Top all-time · #171
Nick Bostrom
Personal blog · nickbostrom.comphilosophyai
Nick Bostrom's personal blog at nickbostrom.com covers philosophy and ai. Since 2007, 245 different Hacker News readers have linked it 312 times, most often “The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant (2005)”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Sometimes recommended · 7 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Bostrom's papers and the Dragon-Tyrant fable on death, the Vulnerable World Hypothesis, AI timelines and the Great Filter, usually to back up a point.
- Recommended for · 7 comments
- Called fascinating, really cool, a nice summary, a strong case and well worth reading.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Oxford philosopher (videos, papers, interviews, bio, etc.)
Most-linked posts?
- The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant (2005)38 people · 46 mentions · first linked 2008-12-18
- Nick Bostrom: The Vulnerable World Hypothesis [pdf]33 people · 39 mentions · first linked 2018-11-23
- The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant (2005)19 people · 20 mentions · first linked 2017-10-20
- The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant (2005)15 people · 16 mentions · first linked 2020-06-15
- The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant15 people · 16 mentions · first linked 2022-08-17
- Existential Risks: Analyzing Human Extinction Scenarios (2002)10 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2010-02-22
- Why I Hope the Search for Extraterrestrial Life Finds Nothing9 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2009-01-15
- Future Progress in Artificial Intelligence: A Survey of Expert Opinion [pdf]7 people · 16 mentions · first linked 2015-02-25
- Why I hope the search for extra terrestrial life finds nothing [pdf]6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2018-03-13
- The Vulnerable World Hypothesis [pdf] (2019)5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2021-11-26
What Hacker News says?
Here's a gigantic PDF listing ways the truth can hurt all kinds of things: https://www.nickbostrom.com/information-hazards.pdf
Comment linking /information-hazards.pdf
on “Willingness to look stupid”Submitted Information Hazards: A Typology of Potential Harms from Knowledge [pdf] as a story · 83 points
HN discussionNo, it is not. Yet not knowing what the alternative is like gives us that delusion. http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html
Comment linking /fable/dragon.html
on “A Sister’s Eulogy for Steve Jobs”Submitted The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant (2005) as a story · 81 points
HN discussionHow are you estimating how far away AI is so accurately that you can disregard it entirely? The best we can do to predict these things is survey experts, and the results aren't too comforting: http://www.nickbostrom.com/papers/survey.pdf >We thus designed a brief questionnaire and distributed it to four groups of experts in 2012/2013. The median estimate of respondents was for a one in two chance that highlevel mach…
Comment linking /papers/survey.pdf
on “Introducing OpenAI”Submitted The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant (2005) as a story · 72 points
HN discussionStrong AI is not necessarily a bad thing. Instead of worrying about questions 1 & 2, we could be thinking less about constraint and competition with AI and more about cooperation and goal-orientation: e.g. the work of Yudkowsky ( https://intelligence.org/files/CFAI.pdf ) or some of the thoughts provided by Nick Bostrom http://nickbostrom.com/ . Goal-orientation is preferable to capability constraint because the pote…
Comment linking /
on “AlphaGo beats the world champion Lee Sedol in first of five matches”Submitted The Vulnerable World Hypothesis [pdf] (2019) as a story · 62 points
HN discussionYes. See Nick Bostrom's Why I hope The Search For Extraterrestrial Life Finds Nothing : http://www.nickbostrom.com/extraterrestrial.pdf
Comment linking /extraterrestrial.pdf
on “Signs of Liquid Water Found on Surface of Mars, Study Says”Submitted The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant (2005) as a story · 61 points
HN discussionI agree, and disagree with the author. > "Vision 1: CONNECT KNOWLEDGE, PEOPLE, AND CATS." > This is the correct vision. I would say this is a correct vision, which I happen to be in favor of. But I don't understand why it has to be an "us vs. them" dynamic between this and the "BECOME AS GODS, IMMORTAL CREATURES OF PURE ENERGY LIVING IN A CRYSTALLINE PARADISE OF OUR OWN CONSTRUCTION" vision. Even in strawman form, I…
Comment linking /papers/survey.pdf
on “Web Design: The First 100 Years (2014)”Submitted The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant (2005) as a story · 61 points
HN discussion"The assumption that any intelligent agent will want to recursively self-improve, let alone conquer the galaxy, to better achieve its goals makes unwarranted assumptions about the nature of motivation." This isn't just an unreflective assumption. The argument is laid out in much more detail in "The Basic AI Drives" (Omohundro 2008, https://selfawaresystems.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/ai_driv... ), which is expanded…
Comment linking /superintelligentwill.pdf
on “Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People”Submitted How Long Before Superintelligence? (1997) as a story · 59 points
HN discussion> [T]he value of living longer for everyone is not self-evident (at least from where I am standing), and the presumption that it is seems in itself dogmatic. A couple of different perspectives on the issue: https://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html https://youtu.be/iKC21wDarBo
Comment linking /fable/dragon.html
on “U.S. surgeons transplant pig heart into human patient”Submitted How long before superintelligence? (1997) as a story · 57 points
HN discussionOn a more poetic note: http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html
Comment linking /fable/dragon.html
on “What Dreams May Come”Submitted The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant (2005) as a story · 57 points
HN discussionYou might be interested in this line of reasoning, why finding life on Mars might in fact be counter to the long-term survival of humans. https://www.nickbostrom.com/extraterrestrial.pdf
Comment linking /extraterrestrial.pdf
on “Planet Ceres is an 'ocean world' with sea water beneath surface, mission finds”Submitted Pascal's Mugging (2009) [pdf] as a story · 55 points
HN discussionEvery time I come across this sentiment—that death is natural, and we have to accept it, and so on—the Fable of Dragon-Tyrant[0] comes to mind. [0] http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html
Comment linking /fable/dragon.html
on “From hacker to hospice in seven weeks”Submitted I Hope the Search for Extraterrestrial Life Finds Nothing (2008) [pdf] as a story · 47 points
HN discussion> Mortality is the ticking timer that keeps you alive. For some people this may be true. Here is an important alternate view - that we rationalize death as being valuable because we can;t fix it yet. http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html More on what you can do here http://www.sens.org/
Comment linking /fable/dragon.html
on “From hacker to hospice in seven weeks”Submitted Why I Hope the Search for Extraterrestrial Life Finds Nothing as a story · 41 points
HN discussionI here declare, that I disagree. http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html
Comment linking /fable/dragon.html
on “From hacker to hospice in seven weeks”Submitted In Great Silence there is Great Hope (2007) [pdf] as a story · 28 points
HN discussionWe need to fix this, and we need to start yesterday. “Yes, we did it, we killed the dragon today. But damn, why did we start so late? http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html If you are in a position to fund things, consider the SENS Research Foundation, instead of the next Yo app. http://www.sens.org
Comment linking /fable/dragon.html
on “From hacker to hospice in seven weeks”Submitted The Fable of the Dragon Tyrant: Nick Bostrom on Death as a story · 19 points
HN discussionOkay, you're right to say I shouldn't say "there is no Great Filter!" and I was fast and a bit too punchy with claims. What I want to say is "Nick Bostrom's Great Filter argument is not a cause for fear!" ( https://nickbostrom.com/extraterrestrial.pdf ). > First, let's define some terms (from wikipedia!): "The Great Filter, in the context of the Fermi paradox, is whatever prevents non-living matter from undergoing a…
Comment linking /extraterrestrial.pdf
on “Phosphine detected in the atmosphere of Venus – an indicator of possible life?”Submitted New Nick Bostrom Paper: Optimal Timing for Superintelligence [pdf] as a story · 15 points
HN discussion
