Talk:Nick Bostrom

message: Should the article be moved to Nick Boström? Nick is Swedish (unless he has changed citizenship lately) and that is his correct name.  On the other hand, he himself uses "Bostrom" in the English-speaking world. —Naddy 01:42, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: FWIW, I've never seen it as anything but "Bostrom" (reading only English material), and since it is the spelling he himself uses in English leaving it here seems sensible on the English Wikipedia. I've created a redirect, though, and mentioned the original spelling, among other things. --Mindspillage (spill yours?) 02:39, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: "Nick Bostrom (born Niklas Boström in 1973)" It sounds to me as he changed his surname from Boström to Bostrom. Is this the case? If not, that line should be rewritten. Ran4 15:52, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Name 

message: A pdf available here - http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/jun08/6272 - says that Nick had a short career as a stand-up comedian, which seems an unusual choice for a rapture-style transhumanist and a swede. Can the comedian information be confirmed? If so, it must be put into the article. Strangerstome (talk) 07:30, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: So, why is the fact he is a swede contradicting the fact he used to be a stand up comedian? I remember him from some Swedish stand up comedy TV show in the early 90's where they occassionally exposed upcoming young talents. It seems like he continued his stand up comedy career in UK when he moved there - just take a look at his homepage where he mentions it. // Jens Persson (193.10.251.119 (talk) 10:10, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: What was his act? Was it funny? It just seems unusual, since Swedes are not known for their humor, and science and humor are not connected. This perhaps makes it notable. Strangerstome (talk) 23:08, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: A possible explanation for why Swedes might not be known for their humor is because most of the material is in Swedish it usually doesn't spread to other countries. And while science and humor might not be directly connected, that clearly doesn't exclude the possibility. But I agree that it seems odd for someone now focusing their effort on reducing existential risk. Erik.Bjareholt (talk) 18:58, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

text: IEEE Spectrum is a WP:NPOV and WP:RS reputable source. If IEEE Spectrum said that Nick Bostrom performed as a comedian at an earlier time in his life, then that is sufficient sourcing. It is rude to suggest that someone isn't capable of being a comedian because of their nationality and field of study.--FeralOink (talk) 08:49, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Stand-up comedian 

message: Guardians of the Apocalypse; The tech-nerd legion bent on saving humanity from asteroids, contagions, and robot revolutions December 15, 2011, 4:30 PM EST by Ashlee Vance in BusinessWeek, excerpt "Professor Nick Bostrom ranks various threats to mankind (Illustrations by QuickHoney)"
99.19.46.105 (talk) 11:10, 28 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  potential resource 

message: Firstly, this section should be named Simulation Argument as the simulation hypothesis refers only to the concept of the world as simulation, an idea not original to Bostrom. The important contribution by Bostrom is the argument resulting in his trilemma. Secondly, the statement "Because H will be such a large value, at least one of the three proximations will be true" is incorrect, as should be obvious to anyone glancing at the formula given above. H cancels from the formula and is thus irrelevant, permitting the statement of the trilemma. Also, the three propositions are not completely correct, they are stated in terms of absolutes, something the argument itself avoids because it cannot make such strong statements, it deals in averages not absolutes. Randomnonsense (talk) 22:42, 29 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Simulation Argument/Hypothesis 

message: I have some issues with the "eventual fate" section: first, it seems rather odd to have claims about future biographical information in an article. Second, and more seriously, the information is slightly incorrect - there was some errors in the Sunday Times article that triggered the information cascade the Oxford Today article is part of. Nick has actually *not* confirmed that he is signed up. Of course, by now there will be plenty of articles making the claim based on the original article, so it will look like a confirmed fact when it isn't. I suggest that we remove the eventual fate section, but I do have some misgivings that the claim will reappear. Anders Sandberg (talk) 07:14, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I had a look at this comment by Anders and looked at the original source and agreed that this section is problematic. First, aside from Anders' complaints, the title "Eventual Fate" is strange and nonstandard for biographies, and seems suspiciously tongue-in-cheek joke, given that Bostrom studies the future and thereby the "fate" of humanity. Second, the sentence itself is worded weirdly - people don't normally state that they have "agreed to pay" for a service. Third, this seems like a bit of strange hearsay that seems inessential to providing important information about the person in question. Fourth, there seems to be questions about the reliability of the source itself, and I don't see any other references here supporting it - but even if there are, those sources may track back to the same unreliable foundations. I don't see why this deserves its own section and even if the statement about cryonics is retained with that reference it should be moved to another section (with the 'Eventual Fate' section removed)and reworded.LanceSBush (talk) 14:20, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with Sandberg and Bush.  The section is inappropriate, poorly worded and factually incorrect.  I am removing it. Sir Paul (talk) 14:34, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Delete eventual fate? 

