Yeah, I thought that response was pretty dense too. All this actually increased my confidence in Less Wrong and the SIAI. I can’t disagree that LW is far above the level of most people, including experts. Yet I also know who Anonymous Expert 03 is and have read a book by him. Many people here on LW, including myself, think that he is one of the smartest people alive.
The only explanation I can think of is that he never bothered to think about AGI and its consequences in detail. I don’t know, I am speechless. But I know that he is far from being an idiot.
Anyway, the upside of all this is that such people likely won’t be able to wipe out humanity by creating an AGI (at least as long as general intelligence isn’t something trivial that you can stumble upon).
Alternately LW is bad at identifying experts. Many of the graduate students in my lab are already far above most of LW in terms of their understanding of popular topics here such as Bayesian reasoning and decision theory; of course this means that there are also faculty at such a level.
The only explanation I can think of is that he never bothered to think about AGI and its consequences in detail.
This is really the norm. It’s not part of their field, and it’s unfair to evaluate ability too strongly based on that. Climate scientists won’t necessarily have a great grasp of the issues studied by climate economists and vice versa, and may still be very strong in their domains of expertise.
Also, a brief email from an unknown stranger is not going to elicit a lot of additional thought, and responses are going to be heavily influenced by pattern-matching to other things they have encountered. For instance, accurately disclaiming that the current state of the art in AI is not capable of posing substantial threat because of experience with scared ill-informed people who think that such AI is almost ready.
If Anonymous Expert 3 is who I think he is, this isn’t the first time he’s made a statement regarding potential existential risks that I thought was extremely ill considered. It’s a sad demonstration of how even exceptional scientists really can fail to be wiser outside the laboratory than others.
Yet I also know who Anonymous Expert 03 is and have read a book by him. Many people here on LW, including myself, think that he is one of the smartest people alive.
If that’s who I think it is, then I just got a very strong five-second-level demonstration of what it feels like to commit the fundamental attribution error and come to a completely wrong judgment as a result.
Looks like XiXiDu deleted his comment to remove the hints as to anonymous expert 3′s identity. Especially given that you have formulated a conjecture, I suggest you also remove the info.
Yeah, I thought that response was pretty dense too. All this actually increased my confidence in Less Wrong and the SIAI. I can’t disagree that LW is far above the level of most people, including experts. Yet I also know who Anonymous Expert 03 is and have read a book by him. Many people here on LW, including myself, think that he is one of the smartest people alive.
The only explanation I can think of is that he never bothered to think about AGI and its consequences in detail. I don’t know, I am speechless. But I know that he is far from being an idiot.
Anyway, the upside of all this is that such people likely won’t be able to wipe out humanity by creating an AGI (at least as long as general intelligence isn’t something trivial that you can stumble upon).
Don’t give too many hints on the identity of someone who asked to be anonymous.
I have deduced the identity of Anonymous Expert 03 from the information given above and therefore have deleted the comment.
Alternately LW is bad at identifying experts. Many of the graduate students in my lab are already far above most of LW in terms of their understanding of popular topics here such as Bayesian reasoning and decision theory; of course this means that there are also faculty at such a level.
I would delete the identifying info.
This is really the norm. It’s not part of their field, and it’s unfair to evaluate ability too strongly based on that. Climate scientists won’t necessarily have a great grasp of the issues studied by climate economists and vice versa, and may still be very strong in their domains of expertise.
Also, a brief email from an unknown stranger is not going to elicit a lot of additional thought, and responses are going to be heavily influenced by pattern-matching to other things they have encountered. For instance, accurately disclaiming that the current state of the art in AI is not capable of posing substantial threat because of experience with scared ill-informed people who think that such AI is almost ready.
If Anonymous Expert 3 is who I think he is, this isn’t the first time he’s made a statement regarding potential existential risks that I thought was extremely ill considered. It’s a sad demonstration of how even exceptional scientists really can fail to be wiser outside the laboratory than others.
If that’s who I think it is, then I just got a very strong five-second-level demonstration of what it feels like to commit the fundamental attribution error and come to a completely wrong judgment as a result.
Looks like XiXiDu deleted his comment to remove the hints as to anonymous expert 3′s identity. Especially given that you have formulated a conjecture, I suggest you also remove the info.
Done, thanks for the heads up.