Talk:Eliezer Yudkowsky
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The information on him getting a 1410 on the SAT at age 11 keeps getting deleted. Odd. 2.35.189.199 (talk) 16:21, 18 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It is a difficult to verify piece of information, it's not really encyclopedic (Bibliographies on Wikipedia usually don't mention SAT scores or IQs), and quite frankly, mentioning it looks like a way to make up for his lack of formal education.
Listing SAT scores seems like an attempt to promote the person and is not relevant to a serious biography. Should we add that he got an A+ in his honors classes in 6th grade? Or that he was a very nice boy who the next door neighbor's kids looked up to? On the other hand, would it be appropriate to mention that he did particularly badly on some standardized test or in some elementary school competition? In that case, it would be obvious the edit was meant to undermine his credibility, just as in this case it seems like a misleading attempt to establish credibility. 74.111.196.86 (talk) 15:39, 3 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Also note that this biography of a relatively non-notable person is three sentences long, and one of those sentences is about standardized test scores as a kid. That seems inappropriate, to say the least. 74.111.196.86 (talk) 15:54, 3 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I've added the compromise edit, making it explicit that Yudkowsky is the source of the claim that he received these SAT scores. It would be great to get more editors to weigh in at this point. In my opinion, this information, even if true, is inappropriate for a Wikipedia biography for reasons explained above. But we don't even have good reason to think the claims are true. Given the personal stake Yudkowsky has in building his reputation in the absence of academic credentials, the fact that he is the ultimate source of his claim to have received these scores makes them deeply unreliable. The fact that an advocate for his Institute takes him at his word does not make the claim more credible. It is common for fringe thinkers to exaggerate or invent facts about themselves to boost their credibility. In my opinion, Wikipedia is not a forum to repeat these claims and promote individuals, particularly without verification. 74.111.196.86 (talk) 16:18, 6 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
A Criticisms section on responses to EY's work would be more valuable than fluff about SAT scores, IMO. But does anyone feel even-handed enough to write it? --Davidcpearce (talk) 15:57, 7 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The SAT score claim is extraordinary, self-serving, and unverified (see above). If it's added, the source (Yudkowsky himself) needs to be made transparent. Thus we should include the fact that this is his claim. 166.137.8.52 (talk) 16:35, 7 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Why does a biography page mention that an individual reported a certain high school test score? I removed it because it's not the kind of thing mentioned in serious biographies, it doesn't tell us anything worth noting, and it comes off as amateurish. My edit was reverted by WeyerStudentOfAgrippa (talk) for the following reason: "It is indeed unusual because most subjects do not report their scores. It is relevant in the same way that it would be relevant if he reported getting a bachelor's degree." This implies that it's relevant because it's fraud (the entry mentions that Yudkowsky did not attend college, so the B.A. claim would have been a lie), but this entry does not support the contention that Yudkowsky is lying when reporting the undocumented score (we have no reason to believe or disbelieve it). If his reporting the score is relevant because it indicates he's a fraud, that should be made clear. However, I oppose that for now since there's no supporting evidence here. Given that high school test scores are irrelevant to a serious biography, I think the sentence should be removed. 77.164.155.115 (talk) 09:23, 21 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
So he's referenced in three books and seven articles (which I haven't read), founded the SIAI, and his primary research interest is an existential threat to humanity — that is, if he is correct (and a number of serious people think he may be) humanity is in danger of extinction from the threat he is studying, and within the next few decades, too. And he's one of the leaders in raising interest in this particular threat. It seems to me that he meets the primary notability criterion and is nearing the "creative professionals" secondary criterion. Is this not clear from the contents of the article? How did it end up with a "may not meet general notability guidelines" tag on it? Kragen Javier Sitaker (talk) 12:17, 24 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I have re-applied the {{notability}} tag. The current article represents Yudkowsky as known for his research in artificial intelligence. If that's the case, the article should be held to the academic notability criteria. He falls very far short of meeting these criteria. I admittedly do not consider him an "academic," as he is not affiliated with an academic or research institution and does not engage with any professional journals, but it seems completely unreasonable to consider him notable because he is not affiliated with a university, when he would clearly be non-notable for exactly the same work if he were. Since he does not meet notability criteria as a researcher, the article should either be overhauled to represent him as something else or deleted. Warm Worm (talk) 15:29, 5 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
redirects here, but as far I can tell, is not mentioned at all in the article. I find that a tad confusing. --79.44.93.161 (talk) 23:17, 21 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
"Yudkowsky was, along with Robin Hanson, one of the principal contributors to the blog Overcoming Bias sponsored by the Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford University. In early 2009, he helped to found Less Wrong, a "community blog devoted to refining the art of human rationality". Overcoming Bias subsequently became Hanson's personal blog.[9]"
In this podcast [1], Eliezer talks about a book on rationality that he's writing and intending to publish. I was hoping to add it to the article but can't find a reference to it anywhere else. Does anyone have another source for this? —Henry Stanley (talk) 15:32, 20 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
[3] - Eliezer Yudkowsky is writing a book on rationality, reductionism, and other prerequisites for thinking well about AI and Singularity outcomes. The book is targeted at bright students who may later contribute to Friendly AI research. Large parts of what will be the book are online in the form of sequences of posts at the rationality website Less Wrong.
