end of the AIXI-tl debate Eliezer started using the 'magician
in the cavern' analogy and all of a sudden I felt as if I was
understanding what he was driving at. That use of analogy is a
wonderful way to keep everyone in the loop of the conversion. If that
sort of thing could be done more often that would be very helpful.
What do you reckon?
Cheers, Philip
