Yudkowsky AFAICT has at most engaged via a couple tweets (again which don’t seem to engage with the points).
If you mean literally two, it’s more, although I won’t take the time to dig up the tweets. I remember seeing them discuss at non-trivial length at least once on twitter. (If “a couple” encompassed that… Well once someone asked me “a couple of spaghetti” and when I gave him 2 spaghetti he got quite upset. Uhm. Don’t get upset at me, please?)
I’ve thought a bit about this because I too on first sight perceived a lack of serious engagement. I’ve not yet come to a confident conclusion; on reflection I’m not so sure anymore there was an unfair lack of engagement.
First I tried to understand Pope’s & co arguments at the object level. Within the allotted time, I failed. I expected to fare better, so I think there’s some mixture of (Pope’s framework not being simplifiable) & (Pope’s current communication situation low), where the comparatives refer to the state of Yudkowsky’s & co framework when I first encountered it.
So I turned to proxies; in cases where I thought I understood the exchange, what could I say about it? Did it seem fair?
From this I got the impression that sometimes Pope makes blunders at understanding simple things Yudkowsky means (not cruxes or anything really important, just trivial misunderstandings), which throw a shadow over his reading comprehension, such that then one is less inclined to spend the time to take him seriously when he makes complicated arguments that are not clear at once.
On the other hand, Yudkowsky seems to not take the time to understand when Pope’s prose is a bit approximative or not totally rigorous, which is difficult to avoid when compressing technical arguments.
So my current conceit is: a mixture of (Pope is not good at communicating) & (does not invest in communication). This does not bear significatively on whether he’s right, but it’s a major time investment to understand him, so inevitably someone with many options on who to talk to is gonna deprioritize him.
To look at a more specific point, Vaniver replied at length to Quintin’s post on Eliezer’s podcast, and Eliezer said those answers were already “pretty decent”, so although he did not take the time to answer personally, he bothered to check that someone was replying more thoroughly.
P.S. to try to be actionable: I think Pope’s viewpoint would greatly benefit from having someone who understands it well, but is good and dedicated at communication. Although they are faring quite well on fame, so maybe they don’t need, after all, anything more?
P.P.S. they now have a website, optimists.ai, so indeed they do think they should ramp up communication efforts, instead of resting on their current level of fame.
If you mean literally two, it’s more, although I won’t take the time to dig up the tweets. I remember seeing them discuss at non-trivial length at least once on twitter. (If “a couple” encompassed that… Well once someone asked me “a couple of spaghetti” and when I gave him 2 spaghetti he got quite upset. Uhm. Don’t get upset at me, please?)
I’ve thought a bit about this because I too on first sight perceived a lack of serious engagement. I’ve not yet come to a confident conclusion; on reflection I’m not so sure anymore there was an unfair lack of engagement.
First I tried to understand Pope’s & co arguments at the object level. Within the allotted time, I failed. I expected to fare better, so I think there’s some mixture of (Pope’s framework not being simplifiable) & (Pope’s current communication situation low), where the comparatives refer to the state of Yudkowsky’s & co framework when I first encountered it.
So I turned to proxies; in cases where I thought I understood the exchange, what could I say about it? Did it seem fair?
From this I got the impression that sometimes Pope makes blunders at understanding simple things Yudkowsky means (not cruxes or anything really important, just trivial misunderstandings), which throw a shadow over his reading comprehension, such that then one is less inclined to spend the time to take him seriously when he makes complicated arguments that are not clear at once.
On the other hand, Yudkowsky seems to not take the time to understand when Pope’s prose is a bit approximative or not totally rigorous, which is difficult to avoid when compressing technical arguments.
So my current conceit is: a mixture of (Pope is not good at communicating) & (does not invest in communication). This does not bear significatively on whether he’s right, but it’s a major time investment to understand him, so inevitably someone with many options on who to talk to is gonna deprioritize him.
To look at a more specific point, Vaniver replied at length to Quintin’s post on Eliezer’s podcast, and Eliezer said those answers were already “pretty decent”, so although he did not take the time to answer personally, he bothered to check that someone was replying more thoroughly.
P.S. to try to be actionable: I think Pope’s viewpoint would greatly benefit from having someone who understands it well, but is good and dedicated at communication. Although they are faring quite well on fame, so maybe they don’t need, after all, anything more?
P.P.S. they now have a website, optimists.ai, so indeed they do think they should ramp up communication efforts, instead of resting on their current level of fame.