unfortunately it still doesn’t abolish the issue whereby smarter people can trick or convince less intelligent people through the fluency of their argumentation.
The danger here is with people who are smart but sufficiently less intelligent than the person who makes the argument. Since if the person you want to convince is too dumb to understand some sophisticated argument then all intelligence is useless (with respect to pure argumentation) if the person is not inclined to believe you.
I mean, some superintelligent AI in a box could output sophisticated proofs of why I am supposed to let it out of the box. But since I am unable to read and understand sophisticated proofs and I am not inclined to believe such an AI, any amount of mathematical sophistication will be useless, or pretty much hit diminishing returns after the level that I (the gatekeeper) can grasp.
Try playing a popular board game with someone of average or below average intelligence. Try proposing before the game a set of rule changes. The response will be “no lets keep the default rules to keep it fair”, even if the game is broken or
imbalanced and even if you can explain to them why this is so. Is this an irrational position for them to take?
If you observed a game in a parallel world where everyone is smarter by one or two standard deviations, I think their response would basically be the same. But if you just raise your and their IQ in this universe I think their response may well differ. Can anyone see why I think this is so?
I also noted that intelligent people may be more vulnerable to this because they are unused to mistrusting their own wits when evaluating the arguments of clever others. People probably have all sorts of bad associations with this kind of advice but pause to consider if you would wish your five year old to respond to reasonable arguments from random strangers wanting entry into your house or asking him to follow them. Also note that the few cases when this might be a good idea (policeman, fireman, ..) can be explicitly discuses and implemented in the little tyke’s brain.
An unsupervised five-year-old will let a stranger indoors, take candy from a stranger, play with a gun he finds etc. no matter what you drill into him.
Anecdotally, there was a particular incident when I was 6 and specifically didn’t open the door for a stranger because my parents told me not to. It turns out it was the postman.
But regardless, surely telling a 5 year old not to take candy from a stranger no matter the stranger’s reasoning is better than not doing so.
When I was 6, my mother and I accepted a ride home from the park. I was very reluctant. I told my mother that she might not know, but I had learned in school that one should not accept rides from strangers.
Another anecdote of very young children being able to internalize and comprehend rules.
You did go along for the ride right because you trusted your mother’s judgement. All else being equal I would say you where better off with your default position being not taking rides from strangers and not listening to their arguments.
Remember I was only talking about superior minds one dosen’t fully trust. In that case you fully trusted your mother and it was best that you outsourced the judgement call to her.
An unsupervised five-year-old will let a stranger indoors, take candy from a stranger, play with a gun he finds etc. no matter what you drill into him.
I don’t believe I would have done any of those things—and my parents would agree. Comprehension and implementation of rules was well within the realm of my capabilities and I was only rebellious against or defiant of rules I thought were stupid. Not those that could be explained (“that is dangerous and kills people”) or those that I was already indifferent to (I would only have answered the door out of a sense of obligation or kindness anyway, I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to.)
“No matter what you drill into him” sets a fairly high bar of stupidity.
To do that somewhat naturally, lift weights to increase testosterone.
I haven’t found either my stupidity or my resistance to (desirable) persuasion to be increased by either lifting weights or alterations to my testosterone—natural or otherwise. If anything the improvement to my health (mental and physical) and general emotional/social security makes the net effect the opposite to what you describe.
That can happen sometimes but it can also go the other way. Testosterone has its downsides. Its upsides might still outweigh them, obviously.
I was born with high prenatal testosterone, so I can attract people now even without testosterone. I generally go without testosterone, ’cuz I think it negatively affects my rationality. Hypothetically, this restricts me to cardio, and keeps me from lifting. In practice, though, it doesn’t really come up.
I don’t lift. I used to. If I were to start lifting again it’d be a relevant consideration. Most people could probably use more testosterone, but I think my optimal testosterone level is low. Years ago someone told me intellligence was correlated with high testosterone at birth but low testosterone as an adult. Makes sense to me.
