Of the people who have a history of disagreeing with Yudkowsky, can you find anyone with some respectability who would find your descriptions "raving narcissist" and "explodes into titanic outbursts of uncontrollable, embarrassing rage when someone with real knowledge of this area dares to disagree with him" to be appropriate / in touch with reality? You can start by asking Ben Goertzel.
Hmmm... not to name any names, but I would say that MANY of us on this list are capable of narcissism, and also capable of raving ;-) I remember a conversation I had with my wife recently. I suggest that we do away with current names and name everyone by their DSM psychiatric category. So a typical introduction between two people would go like: A: "Hi, I'm Paranoid Schizophrenic Hebephrenic." B: "Hi, I'm Manic Depressive Emotionally Dysregulated." She responded as follows: "But that would work terribly for the Novamente team! Everyone on the whole project would be named 'Narcissistic Personality Disorder'!!!" This was a joke of course -- actually none of us on the Novamente team really fit the DSM criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder. (Well, maybe there's one guy... ;-) ... But, seriously.. a certain element of what-looks-like-narcissism is bound to be present among almost anyone who is devoting their life to creating a thinking machine!! If you don't think a lot of your own insights, how can you possibly push ahead relentlessly with ideas that the society around you tells you are insane and a waste of time?? Anyway, though -- to answer the issue more directly -- I would not consider the phrase "raving narcissist" a good summary of Eliezer Yudkowsky's personality by any means; and, I also think Eliezer has a lot of real knowledge and has made some significant contributions to the conceptual theory of AI as well as to the conceptualization of the Singularity. And I would encourage list members to stay away from ad hominem attacks, and to remember that words often sound harsher in email than one may actually have intended them to... -- Ben G ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604&user_secret=7d7fb4d8
