All of Michael Frank Martin's Comments + Replies
I'm still mulling this over, but I have come around to the view that you're right about what you're calling "agency" not being something that could be removed without disservice to the promotion of progress, and that you've got the best way of framing it. If I take your suggestion of viewing "agency" from a more compatibilist point of view -- and thanks for this nudge -- I find it all far more tractable. I'm a big fan of W.V.O. Quine, and I believe he would have supported your pointing to "agency" as useful in this context. Even if "agency" means not freed... (read more)
This is a huge undertaking, and I admire and respect both your industry and your courage in it.
Two questions/comments:
Is there a page I can bookmark that will have links to everything that has been published up to that date? I haven't found it if one exists.
I love the core value of human life first made explicit in what's been published to date, but I'm struggling with the concept of agency. I feel like the word agency gets thrown around a lot these days, and I'm afraid that may have muddied the waters for me at least in understanding the ultimate po... (read more)
Chaotic Progress
A book review in essay format I wrote to help nuance what I see as the unrealistic rhetoric on both sides of the political spectrum right now.
https://www.symmetrybroken.com/chaotic-progress/
This is a brilliant article. My father used to work at IBM ARC back in the 1990s, and you're describing how things worked there, during a period in which numerous Nobels were earned working within a corporation.
The jack-of-all-trades approach to being a PI was also part of what drove me personally out of a Ph.D. program and into industry. I didn't want to be a solo entrepreneur constantly writing grants for peanuts. The most attractive jobs to me back then (early 2000s) seemed to be the government lab jobs that had no teaching responsibilities, and r... (read more)
Just found this tidbit in the biography of the first patent commissioner Henry Ellsworth:
"Acting as Patent Commissioner, Ellsworth made a decision that profoundly affected the future of Hartford and Connecticut. The young Samuel Colt was struggling to establish a firm to manufacture his new revolver. Ellsworth became interested in Colt's invention, and in 1836 made the decision to issue Colt U.S. Patent No. 138. On the basis of Ellsworth's decision, Colt was able to raise some $200,000 from investors to incorporate the Patent Arms Manufacturing Company of ... (read more)
We may have a legit disagreement about the role of patents in supporting the funding of at least certain types of R&D. The Bayh-Dole Act appears to have created a comparative advantage for universities and government labs in funding R&D. Is that the best model? There are reasonable arguments that it is not. But so long as universities and government labs have tech transfer offices, I'm dubious about curiosity driven R&D getting funded by for-profit corporations. Anyway the US market doesn't appear to support it the way it did before the 1980s. ... (read more)
Wonderful summary of the history and analysis of the economic advantages and disadvantages to a patent system. I'm a patent lawyer who has been worrying about the question of whether patents promote progress for a couple of decades. https://www.symmetrybroken.com/whats-wrong-with-the-patent-system/
Lately, I've been partial to the model of progress articulated by North, Wallis, and Weingast (NWW) in Violence and Social Orders. https://www.symmetrybroken.com/what-the-patent-system-can-learn-from-violence-and-the-social-order/
Their observation is that a com... (read more)
I agree with that. But having seen IBM ARC up close in person in the 1990s, my gut is that there is some critical mass of curiosity -- a threshold number of curious researchers all working in the same place -- that leads to a kind of magic you don't see when the same people are more distributed geographically.
Hadn't seen that. Too bad he's misrepresenting facts.
But that hints at what might be worth reevaluating in EA. Jung had this notion of individuation, in which we have to incorporate into our personality conflicting aspects of ourselves in order to fully realize our capabilities. EA seems very academic or analytical in its approach to promoting progress whereas e/acc is more political or emotional. I believe it will take both to realize a future in which progress is accelerated in a way that benefits even the most vulnerable members of society.
I love the work you're doing. I believe there are dysfunctions in the way curiosity-driven academic research gets funded that have and will continue to have major implications for technological progress and economic development. I'm also sympathetic to the sketch of possible reforms. Increasing competition and closing feedback loops on the performance of funding decisions would likely produce tangible benefits.
What I'm wondering about more these days is how things work at the micro level. In my experience, there is a very clear and observable difference be... (read more)
I can understand why you say what you say about falsification. The way the e/acc community is operating right now is more crusade than critical. But I haven't seen the evidence for lack of integrity that you appear to have seen. Not saying it's not there; just I haven't seen it.
I wouldn't write off the people behind e/acc just yet, however. In the end, the scientific mindset may win out over the short term desire to score points and dunk on a competing vision that has been embarrassed in various ways.
If there were any part of e/acc that you might find worth incorporating into EA, what might it be?
There is an argument to be made that e/acc is the Jungian shadow to EA.
There is a fundamental difference in principles between the two movements in that EA gradually and then suddenly fell into a paternalistic disregard (if not disdain) for the negative feedback that the market provides -- e.g., Helen Toner's belief that the dissolution of OpenAI was an acceptable alternative to resolving differences with the CEO. But with this exception, most of the principles espoused by EA (scientific mindset, openness to falsifying evidence, integrity, and teamwo... (read more)
For some this might be too fine a distinction, but for me understanding ontology has always been important, and I find compatabilism useful for its pragmatic distinction between ontology and any prescriptivist philosophy (like positivism). A compatibilist can accept that we don't have free will and yet endorse the instrumental value of rhetoric that promotes freedom — what does it matter that under the hood it's just thermodynamics? One can't escape the illusion of free will even if and when you believe it is an illusion and try hard to do so. But pragamat... (read more)