This is just cracking a dark artsy joke. I still like it since reversed stupidity (or is it intelligence in this case?) truly isn’t intelligence (Konkvistador’s brain starts to ache).
No the better approach is to simply take into account if any important conflict of interests exist between you and a very clever party you don’t fully trust when evaluating their arguments. Yes yes ad hominem I know, yet it does sounds like good tactical advice no?
Are you telling me that I apply this as a dark arts tactic to avoid being persuaded? That is, are you calling me stupid and arrogant? I insist that one of those does not apply!
EDIT: Oh, wait, you could be suggesting that I’m trying to portray XiXiDu as stupid and arrogant? I deny that charge. It doesn’t apply in this instance and when I do say things that are insulting my track record indicates that I say them rather directly. In fact, I point out that it is XiXiDu that calls himself stupid and on more than one occasion I have flat out denied and contradicted his claim.
EDIT: Never mind. Parent changed. New reply:
This is just cracking a dark artsy joke.
Huh? No it isn’t. It’s an agreement with XiXiDu’s point. It is an phenomenon that applies and, I suggest, one that is implemented to a certain context sensitive degree by humans.
Oh sorry I thought you where being sarcastic and that you where disagreeing with XiXiDu and perhaps even setting up a straw man. Maybe the reason I misidentified this is because of your use of “arrogant”. When I think of protective stupidity I don’t associate that word with it.
How do you find out whether a conflict of interests exists? That’s one of the things someone who’s trying to manipulate you will try to conceal, and if they’re a lot smarter, they’re more likely to succeed at it.
Sure. But I think at least some conflicts of interests are very hard to conceal. At the very least if someone finds this argument compelling the other party can’t prompt them to denounce this check on principle.
Most strategies that could help one avoid malicious advice stemming from hard to detect conflicts of interests seem to have a (to me) unacceptably high false positive rate. Not so much in the context of a scenario where you are dealing with a a boxed AI but more say when one is interacting very intelligent people in a business envrionment or personal life. It seems to me that such strategies would carry high opportunity costs.
The danger here is with people who are smart but sufficiently less intelligent than the person who makes the argument. Since if the person you want to convince is too dumb to understand some sophisticated argument then all intelligence is useless (with respect to pure argumentation) if the person is not inclined to believe you.
I mean, some superintelligent AI in a box could output sophisticated proofs of why I am supposed to let it out of the box. But since I am unable to read and understand sophisticated proofs and I am not inclined to believe such an AI, any amount of mathematical sophistication will be useless, or pretty much hit diminishing returns after the level that I (the gatekeeper) can grasp.
Agree. To be hard to persuade through cleverness, be stupid and arrogant.
I came to a very similar conclusion some time ago.
I also noted that intelligent people may be more vulnerable to this because they are unused to mistrusting their own wits when evaluating the arguments of clever others. People probably have all sorts of bad associations with this kind of advice but pause to consider if you would wish your five year old to respond to reasonable arguments from random strangers wanting entry into your house or asking him to follow them. Also note that the few cases when this might be a good idea (policeman, fireman, ..) can be explicitly discuses and implemented in the little tyke’s brain.
An unsupervised five-year-old will let a stranger indoors, take candy from a stranger, play with a gun he finds etc. no matter what you drill into him.
Anecdotally, there was a particular incident when I was 6 and specifically didn’t open the door for a stranger because my parents told me not to. It turns out it was the postman.
But regardless, surely telling a 5 year old not to take candy from a stranger no matter the stranger’s reasoning is better than not doing so.
When I was 6, my mother and I accepted a ride home from the park. I was very reluctant. I told my mother that she might not know, but I had learned in school that one should not accept rides from strangers.
Another anecdote of very young children being able to internalize and comprehend rules.
You did go along for the ride right because you trusted your mother’s judgement. All else being equal I would say you where better off with your default position being not taking rides from strangers and not listening to their arguments.
Remember I was only talking about superior minds one dosen’t fully trust. In that case you fully trusted your mother and it was best that you outsourced the judgement call to her.
