Eliezer Yudkowsky

You know, that sounds kind of too fancy to me.

I'd just look at all the people, you know, like one by one, up to the eight billion, and be like, that's life, that's life, that's life.

Thank you for talking today.

You're welcome.

I do worry that we didn't really address a whole lot of fundamental questions I expect people have, but maybe...

We got a little bit further and made a tiny little bit of progress.

And I'd say, like, be satisfied with that.

But actually, no, I think one should only be satisfied with solving the entire problem.

Einstein's superpowers.

There's a widespread tendency to talk and think as if Einstein, Newton, and similar historical figures had superpowers.

Something magical, something sacred, something beyond the mundane.

Remember, there are many more ways to worship a thing than lighting candles around its altar.

Once I unthinkingly thought this way too, with respect to Einstein in particular, until reading Julian Barber's The End of Time cured me of it.

Barber laid out the history of anti-epiphenomenal physics and Mach's principle.

He described the historical controversies that predated Mach, all this that stood behind Einstein and was known to Einstein when Einstein tackled his problem.

And maybe I'm just imagining things, reading too much of myself and of Barber's book.

But I thought I heard Barber very quietly shouting, coded between the polite lines, What Einstein did isn't magic, people.

If you all just looked at how he actually did it instead of falling to your knees and worshipping him, maybe then you'd be able to do it too.

Maybe I'm mistaken or extrapolating too far, but I kind of suspect that Barber once tried to explain to people how you move further along Einstein's direction to get timeless physics, and they sniffed scornfully and said, Oh, you think you're Einstein, do you?

John Baez's Crackpot Index, Item 18.