on what evidence would you take seriously someone’s claim to be doing effective work against an existential threat?
Eliezer’s claims are not that he’s doing effective work, his claims are pretty much of being a messiah saving humanity from super-intelligent paperclip optimizers. That requires far more evidence. Ridiculously more, because you not only have to show that his work reduces some existential threat, but at the same time it doesn’t increase some other threat to larger degree (pro-technology vs anti-technology crowds suffer from this—it’s not obvious who’s increasing and who’s decreasing existential threats). You can as well ask me what evidence would I need to take seriously someone’s claim that he’s a second coming of Jesus—in both cases it would need to be truly extraordinary evidence.
Anyway, the best understood kind of existential threats are asteroid impacts, and there are people who try to do something about them, some even in US Congress. I see a distinct lack of messiah complexes and personality cults there, very much unlike AI crowd which seems to consist mostly of people with delusions of grandeur.
Is there any other uncontroversial case like that?
I also recall you and ciphergoth going hammer-and-tongs over that for ages, but not what the outcome was.
Eliezer’s claims are not that he’s doing effective work, his claims are pretty much of being a messiah saving humanity from super-intelligent paperclip optimizers. That requires far more evidence. Ridiculously more, because you not only have to show that his work reduces some existential threat, but at the same time it doesn’t increase some other threat to larger degree (pro-technology vs anti-technology crowds suffer from this—it’s not obvious who’s increasing and who’s decreasing existential threats). You can as well ask me what evidence would I need to take seriously someone’s claim that he’s a second coming of Jesus—in both cases it would need to be truly extraordinary evidence.
Anyway, the best understood kind of existential threats are asteroid impacts, and there are people who try to do something about them, some even in US Congress. I see a distinct lack of messiah complexes and personality cults there, very much unlike AI crowd which seems to consist mostly of people with delusions of grandeur.
Is there any other uncontroversial case like that?
The outcome showed that Aumann was wrong, mostly.