ClaimsEliezer Yudkowsky

“If a human mind were thus accelerated, a subjective year of thinking would be accomplished for every 31 physical seconds in the outside world”

Eliezer Yudkowsky, author 2008 Artificial Intelligence as a Positive and Negative Factor in Global Risk (MIRI)

Factual Science and research methods

A mind accelerated a millionfold would accomplish a subjective year of thinking every 31 physical seconds.

Resolved true The record shows it happened or was so.

Factual: Statements about the present or the past, checked against the record: did they hold up?

What would count as true or false

This is an arithmetic claim: a mind sped up a millionfold experiences one subjective year for every (seconds in a year ÷ 1,000,000) physical seconds. A year is about 31,536,000–31,557,600 seconds, so the answer is about 31.5 seconds. True: the calculation gives about 31 seconds (between 30.5 and 32.5). Mostly true: it gives 29–34 seconds, a minor rounding slip. Mixed: not used, because this is a single figure. Mostly false: the figure is wrong by more than that but within a factor of 2, for example because a wrong multiplier was used. False: the figure is off by more than a factor of 2, for example because the true value is minutes or milliseconds.

Set before the research began.

Evidence (3)

  1. E1 The Time David Madore (personal web page) · 1 January 2000

    “The Julian year is 365.25 SI days, that is, 31557600 SI seconds.”
  2. E2 Notable Properties of Specific Numbers Robert P. Munafo (mrob.com) · 1 January 2026

    “This is the number of seconds per year according to the Gregorian calendar (averaged over a 400-year period): 365.2425 times 86400. It is an exact integer but is just an average; the number of seconds in any particular year is always either 31536000 or 31622400.”
  3. E3 How many seconds are in a year Justfreetools.com · 1 January 2021

    “One Julian astronomical year, has 365.25 days: 1 year = 365.25 days = (365.25 days) × (24 hours/day) × (3600 seconds/hour) = 31557600 seconds”

Reasoning

E1 and E3 put the Julian year at 31,557,600 seconds. E2 puts the average Gregorian year at 365.2425 × 86,400 seconds, with any single year being 31,536,000 or 31,622,400 seconds. Divided by a millionfold speedup, these give about 31.5–31.6 physical seconds per subjective year. That is within the 30.5–32.5 second range the criteria set for "true", so the stated figure of 31 seconds holds.

Cite this claim

Eliezer Yudkowsky, “A mind accelerated a millionfold would accomplish a subjective year of thinking every 31 physical seconds.” (said 2008). Verdict: resolved true. Reliability API, claim c_13cee1a19877, method 0.1.0+c876030c, dataset release v1.1.2. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_13cee1a19877

This claim is in dataset release v1.1.2, with the same verdict.

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More factual claims by Eliezer Yudkowsky

  1. Mostly true Factual September 2025
    “And that in turn provided a lot of indirect support for the atomic theory.”

    Conservation of mass provided a lot of indirect support for atomic theory.

  2. Mostly true Factual September 2025
    “The conservation of mass was one of the first hints that things were being rearranged rather than created or destroyed.”

    The conservation of mass was one of the first hints that things are rearranged rather than created or destroyed.

  3. Resolved true Factual September 2025
    “The way that if you burn something inside a sealed glass vessel, it didn't change weight.”

    Burning a substance inside a sealed glass vessel does not change the total weight.

  4. Mostly true Factual 26 December 2020
    “that ignorance is a mental rather than physical property.”

    E. T. Jaynes said many times that probability is ignorance and that ignorance is a mental rather than physical property, and Yudkowsky repeated this often.

  5. Mixed Factual 2008
    “General intelligence is a between-species difference, a complex adaptation, and a human universal found in all known cultures.”

    General intelligence is a between-species difference, a complex adaptation, and a human universal found in all known cultures.

All of them

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