Hi, First a note of clarification: although I am speaking at Convergence08 and know some of the organizers, I have had no role in the organization of that conference.
Also, a comment for Ben J: the emerging AGI community and the futurist community are largely disjoint though there is some minor overlap such as me.... In general, though, I think balancing openness with quality-maintenance is actually a hard job once you're in the position of organizing conferences and journals and such. Personally, having been an outsider in nearly every social context I've ever been in, my bias is generally toward openness. Second: I checked http://convergence08.pbwiki.com/Speaker+Sign+Up and your suggested talk is up there along with everybody else's. As for whether whomever-it-was was right to freeze your wiki privileges in response to your posting on the conference wiki in an appropriate way (given that you didn't know the rules of appropriateness in this context), I really can't say since I wasn't privy to the full exchange between you and them. Anyway, to keep things simple, how about this: if you email me a link to an external website pertinent to your conference session, I'll just log onto that wiki and insert it into the box corresponding to your talk. That would seem to solve the practical problem that you want people to be able to find out the material about your talk beforehand. Finally, an unsolicited piece of advice is that your conference topic from the wiki ************ 1. Personal experience with a new procedure to greatly enhance human intelligence. 2. Demo of Dr.Eliza: A new approach to solving society's most difficult problems. 3. Processors that are 10,000 times faster, made on existing silicon fab lines. 4. A scanning UV fluorescence microscope would revolutionize AGI, NN, and whole brain emulation. 5. Technological censorship. It is ubiquitous, even here. It is an invisible emergent property. ************* seems like too many different topics for one brief presentation, to me. Even excepting the fifth topic, it seems like each of the first 4 topics, if you really have something substantive to say about it, could easily occupy a whole presentation. One approach might be to give a presentation on Dr. Eliza (I picked that one up because you say you have a demo) and just hand out brochures on the other ones to interested parties, including the people at the Dr. Eliza talk. If you want me to paste some modified text up there for you I could do that too. It would be possible for me to pester the people involved about why they banned you from the wiki and so forth, but I really don't feel like I have much time to deal with these matters, which aren't strictly my own business. But you can make use of the above offer of small assistance if you like. ben g On Wed, Nov 5, 2008 at 5:28 AM, Benjamin Johnston <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote: > > > Rather than assuming idiocy, censorship or ill intent; why not give them > the benefit of the doubt? > > > > Maybe they felt that offering anybody the chance to sign up as a speaker > with "a session title, your name, a link to your bio or website, and perhaps > a picture of you" was enough. You have complete freedom to publish whatever > you like at your own website. Using a conference *organization* website > (rather than linking to your homepage) to discuss the particulars of your > work would strike me as rather "spammy" (especially given that it isn't > normal at other unconference wikis); the best way to deal with spammers is > usually just to delete, ignore, move on, and not waste time with them. > > > > While my impressions are that AGI is not (yet) taken particularly seriously > in the established AI community, I have been pleasantly surprised with how > well it has actually been received so far. I certainly see no censorship – > sure, there's some scepticism about whether this might not just be history > repeating itself, but I think there's also a lot of optimism, > open-mindedness and hope from those in the established AI community who look > in. The best way to be taken seriously is to play by the established rules > of the game (whether the rules are implicit or explicit), and win. > > > > -Ben (but presumably not the "Ben" of the original message's addressees) > > > > *From:* Steve Richfield [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > *Sent:* Wednesday, 5 November 2008 6:18 PM > *To:* agi@v2.listbox.com > *Subject:* [agi] OT: More thoughts Technological Censorship > > > > Ben, et al, > > > > I am getting my thoughts more together on technological censorship, > an(other) example of which I recently encountered at Convergence08. Since we > have already had some discussions about this here in the past, I thought > that my recent encounter at Convergence08 would be remote enough for > everyone to speak objectively, as it doesn't directly concern anyone here > (except maybe Ben in a very slight way). > > > > As I understand it, Ben is going to be presenting there on November 16, and > I suspect that he will see himself on my side of this particular situation, > whereas he has been on pretty much the opposite side of nearly this same > issue in the past on this forum. > > > > The Act: I was planning on presenting some complex material and they have > a conference Wiki, so I just opened up a new page on the Wiki and pasted an > article in for others to comment on before the conference. Not only did the > management there vehemently disapprove of my actions, which violated no > stated rule, but they then immediately proceeded to delete my article and > suspend my Wiki privileges. They have refused to reinstate my Wiki > privileges, and they have also refused to give any reason whatsoever for > refusing to reinstate them, even after my explaining that any error on my > part was entirely unknowing and unintentional and would not be repeated. > They have also refused to give any explanation for refusing allow the > posting of articles. > > > > On the surface this would seem to be absolutely no censorship at all, > because everyone gets the same forum to present in, and I would have the > same hour as everyone else to make my case. However, this puts those > presenting material that is leveraged on well known existing material, as > well as those who are unprepared, at an advantage over those presenting > entirely new material. This would tend to support status quo positions > rather than radical advances (like Ben's?). Without any opportunity to have > others come up to speed on radically new material, I doubt that I could be > really heard by a general audience in just one hour. > > > > Of course there was absolutely no conscious understanding of these subtle > effects by the idiots who demanded that articles not be posted. After all, > everything that they know about could easily be presented in just one hour. > Of course this only demonstrates their ignorance, which of course is the > source of the emergent property of censorship. Ben, I will certainly enjoy > watching you present how machine consciousness works, to a general audience, > all in just one hour. Like most censorship, it is completely unknowing on > the part of the people doing the censoring. > > > > Any thoughts? > > > > Steve Richfield > ------------------------------ > *agi* | Archives <https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now> > <https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/> | > Modify<https://www.listbox.com/member/?&;>Your Subscription > <http://www.listbox.com> > -- Ben Goertzel, PhD CEO, Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC Director of Research, SIAI [EMAIL PROTECTED] "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." -- Robert Heinlein ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