message: The television section feels a bit odd; Nick is on TV fairly often as a public intellectual - those examples are just a scattered handful. Anders Sandberg (talk) 17:40, 18 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Television

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: This article seems to contain a quite a bit of OR and self sourcing. Please cite from RS before reverting. Thanks. Inlinetext (talk) 19:06, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Primary sources are considered reliable sources.Apollo The Logician (talk) 19:26, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

text: That is incorrect. See WP:PSTS. To help you, I am setting out the relevant text  All analyses and interpretive or synthetic claims about primary sources must be referenced to a secondary source, and must not be an original analysis of the primary-source material by Wikipedia editors.. Please provide reliable secondary sources. Since this is about a BLP I am obliged by policy to immediately remove the controversial text to protect the encyclopedia and the trust of our readers. Inlinetext (talk) 19:40, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: The key words their are interpretative and synethetic. Simply saying what he says sumarising in different words is not those things.Apollo The Logician (talk) 19:43, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Please provide a reliable secondary source for these alleged summaries in different words. You cannot force an editor to read the book / paper to verify these summaries. If the work /BLP is so notable surely there would be secondary sources, and lots of them ? Inlinetext (talk) 19:52, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
replies: text:  FYI, WP:3RRBLP Removing violations of the biographies of living persons (BLP) policy that contain libelous, biased, unsourced, or poorly sourced contentious material. What counts as exempt under BLP can be controversial. Consider reporting to the BLP noticeboard instead of relying on this exemption. Inlinetext (talk) 19:52, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

text: Inlinetext is a long term disruptive user.  He wasted a huge amount of time at Geodesics on an ellipsoid falsely claiming copyright violations and "original research".  He also deleted more than half of Stanton Foundation and Parker Conrad without a good reason.  I am reverting back to the edit before Inlinetext's first edit. Jrheller1 (talk) 19:56, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
replies: text:  I am applying Wikipedia policy to this article, you are edit warring by reverting me on this BLP. Now please quickly find reliable secondary (preferably scholarly showing wide peer acceptance) sources for all this OR /SYNTH and SPS which I have clearly identified, instead of raising red herrings and HARASSING / STALKING me.  You are of course aware that this is exactly the sort of dubious poorly sourced EA puffery which is littering Wikipedia inserted by paid EA advocacy editors like Vipul, Issarice ? Inlinetext (talk) 20:04, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Since there is no response or citation of authentic secondary sources, I shall proceed to delete those poorly sourced controversial portions in this BLP I had previously excised. I am doing this under the BLP policy to safeguard the integrity of this article from Original Research, synthesis, and cite-fraud. Inlinetext (talk) 03:39, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

text: Not "pseudo-science" ? You may want to see "far beyond the edge of absurd". Inlinetext (talk) 18:30, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

text: I am not exactly sure what you mean by that but read WP:PRIMARY and WP:RS. Primary sources are considered reliable though it is better to use secondary etc.Apollo The Logician (talk) 20:06, 15 March 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: I suggest that you have misread a stray phrase from inapplicable sections of those policies. For BLPs the sourcing policy is WP:BLPSOURCE, eg WP:BLPREMOVE. Inlinetext (talk) 03:15, 16 March 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: For this topic there are a large number of reputably published primary sources as well as primary sources which have been extensively discussed by secondary sources and can therefore be used for augmentation. The book Superintelligence, for instance, has received multiple reviews not only in the press but also in academic journals. If material is lacking proper sourcing then flag it and suitable sourcing material will probably be found. K.Bog 11:18, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sourcing issues and OR 

message: The lede is cluttered with info that does not belong, cluttering up the article. The lede should be emphasising the reason that Bostrom has his own page and be intriguing enough to make readers would want to read through the main body of the article  That reason is his AI concerns  and his main arguments from the AI book should be touched on. Critical responses should also be mentioned. Refs should not be in the lede anyway.  Overagainst (talk) 15:36, 28 October 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: I disagree. The previous lead paragraph gave a more comprehensive overview of Bostrom's work, in line with MOS:LEAD. Your version focusses only on AI. On a formal level, the lead now links 3 times the term superintelligence – see WP:REPEATLINK, but omits a link to Instrumental convergence where paperclip maximizer is explained. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Michael Bednarek (talk • contribs) 05:12, 29 October 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with Michael. GojiBarry (talk) 01:54, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