The links to the TDT document, FAI etc. look ugly being in the body - can we just mention them there, and have a 'publications' section or something? Larklight (talk) 15:31, 24 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Review: http://web.archive.org/web/20090211145423/http://www.nytheatre.com/nytheatre/P07rev_02.htm#400
"Yudkowski Returns! reviewed by Robert Weinstein"
Theater info: http://www.theatermania.com/Off-Off-Broadway/shows/the-pretentious-festival_133057
Yudkoswki Returns! (The Rise and Fall and Rise Again of Dr. Eliezer Yudkowski)Written and Directed by Bob Saietta
In a seemingly deserted island, Dr. Eliezer Yudkowski and his artificial intelligence drones and cohorts wage a war to keep their circular narrative from ending. Their only weapon? The hope that humanity can finally evolve. (90 min)
Tue 6/19 7pm, @ Sat 6/30 @ 8:45pm, Sun 7/1 @ 1pm, Sun 7/1 @ 7pm
Yudkowsky's reaction: http://www.sl4.org/archive/0707/16399.html --Gwern (contribs) 23:01, 8 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
His infobox is that of a scientist (infobox scientist). Is that really appropriate? He is not a scientist, and from what I understand he has very little exchange with the scientific community on the subjects he writes about, as well as pushing scientifically dubious claims. I think the infobox writer would be more appropriate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.226.163.15 (talk) 21:16, 22 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
While I am not exactly an expert on Yudkowsky's work and life, I think that it should be noted that the man has been roundly criticised in certain quarters for his views on economics, gender politics and race, particularly with respect to [these] [articles] on Lesswrong. While it could be argued that many of the individual critics of his work are not in and of themselves notable, as a collective opposition I believe that they are well worth talking about here, particularly given that the article currently makes no allusion to the contentious nature of Yudkowsky's views.Polypartite (talk) 16:06, 1 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Absolutely. By most of the info I can find on this guy he seems to be regarded as something of a cultist lunatic by most of the net. Definitely worth investigating. Especailly as he's been noted to edit wikipedia himself. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.136.7.205 (talk) 22:10, 23 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
He's certainly considered a crackpot, but not for the reasons you stated. It's not as if people disagree with him politically. He hardly talks about politics. The much larger problem is that he has no formal education to speak of, makes sweeping pronouncements about things he doesn't understand at all, made up his own form of rationality and thinking that other people consider flawed, makes basic errors in science, etc.
He's not known for his political beliefs. He's known for his beliefs about rationality, science, AI, transhumanism, and philosophy, and those are the beliefs people have problems with.
