I just read a page titled: "Singularity Writing Advice", by one of my favorite thinkers: Eliezer Yudkowsky.

For me, it was great from several standpoints. I do need to learn how to write more skillfully, and this helped.  More importantly, this concept eloquently explains one reason why I find it so difficult to share new ideas with people: the inferential distance is too great, and therefore I have No Bone in My Beard !

Here's an excerpt:

You're a hunter-gatherer, blood and bone and DNA. You were born to live in small tribes in which everyone grows up with the same alliterate education.

We are all hunter-gatherers. Our instincts say that anyone who says something with no immediately obvious evidence is an idiot, because in a hunter-gatherer tribe, he is. Conversely, if you say something blatantly obvious and the other person doesn't see it, he's an idiot. Anyone who expects you to believe a statement with no obvious evidence is either a poor liar, or (at best) the tribal witch doctor. And you'd better not try to claim the status of witch doctor (by making witch-doctorish statements) unless you have a bona-fide bone through your beard; do you take us for fools?

The scientist has no instincts that track whether the words and conclusions he's using are fifty inferential steps removed from the evidence the audience is previously familiar with. He knows that the layman doesn't know the conclusions; he doesn't realize that the layman doesn't know the premises. Reporting a result new to his scientific tribe, he takes one or two inferential steps backward to the common wisdom of his tribe; obviously this is a persuasive argument. The layman is not persuaded, and so the scientist thinks the layman is an idiot. And in turn the layman has no instinct that someone offering blatantly unsupported conclusions might be working fifty inferential steps away; he thinks the scientist is a lunatic. How often does a hunter-gatherer in a tribe with no written literature wind up more than two or three inferential steps away from everyone else?

So, inferential distance has been screwing me before I even begin!     Unknowingly, when I've spoken to people about Nanotech and the Singularity... I've been making witch-doctorish statements!  It pleases me to hear this explained so logically, and humorously.

This means I have to find some way to introduce concepts while avoiding the 'intellectual shock' that often scares people off.  I have to remember the concept of  Shock Levels, and its' very real effects!

You'll get over the shock... and experience the multiple epiphanies that follow.   Enjoy the ride!

Yudkowski's Shock Level Concept  (I consider myself SL3, struggling with SL4)

• SL0:  The legendary average person is comfortable with modern technology - not so much the frontiers of modern technology, but the technology used in everyday life.  Most people, TV anchors, journalists, politicians.

• SL1:  Virtual reality, living to be a hundred, "The Road Ahead", "To Renew America", "Future Shock", the frontiers of modern technology as seen by Wired magazine.  Scientists, novelty-seekers, early-adopters, programmers, technophiles.

• SL2:  Medical immortality, interplanetary exploration, major genetic engineering, and new ("alien") cultures.  The average SF fan.

• SL3:  Nanotechnology, human-equivalent AI, minor intelligence enhancement, uploading, total body revision, intergalactic exploration. Extropians and transhumanists.

• SL4:  The Singularity, Jupiter Brains, Powers, complete mental revision, ultraintelligence, posthumanity, Alpha-Point computing, Apotheosis, the total evaporation of "life as we know it."  Singularitarians and not much else.

Eliezer Yudkowsky      (Great thinker; much excellent writing on AI and the Singularity)

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