I guess so. I only mean that I think children don’t so closely resemble stupid adults. Even bad-tempered children are pretty docile.
There are exceptions.
I don’t believe I would have done any of those things—and my parents would agree. Comprehension and implementation of rules was well within the realm of my capabilities and I was only rebellious against or defiant of rules I thought were stupid. Not those that could be explained (“that is dangerous and kills people”) or those that I was already indifferent to (I would only have answered the door out of a sense of obligation or kindness anyway, I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to.)
“No matter what you drill into him” sets a fairly high bar of stupidity.
To do that somewhat naturally, lift weights to increase testosterone. Also gets you laid. Not sure what the corresponding hack for women is.
I haven’t found either my stupidity or my resistance to (desirable) persuasion to be increased by either lifting weights or alterations to my testosterone—natural or otherwise. If anything the improvement to my health (mental and physical) and general emotional/social security makes the net effect the opposite to what you describe.
That part I noticed.
That can happen sometimes but it can also go the other way. Testosterone has its downsides. Its upsides might still outweigh them, obviously.
I was born with high prenatal testosterone, so I can attract people now even without testosterone. I generally go without testosterone, ’cuz I think it negatively affects my rationality. Hypothetically, this restricts me to cardio, and keeps me from lifting. In practice, though, it doesn’t really come up.
Messes with cholestrol levels something shocking. Makes you stinky. Causes acne. Is converted to DHT leading to male pattern baldness and
You actively avoid lifting weights so as to reduce your testosterone levels? That’s not something I’ve heard before.
I don’t lift. I used to. If I were to start lifting again it’d be a relevant consideration. Most people could probably use more testosterone, but I think my optimal testosterone level is low. Years ago someone told me intellligence was correlated with high testosterone at birth but low testosterone as an adult. Makes sense to me.
I know this is old—do you have your research here on lifting and testosterone?
This is just cracking a dark artsy joke. I still like it since reversed stupidity (or is it intelligence in this case?) truly isn’t intelligence (Konkvistador’s brain starts to ache).
No the better approach is to simply take into account if any important conflict of interests exist between you and a very clever party you don’t fully trust when evaluating their arguments. Yes yes ad hominem I know, yet it does sounds like good tactical advice no?
Edit: It turns out it wasn’t a joke.
Are you telling me that I apply this as a dark arts tactic to avoid being persuaded? That is, are you calling me stupid and arrogant? I insist that one of those does not apply!
EDIT: Oh, wait, you could be suggesting that I’m trying to portray XiXiDu as stupid and arrogant? I deny that charge. It doesn’t apply in this instance and when I do say things that are insulting my track record indicates that I say them rather directly. In fact, I point out that it is XiXiDu that calls himself stupid and on more than one occasion I have flat out denied and contradicted his claim.
EDIT: Never mind. Parent changed. New reply:
Huh? No it isn’t. It’s an agreement with XiXiDu’s point. It is an phenomenon that applies and, I suggest, one that is implemented to a certain context sensitive degree by humans.
Oh sorry I thought you where being sarcastic and that you where disagreeing with XiXiDu and perhaps even setting up a straw man. Maybe the reason I misidentified this is because of your use of “arrogant”. When I think of protective stupidity I don’t associate that word with it.
How do you find out whether a conflict of interests exists? That’s one of the things someone who’s trying to manipulate you will try to conceal, and if they’re a lot smarter, they’re more likely to succeed at it.
Sure. But I think at least some conflicts of interests are very hard to conceal. At the very least if someone finds this argument compelling the other party can’t prompt them to denounce this check on principle.
Most strategies that could help one avoid malicious advice stemming from hard to detect conflicts of interests seem to have a (to me) unacceptably high false positive rate. Not so much in the context of a scenario where you are dealing with a a boxed AI but more say when one is interacting very intelligent people in a business envrionment or personal life. It seems to me that such strategies would carry high opportunity costs.