Unfortunately, he's barely notable to begin with and so there is almost no criticism of him from notable people.2602:252:D10:2340:25FB:A879:5C4:1A06 (talk) 04:43, 14 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Why this keeps popping up? It's not a standard job title or professional description, and most importantly, there is currently no reliable source to the claim that Yudkowsky has performed any notable work in the field of decision theory. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.147.147.61 (talk) 03:55, 18 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
--Davidcpearce (talk) 17:27, 21 January 2014 (UTC)Eliezer is not an academic. So the question of whether he's a notable academic doesn't arise. The fact Eliezer chooses not to submit his work to academic journals is certainly worth mentioning. But it would be misleading to imply that no academic AI researchers take his work seriously. The one case I know where Eliezer did submit his work to the process of academic peer review was for the recent Springer "Singularity Hypotheses" volume. He ignored the referee's suggestions entirely and simply re-submitted his paper "Friendly Artificial Intelligence" verbatim. Critics might say this displays a certain chutzpah. But the fact the [academic] editors of the volume considered his ideas too important to ignore and published the paper unchanged is suggestive, to say the least.[To spike some guns, I'm highly critical of the IJ Good / MIRI / Yudkowsky conception of posthuman superintelligence. I just found the hostile tone of the entry disconcerting. Thus a Criticisms / Controversies section is indeed appropriate. But is Steven's Bond's collection of ad hominems the most appropriate link?][reply]
--Davidcpearce (talk) 20:37, 18 February 2014 (UTC)True. Even so, the original article (and one now deleted scurrilous link) suggested that no academics take Eliezer's work seriously - which simply isn't the case. He collaborates closely with Prof. Nick Bostrom, for instance. Oxford does not award its chairs lightly.[reply]
This article is using primary self-published sources from Yudkowsky's own website, and sources from possibly-unreliable WP:SPS blogs. This material should be cut if it cannot be referenced to stronger sources. --McGeddon (talk) 10:55, 20 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Ideally, I agree. But the most "prestigious" references aren't necessarily the most informative - especially if they are only print-published rather than online. So yes, the references could be pruned; but (IMO) their absence would make the entry less helpful. What do you reckon? --Davidcpearce (talk) 18:41, 20 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I've cleaned it up and moved the publications to their own section, per precedent. I still think the HP fan fiction stuff needs to be looked at, a lot of the sources are blogs that need to be individually examined. Additionally, the Kurzweil citation should be collapsed each into one and page numbers should be cited. Bond's criticism could also be re-included (after a discussion of it). There's also a decent number of technical terms that can probably be wikilinked. Inanygivenhole (talk) 00:00, 21 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Many thanks user Inanygivenhole for the tidying and link maintenance. But I can't be the only critic of Eliezer's work who is disturbed by the venomous nature of some of the attacks - not least the banished Bond link. --Davidcpearce (talk) 02:19, 21 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Over the next month or so I plan to go through the edit history to see if there's anything useful. Inanygivenhole (talk) 08:48, 7 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I put it in here, it was taken out here. Editor cited "Per WP:ELNO, and more importantly, WP:ELBLP this is inappropriate." Admittedly, I gave them a cursory look, but I don't see where it violates either. RW is stable and the article trashes his ideas rather than him.Civic Cat (talk) 19:54, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Civic Cat, alas the article ridicules the subject from start to finish. Can we find something that critiques Eliezer Yudkowsky's ideas and work rather than trashes the author?--Davidcpearce (talk) 10:52, 24 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Let's complete the quote:
"Open wikis, except those with a substantial history of stability and a substantial number of editors. Mirrors or forks of Wikipedia should not be linked."
The basis of an article for EY in WP doesn't strike me as particularly strong. The external links go to his personal web sites, and some mention from Ray Kurzweil's sites: who has his own credibility issues—didn't he say that by the end of this century strong AI life-forms will outnumber humans (Predictions made by Ray Kurzweil)? Whatever. The point is, this article has a slightly to somewhat spammy, promotional quality to it. The articles in the other languages even more so.
German, Polish, and Russian speaking Wikipedians might have problems going through the mostly English links on their pages—I don't know—I don't know the policies of their Wikipedias—Ich kanne sprecht nicht Deutsch gut, oder veil und schnell, and I can't write my name (neither real nor pseudonym) in Cyrillic; and while supercomputers are great at playing chess and Jeopardy, they are still apparently bad at finding Nigerian girls, lost jet planes, and translating stuff. Therefore, I don't know if the other articles are even more spammy than this one, perhaps even bullshitty . For all I know, those who created this article used Google to create the others, modified them a bit, tailored out the uncertainties, and wah-lah, score a few more for EY and his buddies. Not complaining, I've been tempted to do similar.
I don't know WDF there's a Wikiquote article on EY: it's so lame-ass as to constitute a wank—but, hey, that's just me, a dude who can't even do 50 edits per year on this site (or for that matter RW). Maybe you experts know something I don't, and EY shur rites reel-intelligent-like and in my still largely superficial-on-my-part examination of his sites, I'm impressed with them $50 words. Add this that I tend towards inclusionism and that I too have felt the bitterness of a deleted article (more so on RW), means I'm far from complaining about this article's existence. But this acceptance, this toleration of what I consider to be a somewhat spammy and yes, somewhat POV article, should be countered by a little bitty external link to the RationalWiki article to balance things out to a more NPOV ph rating.
