Some Scott Alexander links

[dmm]

(Надо же, как всё фигово. Ядерная сверхдержава затеяла фашистскую агрессию вполне в гитлеровском стиле. Перспективы мрачные. Правда, её вооружённые силы совершенно прогнили, всё деньги на "модернизацию" украдены, судя по тому, что мы видим.

Пытаются блокировать твиттер, и всякое такое: twitter.com/RALee85/status/1497546710461165568)

Anyway, back to the post title:

This one seems to be pretty good: slatestarcodex.com/2019/01/08/book-review-the-structure-of-scientific-revolutions/

This is in connection with his latest analysis of attempts to predict superintelligence arrival timeline: astralcodexten.substack.com/p/biological-anchors-a-trick-that-might

Comments

[dmm]

"My own contribution to the Moore's Law literature consists of Moore's Law of Mad Science: "Every 18 months, the minimum IQ required to destroy the Earth drops by 1 point." Even if this serious-joke was an absolutely true law, and aliens told us it was absolutely true, we'd still have no ability whatsoever to predict thereby when the Earth would be destroyed, because we'd have no idea what that minimum IQ was right now or at any future time. We would know that in general the Earth had a serious problem that needed to be addressed, because we'd know in general that destroying the Earth kept on getting easier every year; but we would not be able to time when that would become an imminent emergency, until we'd seen enough specifics that the crisis was already upon us."