Re: Eliezer is only nineteen years-old!!

Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Wed, 04 Aug 1999 21:11:55 -0500

john grigg wrote:
>
> Eliezer,
>
> wow, so you are only nineteen!

Yes, but soon I'll be twenty. Soon I will no longer not be a teenager; instead I will not be a young adult. In just a month or so, I will not be part of a completely different social group! It makes me giddy just thinking about it! I just hope I can handle the transition.

> I imagined you being in your late fifties at
> least with a balding head and a professorship somewhere!!

Most people do.

> This is just
> amazing to me! I'm very curious about what college you attend and what your
> major is.

Let's just say that this question incorporates a false assumption and leave it at that, shall we?

> If you tell me you work as a gas station attendant and are not
> ambitious only wanting to learn about science for your own fun I will pass
> out!

No, although it does seem likely that I'll just get work as a computer programmer at some temp agency (or something) so I can do The Job in my spare time. Not having a life should cut down on expenses a bit.

> Anchorage has a fellow with an extremely high I.Q. that I read about
> in the paper who is perfectly content as a heavy equipment operator but his
> friends freak when they see all the books in his home about theoretical
> physics and chemistry!

This is news? Wonder what they'd make of a mutant supergenius.

> What is your career goal?

The Singularity, of course. What else?

> When I read the extropian
> song lyrics you wrote while inspired at a con I just thought "he's pretty
> hip for an old guy!"

Oh, that's wonderful! That really is wonderful! "Pretty hip for an old guy!" That goes on the list right next to "72-year-old Brooklyn grandmother" and "Someone who, if fringe, is at least not completely looney."

-- 
           sentience@pobox.com          Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
        http://pobox.com/~sentience/tmol-faq/meaningoflife.html
Running on BeOS           Typing in Dvorak          Programming with Patterns
Voting for Libertarians   Heading for Singularity   There Is A Better Way