text:  Do you have any thoughts on this change in the lede? GojiBarry (talk) 01:25, 11 February 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Most Wikipedia BLP leads are bland CVs because that's the easiest way to do things, but MOS:LEAD doesn't really support that; rather MOS:LEAD states "Like in the body of the article itself, the emphasis given to material in the lead should roughly reflect its importance to the topic, according to reliable, published sources", so whether to even mention the anthropic principle, the reversal test, and consequentialism in the lede is a judgement call which I don't have a strong opinion about. Most of the MSM media coverage appears to be about superintelligence, followed moderately distantly by the simulation argument. Looking at , human enhancement ethics should definitely be mentioned in the lede. I don't know what "touching on" the main arguments would entail, but it would probably be difficult to be concise, non-technical, and NPOV in the lede; this isn't a large article and therefore wouldn't need a four-paragraph lede. Rolf H Nelson (talk) 02:03, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

text: I liked the old intro better and from a pure style point of view, if you elaborate on his AI theories, then it should be at the end of the second paragraph rather than right up front. The way it's written now is kind of weird and jarring, and it detracts from his other notable work. Definitely don't exclude mention of the other topics besides AI, sure pop media doesn't talk about them as much but they are still popular and have decent academic recognition. Remember one of the main purposes of an introduction is to tell the reader why the subject is notable; talking about what he believes doesn't tell us why he is a notable person, and talking about what he believes right in the beginning of the introduction forces the reader to go further in order to find information about why he is notable. I don't have a problem with elaborating on AI if it's at the end of the introduction. K.Bog 05:20, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

text: Also, I don't see any reason to mention critical responses to his theories in the lede - that's not important for telling the reader who he is, why he's notable, etc. As far as I can tell we don't normally do that, even for researchers with theories as controversial as, say, Karl Marx. Refs in the intro are also fine, I don't see any problem with them. K.Bog 05:27, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

text: To be clear: this version of the intro was good, people can add one or two sentences about the end going into detail about superintelligence if they want.  K.Bog 05:35, 13 February 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lede emphasising  he is known for the AI argument  

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Musk merely said Borstom's book Super intelligence is "worth reading". Musk has warned about one country's advanced strategically programmed computer starting a nuclear world war three in a preempting attempt to prevent the state it is part of the defences for from being defeated, but he has never ever mentioned the possibility of AI deciding that its own very particular interests are best served by killing off all humanity, which is the main concern that Bostrom is raising.  Eliezer Yudkowsky sketched a scenario for how  an artificial intelligence could fulfill the worst fears of Borstom. 
Musk's thinking is not similar to Bostom's at all. And he is spreading open source AI all over the globe, which does not sound like someone worried about a  scenario in which AI bootstraps itself into a undercover Supeintelligence with only one logical move left; a three act play in which humans disappear during the second act. Overagainst (talk) 20:24, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: You have a good point that the sources provided, besides being weak, are indeed ambiguous about what kind of existential risk Musk believes AI poses. I added vanity fair, which states "Musk, Stephen Hawking, and Bill Gates are all raising the same warning about A.I." and quotes Musk in more detail to make it clearer that Musk does claim to be strongly motivated by concern about superintelligence deciding to kill off humanity: “Let’s say you create a self-improving A.I. to pick strawberries,” Musk said, “and it gets better and better at picking strawberries and picks more and more and it is self-improving, so all it really wants to do is pick strawberries. So then it would have all the world be strawberry fields. Strawberry fields forever.” Rolf H Nelson (talk) 05:26, 13 February 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Musk

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thread_title:  External links modified (February 2018) 

message: There are plenty of primary sources associating Bostrom with the analytic tradition. For example, his homepage and CV mention it, and his old homepage was even analytic.org: "Nick Bostrom's thinking in analytic philosophy"! As for secondary sources: , , . GojiBarry (talk) 02:06, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Citation for analytic philosophy 