RationalWiki is stable insofar that articles there on subjects such as EY don't experience too many fundamental changes in them over long periods of time. EY has credentials?—such as they are. Some RationalWiki editors have credentials. (You can easily exclude me in that consideration). As for BLP issues, while some of EY's ideas are trashed, and his seeming trashing of those with credentials are trashed, and some of his actions are criticized, it ain't exactly given his home-phone number; or is speculating on his personal life—save a little on education—he being an autodidact.
Now while some exclusionists might suggest my nominating this as an AfD, instead of putting in the RW link, for some of my aforementioned reason(s), I'm not going to take such a dickish route—and it's not at all certain that such would succeed anyway. I'll also check out the links in the article later; but for now, I'll the external link back in.
Civic Cat (talk) 16:16, 17 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The SAT scores listed on this page are based on sources that cite Yudkowsky himself as the source of the scores. Given the conflict of interest, should we repeat such a claim as fact without making the source transparent? Further, are SAT scores appropriate at all in a biography? 216.3.101.62 (talk) 17:09, 7 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
If no secondary source has reported on this, then there's no reason for us to take note of it. I suggest removing it. Gamaliel (talk) 22:38, 12 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I wish we didn't have two sections on the SAT score on this talk page. It's confusing.Is the Damien Broderick source affiliated just because they talked on the same mailing list at one point? Also I can understand saying that Yudkowsky claiming this about himself is self-serving but I'm not sure if Miller citing Yudkowsky's statement as truth is considered the same thing. I think the fact that a professor of economics considers Yudkowsky's claim valid carries some weight. 69.122.30.169 (talk) 19:25, 12 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I had added the following to the article:
A selection of his blogposts is set to be released as an ebook in mid-march 2015[1] by the Machine Intelligence Research Institute[2], and will be released as six printbooks at a future date.[1]
But somebody thinks this is "promotional spam", and [7]has removed it, as the same person did with an earlier version of that paragraph I had inserted previously. I don't understand why. There's also going to be an audiobook version, Eliezer Yudkowsky has helped making the book (see this example), and if I recall correctly he has even written some kind of foreword specifically for the book.
--Distelfinck (talk) 23:45, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Does Wikipedia allow this? Because this whole article reeks of self promotion.Mad hardy (talk) 17:09, 12 March 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mad hardy (talk • contribs) 16:47, 12 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
There needs to be a controversy section added to the page as he has faced many of them with numerous professional Ai readers expressing views that he isn't as credible as he claims to be. These are missing from the page and should be added. Also much of the page is a huge jargon jump that should be rephrased in a more understandable manner Zubin12 (talk) 07:27, 17 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
His recent column in Time where he proposed a full moratorium on new large AI training runs is more than constroversial as well, and I think it should be mentioned in the article. Finstergeist (talk) 20:50, 17 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Based on a facebook post of his, I don't think he is married anymore: https://www.facebook.com/yudkowsky/posts/10156307811769228Jrincayc (talk) 12:17, 12 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
This section seems too short to be worth including. Thoughts on deleting it? User:Zhoulikan
I deleted the section myself. The summary in the edit history that accompanied its addition showed a clear lack of NPOV and said information was almost wholly irrelevant. 2601:204:D500:ADE0:246D:FE8F:99D6:71AD (talk) 06:02, 15 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This is a biography, not a resume. Why do we have an academic publications section here? --Molochmeditates (talk) 03:17, 16 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It’s normal for an article about someone who does research, see for instance Stephen Hawking. We might be including too many though and should change it to “Selected Academic Publications” or something like that. Gbear605 (talk) 09:23, 16 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This article desperately needs IPA. 202.138.17.37 (talk) 08:39, 23 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Should his middle name really be "Shlomo"? The edit [8] that introduced that referenced a message [9] he wrote at 14 years old. This is however the Hebrew version of "Solomon", and in later messages he refers to himself as the English version instead, e.g: here [10] and here [11].
2001:9B1:26FC:7C00:0:C0:FF:EE (talk) 09:15, 19 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The redirect The Yud has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 May 19 § The Yud until a consensus is reached. Jay 💬 14:49, 19 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]