| > But the academic activity is focused around the kind of activities that Kuhn calls "Normal Science". True, but even Kuhn would note that most paradigm shifts still come from within the field. You don't need complete outsiders and, as far as I know, outsiders revolutionizing a field are quite rare. You need someone (a) who can think outside the box, but you also need (b) someone who has all of the relevant background to not just reinvent some ancient discarded bad idea. Outsiders are naturals at (a) but are at a distinct disadvantage for (b). I think what's really happening in this thread is: 1. Carmack is a well-deserved, beloved genius in his field. 2. He's also a coder, so "one of us". 3. Thus we want him to be a successful genius in some other field because that indirectly makes us feel better about ourselves. "Look what this brilliant coder like me did!" But the odds of him making some big leap in AGI are very slim. That's not to say he shouldn't give it a try! Society progresses on the back of risky bets that pay off. |
That's probably true. I look at this as Carmack running his own PhD program. I expect he will expand what we know about computation and the AGI problem before he's done.