I’ve actually this little crazy conspiracy theory in my head that EY is such a smart fellow that he was able to fool a bunch of nonconformists to make him live of their donations.
I had the same idea! It’s also interesting to consider if some discriminating evidence could (realistically) exist in either sense.
I’m pretty sure there are easier ways to make a living off a charity than to invent a cause that’s nowhere near the mainstream and which is likely to be of interest to only a tiny minority.
Admittedly, doing it that way means you won’t have many competitors.....
The basic hypothesis is that AI theorising was already (one of) his main interest/s, and founding SIAI was the easiest path for him to be able to make a living doing the stuff he enjoys full-time.
Eliezer says that AI theorizing became as interesting to him as it has because it is the most effective way for him to help people. Having observed his career (mostly through the net) for ten years, I would assign a very high (.96) probability that the causality actually runs that way rather than his altruism’s being a rationalization for his interest in getting paid for AI theorizing.
Now as to the source of his altruism, I am much less confident, e.g., about which way he would choose if he found himself at a major decision point with large amounts of personal and global expected utility on the line where he had to choose between indelible widespread infamy or even total obscurity and helping people.
Not really useful as evidence against the mighty conspiracy theory, though—one would make identical statements to that effect whether he was honest, consciously deceiving, or anywhere inbetween.
Would you happen to remember an instance of Eliezer making an embarrassing / self-damaging admission when you couldn’t see any reason for him to do so outside of an innate preference for honesty?
Would you happen to remember an instance of Eliezer making an embarrassing / self-damaging admission when you couldn’t see any reason for him to do so outside of an innate preference for honesty?
How would that constitute evidence against the “mighty conspiracy theory”? Surely Eliezer could have foreseen that someone would ask this question sooner and later, and made some embarrassing / self-damaging admission just to cover himself.
Good point. I didn’t think much about the question, and it should have been obvious that the hypothesis of him simulating honesty is not strictly falsifiable by relying solely on his words.
Ok, new possibility for falsification: before SIAI was founded, a third party offered him a job in AI research that was just as interesting and brought at least as many assorted perks, but he refused because he genuinely thought FAI research was more important. Or for that matter any other scenario under which founding SIAI constituted a net sacrifice for Eliezer when not counting the benefit of potentially averting armageddon.
Quite a bit harder to produce, but that’s par for the course with Xanatos-style conspiracy theories.
Actually, I was responding to your “AI theorising was already (one of) his main interest/s”, not your larger point.
I consider the possibility that Eliezer has intentionally deceived his donors all along as so unlikely as to not be worth discussing.
ADDED. Re-reading parent for the second time, I notice your “whether he was honest, consciously deceiving, or anywhere inbetween” (emphasis mine). So, since you (I now realize) probably were entertaining the possibility that he is “unconsciously deceiving” (i.e., has conveniently fooled himself), let me extend my reply.
What one does instead is look at his decisions. And even more you look at what he is able to stay motivated to do over a long period of time. Consider for example the two years he spent blogging about rationality. This is educational writing or communication and it is extremely good educational communication. No matter how smart the person is, he cannot communicate or teach that effectively without doing a heck of a lot of hard work. And IMO no human being can work that hard for two whole years voluntarily (i.e., without fear of losing something he needs or loves and already has) unless the person is deriving some sort of real human satisfaction from the work. (Even with a very strong “negative” motivation like fear, it is hard to work that hard for 2 years without making yourself sick, and E sure did not look or act sick when I chatted with him at a Sep 2009 meetup.) And this is where the explanation gets complicated, and I want to cut it short.
There are only so many kinds of real human motivation. Scientists of course are usually motivated by the pleasure of discovery, of extending their understanding of the world. Many, perhaps most, scientists are motivated by reputation, for the good opinion of other scientists or the public at large. I find it unlikely however that any combination of those 2 motivations would have been enough for any human being to perform the way E did during his 2 years of “educating through blogging”.
So, to summarize, I have some strong or firm reasons to believe that while he was writing those excellent blog posts, E regularly found pleasure and consequently found motivation in the idea of producing understanding in his readers, and this pleasure is an example of a “friendly impulse” or “altruistic desire” in E (part of the implementation in the human mind of the human capacity for what the evolutionary psychologists call reciprocal altruism).