message: In Bostrom work Existential Risks:Analyzing Human Extinction Scenarios and Related Hazards, sectiom 5.3 “Dysgenic” pressures, he discusses"enhancements" and "genetic engineering". I wonder if someone interested in colabrating in summarising his views and book about this, and Posthuman in general. Here a list of article that we can start with: Embryo Selection for Cognitive Enhancement, , In Defense of Posthuman Dignity, Human Enhancement Ethics: The State of the Debate, Human Genetic Enhancements: A Transhumanist Perspective, Ethical Issues in Human Enhancement, SMART POLICY, Why I Want to be a Posthuman When I Grow Up, Cognitive Enhancement: Methods, Ethics, Regulatory Challenges, The Reversal Test: Eliminating Status Quo Bias in Applied Ethics = all of these formed his book on Human Enhancement (not Human enhancement) .. FuzzyMagma (talk) 15:43, 10 April 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Please see my comments on this topic at Talk:Dysgenics#reverted edit. In general, Wikipedia is based on WP:SECONDARY rather than WP:PRIMARY sources. This is especially important when discussing potentially WP:FRINGE topics like dysgenics in humans, where race pseudoscience and fallacies about population genetics abound. Any discussion of a FRINGE topic should be sourced to an *independent* secondary source, per WP:FRIND. Generalrelative (talk) 16:02, 10 April 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: @Generalrelative I understand your point in Dysgenics, but book analysis are different, see WP:NONFICTION FuzzyMagma (talk) 16:09, 10 April 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I am just going to summarise what is written, so WP:PRIMARY does not apply to synposis. if they are wrong or right this is not the point unless it was issued in reponse to the book, which is different if I was writting about the topic itself, e.g., Dysgenics or Human enhancement then WP:FRINGE and WP:SECONDARY applies. FuzzyMagma (talk) 16:29, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

text: Generalrelative, there is a body of literature on human dysgenics that does not pertain to race/ethnicity nor culture/society; evolutionary biologist William D. Hamilton is highly respected and wrote about the subject, as did others. I do agree with you, that Nick Bostrom's self-authored work (he is quite prolific!) about any sort of dysgenics should not be directly included in his Wikipedia BLP. We need secondary sources, especially about something like transhumanism, dysgenics (for whatever reason), etc.  I arrived here after viewing the article on Instrumental convergence, which is in the effective altruism realm of Less Wrong. There's a lot of rationalist fan cruft in the talk page (e.g. multiple suggestions to use Eliezer Yudkowsky's own tweets claiming that Eliezer came up with something, as a source). I'm not accusing or casting aspersions of similar tendencies toward you, FuzzyMagma. This article already has some of that "true believer" feel to it, and it is likely to increase as the subject of AI existential risk gets more attention. Let's keep that in mind regarding further self-sourced content for a BLP.  Of course, WP:RS secondary sources are totally okay.--FeralOink (talk) 09:24, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Hey all, thank you for your engagement here and for the pings. I am traveling and will not have time to engage much for the time being. I trust the community to arrive at good solutions in the meantime, but will insist that the idea that evidence exists for dysgenic effects in humans is indeed fringe, and will be happy to make time to continue to argue that case when I have time if it becomes necessary. For now, please refer to the sources cited for this at Dysgenics. Generalrelative (talk) 18:47, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Support of "enhancements" and "genetic engineering" 

message: The section on superintelligence probably needs to be restructured. Notably because it focuses too much on illustrative scenarios. The risks scenarios are pretty anecdotal, they are just examples amongst others of how things could surprisingly go wrong. Here they are too detailed and speculative. We could instead briefly present the paperclip maximizer, which is popular, purposefully unrealistic (it's just a thought experiment) and illustrates well instrumental convergence and the orthogonality thesis. And the possibility of an intelligence explosion is just one risk factor, it is not necessary for a catastrophe. Moreover, Bostrom doesn't seem central to the "23 principles of A.I. safety", whereas there are a lot of concepts that he discovered and that deserve more attention in this article.
In my opinion, this section should roughly follow the structure of the book Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. First, it should explain why superintelligence seems possible. Then, what kinds of properties it would have, how not to anthropomorphize it. Then, why it's risky (intelligence explosion, instrumental convergence...), and what's the benefits. Then, how we could try to make it safe. And finally, Bostrom's overall strategic picture as he sees it. Of course, this could use recent articles if he updated his views since 2014. Sorry to propose that after you took so much time to improve this section, @FeralOink.
What do you think ? Alenoach (talk) 09:35, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I made the modifications that I was asking for, so this message is no longer relevant. Alenoach (talk) 17:13, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Superintelligence section 

message: The 1996 email controversy has been addressed and come to a conclusion. I propose that we delete the 1996 email controversy because of this. (also im new to wikipedia so if this is short thats why) 65.92.163.175 (talk) 21:37, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: No, I disagree. It happened and was covered by reliable sources, that's all that's needed to justify inclusion in the article. I also don't think it's "come to a conclusion," it may be something critics of Effective Altruism and related ideas talk about for a long time. Prezbo (talk) 12:42, 7 February 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Delete 1996 email controversy? 

message: In reference to Not that I think Bostrom is lying, but the article should make clear that this quote is coming from Bostrom’s website. He says that it’s the result of Oxford’s investigation but we have no independent evidence of this. Evidently Oxford sent Bostrom an email/letter with this statement but chose not to make any kind of public announcement. Prezbo (talk) 04:25, 13 February 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Result of Oxford investigation