Instrumental convergence is a very simple idea that I understand very well, and yet I failed to understand this paper (after spending hours on it) [EDIT: and also the post], so I’m worried about using it for the purpose of ‘standing up to more intense outside scrutiny’. (Though it’s plausible I’m just an outlier here.)
While it’s been my experience that most people have understood the important parts of the post and paper, a few intelligent readers (like you) haven’t had the expected clicks. The paper has already been dramatically rewritten, to the point of being a different paper than that originally linked to by this post. I’m also planning on rewriting some of the post. I’d be happy to send a draft by you to ensure it’s as clearly written as possible.
As far as ‘more intense outside scrutiny’, we received two extremely positive NeurIPS reviews which were quite persuaded, and one very negative review which pointed out real shortcomings that have since been rectified. I anticipate that it will do quite well at ICML / NeurIPS this year. That said, I don’t plan on circulating these arguments to LeCun et al. until after the work has passed peer review.
Instrumental convergence is a very simple idea that I understand very well, and yet I failed to understand this paper (after spending hours on it) [EDIT: and also the post], so I’m worried about using it for the purpose of ‘standing up to more intense outside scrutiny’. (Though it’s plausible I’m just an outlier here.)
While it’s been my experience that most people have understood the important parts of the post and paper, a few intelligent readers (like you) haven’t had the expected clicks. The paper has already been dramatically rewritten, to the point of being a different paper than that originally linked to by this post. I’m also planning on rewriting some of the post. I’d be happy to send a draft by you to ensure it’s as clearly written as possible.
As far as ‘more intense outside scrutiny’, we received two extremely positive NeurIPS reviews which were quite persuaded, and one very negative review which pointed out real shortcomings that have since been rectified. I anticipate that it will do quite well at ICML / NeurIPS this year. That said, I don’t plan on circulating these arguments to LeCun et al. until after the work has passed peer review.