And I know enough psychology to know that if E is capable of being motivated to extremely hard work by “the friendly impulse” when he started his blogging at age 27, then he was also capable of being motivated in his daydreams and in his career planning by “the friendly impulse” when he was a teenager (which is when he says he saw that AI research is the best way to help people and when he began his interest in AI theorizing). (It is rare for a person to be able to learn (even if they really want to) how to find pleasure (and consequently long-term motivation) from altruism / friendliness if they lacked the capacity in their teens like I did.)
Now I am not saying that E does not derive a lot of pleasure from scientific theorizing (most scientists of his caliber do), but I am saying that I believe his statements that the reason that most of his theorizing is about AI rather than string theory or population genetics is what he says it is.
This is all very condensed and it relies on beliefs of mine that are definitely not settled science, e.g., the belief that the only way a person every voluntarily works as hard as E must have for 2 years is if they find pleasure in the work) but it does explain just a little of the basis for the probability assignment I made in grandparent.
I don’t think I find your psychological argument very relevant here. The conspiracy allows—indeed, it makes a cardinal assumption—that Eliezer loves doing what he does, i.e. discussing and spreading ideas about rationality and theorising about AI and futurology; the only proposed dissonance between his statements and his findings would be that he is (whether intentionally or not, see below) overblowing the danger of a near-omnipotent unfriendly AI. And of course, people can be untruthful in one field and still be highly altruist in a hundred others.
Speaking of which, we ended up drifting further from the idea XiXiDu and I were originally entertaining, which was that of a cunning plot to create his dream job. While, only because of his passion for rationality, it would still be interesting if Eliezer were suffering from such a dramatic bias (and it would be downright hilarious if he were truly pulling a fast one), the more such a bias is unconscious and hard to spot, the closer it comes to being a honest mistake, rather than negligence; but it’s not particularly interesting or amusing that someone could have made a honest mistake.
Speaking of which, we ended up drifting further from the idea XiXiDu and I were originally entertaining, which was that of a cunning plot to create his dream job.
Yes, I am a little embarassed that I took the thread on such a sharp and lengthy tangent. I don’t have time to move my comment though.
I had the same idea! It’s also interesting to consider if some discriminating evidence could (realistically) exist in either sense.
I’m pretty sure there are easier ways to make a living off a charity than to invent a cause that’s nowhere near the mainstream and which is likely to be of interest to only a tiny minority.
Admittedly, doing it that way means you won’t have many competitors.....
The basic hypothesis is that AI theorising was already (one of) his main interest/s, and founding SIAI was the easiest path for him to be able to make a living doing the stuff he enjoys full-time.
Eliezer says that AI theorizing became as interesting to him as it has because it is the most effective way for him to help people. Having observed his career (mostly through the net) for ten years, I would assign a very high (.96) probability that the causality actually runs that way rather than his altruism’s being a rationalization for his interest in getting paid for AI theorizing.
Now as to the source of his altruism, I am much less confident, e.g., about which way he would choose if he found himself at a major decision point with large amounts of personal and global expected utility on the line where he had to choose between indelible widespread infamy or even total obscurity and helping people.
Not really useful as evidence against the mighty conspiracy theory, though—one would make identical statements to that effect whether he was honest, consciously deceiving, or anywhere inbetween.
Would you happen to remember an instance of Eliezer making an embarrassing / self-damaging admission when you couldn’t see any reason for him to do so outside of an innate preference for honesty?
How would that constitute evidence against the “mighty conspiracy theory”? Surely Eliezer could have foreseen that someone would ask this question sooner and later, and made some embarrassing / self-damaging admission just to cover himself.
Good point. I didn’t think much about the question, and it should have been obvious that the hypothesis of him simulating honesty is not strictly falsifiable by relying solely on his words.
Ok, new possibility for falsification: before SIAI was founded, a third party offered him a job in AI research that was just as interesting and brought at least as many assorted perks, but he refused because he genuinely thought FAI research was more important. Or for that matter any other scenario under which founding SIAI constituted a net sacrifice for Eliezer when not counting the benefit of potentially averting armageddon.
Quite a bit harder to produce, but that’s par for the course with Xanatos-style conspiracy theories.
Actually, I was responding to your “AI theorising was already (one of) his main interest/s”, not your larger point.
I consider the possibility that Eliezer has intentionally deceived his donors all along as so unlikely as to not be worth discussing.
