Eliezer Yudowsky, "Overcoming Bias", and the "Future of Humanity Institute"
Dr. Philip Vos Fellman
shirogitsune at hotmail.com
Wed Aug 22 20:16:33 EDT 2007
Fellow Complexifiers:
Have any of you ever encountered the particular moron (apparently in
addition to Eliezer Yudowsky there is someone named Robin Hanson from Oxford
also involved unless, to follow Yudowsky's logic, she doesn't really exist
and is just an alias he uses in order to provide ad hominem reinforcement
for his rather off-the-beaten scientific track views) or the idiotic
Overcoming Bias blog of his pseudoscientific organization, "The Future of
Humanity Institute". This is a rather nasty question and I will apologize
for taking up everyone's air time, but if you're interested in why Mt.
Fellman suddenly blew without warning, read on, and I really am curious if
anyone in either of our groups (NAACSOS or NECSI) has had occasion to
interact with these nutballs. Why I describe them as such is explained (as
briefly and painlessly as possible below, and maybe I will even find
occasion to interject a note of humour as well as one of appropriate self
deprecation, since this is not really quite so serious as I make it sound).
I will ask the list moderators to forebear with me here. I know Yaneer
doesn't appreciate my blowing my nose in the general direction of scientific
miscreants when more serious discussion is going on, and if Claudio is
moderating the NAACSOS list he likes it even less. But I'll only post this
once and ask for any responses to be given off line.
How this whole thing came up was that I was cc'ed on a note from the blog
that my distinguished coauthor, Professor Jonathan Vos Post, whom many of
you know (and who has also coauthored with Richard Feynman, Sir Arthur
Clarke, Isaac Asimov and about a gazillion other people) saying that his
comments on scientific method and methodology would be censored (yep, the
Hanson clone actually used the word "censored" - not pulling any punches
about what they are doing in at least one sense), apparently among other
things, because neither he nor his research actually existed. John Sokol, a
guy whom several of us regard as an innovative genius in computer science,
posted a mild rebuttal and I posted a slightly stronger rebuttal and then
this Yudowsky character posted a note to the effect that he had removed both
the rebuttal by Sokol and myself because we were just aliases for professor
Post and along with our research, we didnt exist either.
I know this sort of weirdness goes on in the blog world, and it's one of
the reasons I don't normally blog. In fact, I rarely participate in the
lists of the organizations to which I belong and whose members I hold in
high esteem. Those of you who were at NAACSOS in 2004 might remember the
plenary session with Peter Lynds ("Time and Classical and Quantum Mechanics:
Indeterminacy vs. Discontinuity"; "Zeno's Paradoxes: A Timely Solution" and
"Subjective Perception of Time and a Present Moment: The Neurobiological Key
to Unlocking Consciousness") which Professor Post and I chaired. There had
been rather a bunch of web gossip, mainly in 2002 and 2003, but continuing
through 2004 and for all I know, through the present day that Peter Lynds
wasn't a real person and this was just another web hoax. In fact, in 2005,
I remember chancing upon a Chinese physics blog which claimed that Jonathan
and I were also non-existent as was NAACSOS and one guy even argued that we
were committing this scientific fraud in order to obscure the true solution
to Xeno's paradox, which was actually his discovery (I've seen a few
European posters to various blogs claim the same thing, but just attacking
Peter rather than the larger ensemble).
As long as I am on the subject of Peter Lynds, those of you who will be
attending the 7th International Conference on Complex Systems should get a
chance to meet Peter, as he will be presenting his recent work on cosmology.
I dont know yet whether he will be presenting an entirely new paper or
primarily explaining his recent work, On a Finite Universe with No
Beginning or End (http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0612053). The nonexistent
Post-Fellman team, will, in our virtual turn, be presenting a comparison of
Peters work on quantum cosmology with that of Stephen Hawking and Sean
Carroll. The abstract for that is at
http://www.necsi.org/events/iccs7/submit.php?id=26 . We havent finished
the full paper yet, and if anyone is inclined to offer advice, comments, or
material which they feel we should necessarily include in our paper, please
feel free to contact either me (shirogitsune9(@yahoo.com) or Professor Post
(jvospost3 at gmail.com) off-line. Id be particularly interested if Russell
Standish has any comments on Peters work from the standpoint of
non-extensive statistical mechanics, even though I know he has not been
recently active in this field. Anyway, enough astrophysics for the moment
(at least it gives a bit of a positive purpose for sending out this oddball
posting to the groups).
Anyway, if any of you have had any interactions with either of Yudowsky
or Hanson or have any idea what this childish group is doing, apparently
under the auspices of Oxford University,
(http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/08/is-molecular-na.html#comment-80319129)
Id like to know. At the moment I am simply mystified. Having a backlog of
real work to do in my otherwise apparently virtual life, Ill go back to
keeping my piece of the ground state of the quantum electrodynamic field.
Cheers,
Phil
**Remember, No matter where you go, There you are**
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