ADDED. Re-reading parent for the second time, I notice your “whether he was honest, consciously deceiving, or anywhere inbetween” (emphasis mine). So, since you (I now realize) probably were entertaining the possibility that he is “unconsciously deceiving” (i.e., has conveniently fooled himself), let me extend my reply.
People can be scrupulously honest in almost all matters, NihilCredo, and still deceive themselves about their motivations for doing something, so I humbly suggest that even though Eliezer has shown himself willing to issue an image-damaging public recantation when he discovers that something he has published is wrong that is not nearly enough evidence to trust his public statements about his motivations.
What one does instead is look at his decisions. And even more you look at what he is able to stay motivated to do over a long period of time. Consider for example the two years he spent blogging about rationality. This is educational writing or communication and it is extremely good educational communication. No matter how smart the person is, he cannot communicate or teach that effectively without doing a heck of a lot of hard work. And IMO no human being can work that hard for two whole years voluntarily (i.e., without fear of losing something he needs or loves and already has) unless the person is deriving some sort of real human satisfaction from the work. (Even with a very strong “negative” motivation like fear, it is hard to work that hard for 2 years without making yourself sick, and E sure did not look or act sick when I chatted with him at a Sep 2009 meetup.) And this is where the explanation gets complicated, and I want to cut it short.
There are only so many kinds of real human motivation. Scientists of course are usually motivated by the pleasure of discovery, of extending their understanding of the world. Many, perhaps most, scientists are motivated by reputation, for the good opinion of other scientists or the public at large. I find it unlikely however that any combination of those 2 motivations would have been enough for any human being to perform the way E did during his 2 years of “educating through blogging”.
So, to summarize, I have some strong or firm reasons to believe that while he was writing those excellent blog posts, E regularly found pleasure and consequently found motivation in the idea of producing understanding in his readers, and this pleasure is an example of a “friendly impulse” or “altruistic desire” in E (part of the implementation in the human mind of the human capacity for what the evolutionary psychologists call reciprocal altruism).
And I know enough psychology to know that if E is capable of being motivated to extremely hard work by “the friendly impulse” when he started his blogging at age 27, then he was also capable of being motivated in his daydreams and in his career planning by “the friendly impulse” when he was a teenager (which is when he says he saw that AI research is the best way to help people and when he began his interest in AI theorizing). (It is rare for a person to be able to learn (even if they really want to) how to find pleasure (and consequently long-term motivation) from altruism / friendliness if they lacked the capacity in their teens like I did.)
Now I am not saying that E does not derive a lot of pleasure from scientific theorizing (most scientists of his caliber do), but I am saying that I believe his statements that the reason that most of his theorizing is about AI rather than string theory or population genetics is what he says it is.
This is all very condensed and it relies on beliefs of mine that are definitely not settled science, e.g., the belief that the only way a person every voluntarily works as hard as E must have for 2 years is if they find pleasure in the work) but it does explain just a little of the basis for the probability assignment I made in grandparent.
Definitely an interesting comment. Thanks.
I don’t think I find your psychological argument very relevant here. The conspiracy allows—indeed, it makes a cardinal assumption—that Eliezer loves doing what he does, i.e. discussing and spreading ideas about rationality and theorising about AI and futurology; the only proposed dissonance between his statements and his findings would be that he is (whether intentionally or not, see below) overblowing the danger of a near-omnipotent unfriendly AI. And of course, people can be untruthful in one field and still be highly altruist in a hundred others.
Speaking of which, we ended up drifting further from the idea XiXiDu and I were originally entertaining, which was that of a cunning plot to create his dream job. While, only because of his passion for rationality, it would still be interesting if Eliezer were suffering from such a dramatic bias (and it would be downright hilarious if he were truly pulling a fast one), the more such a bias is unconscious and hard to spot, the closer it comes to being a honest mistake, rather than negligence; but it’s not particularly interesting or amusing that someone could have made a honest mistake.
Yes, I am a little embarassed that I took the thread on such a sharp and lengthy tangent. I don’t have time to move my comment though.
Oh, I wouldn’t worry. To paraphrase what I once read being written about HP&MoR, overthinking stuff is pretty much the point of this site.
I can remember several such instances, and I haven’t been following things for as long as rhollerith. There are even a few of them in top-level posts.