It’s difficult to tell, having spent some time (but not a very large amount of time) following this back-and-forth, whether much progress is being made in furthering Eliezer’s and Paul’s understanding of each other’s positions and arguments. My impression is that there has been some progress, mostly from Paul vetoing Eliezer’s interpretations of Paul’s agenda, but by nature this is a slow kind of progress—there are likely many more substantially incorrect interpretations than substantially correct ones, so even if you assume progress toward a correct interpretation to be considerably faster than what might be predicted by a random walk, the slow feedback cycle still means it will take a while.
My question is why the two of you haven’t sat down for a weekend (or as many as necessary) to hash out the cruxes and whatever confusion surrounds them. This seems to be a very high-value course of action: if, upon reaching a correct understanding of Paul’s position, Eliezer updates in that direction, it’s important that happen as soon as possible. Likewise, if Eliezer manages to convince Paul of catastrophic flaws in his agenda, that may be even more important.
On the other hand, you should consider the advantages of having this discussion public. I find it quite valuable to see this, as the debate sheds more light on some of both Paul’s and Eliezer’s models. If they just sat down for a weekend, talked, and updated, it may be more efficient, but a black-box.
My intuition is from a more strategical perspective, the resource we actually need the most are “more Pauls and Eliezers”, and this may actually help.
Meta-comment:
It’s difficult to tell, having spent some time (but not a very large amount of time) following this back-and-forth, whether much progress is being made in furthering Eliezer’s and Paul’s understanding of each other’s positions and arguments. My impression is that there has been some progress, mostly from Paul vetoing Eliezer’s interpretations of Paul’s agenda, but by nature this is a slow kind of progress—there are likely many more substantially incorrect interpretations than substantially correct ones, so even if you assume progress toward a correct interpretation to be considerably faster than what might be predicted by a random walk, the slow feedback cycle still means it will take a while.
My question is why the two of you haven’t sat down for a weekend (or as many as necessary) to hash out the cruxes and whatever confusion surrounds them. This seems to be a very high-value course of action: if, upon reaching a correct understanding of Paul’s position, Eliezer updates in that direction, it’s important that happen as soon as possible. Likewise, if Eliezer manages to convince Paul of catastrophic flaws in his agenda, that may be even more important.
On the other hand, you should consider the advantages of having this discussion public. I find it quite valuable to see this, as the debate sheds more light on some of both Paul’s and Eliezer’s models. If they just sat down for a weekend, talked, and updated, it may be more efficient, but a black-box.
My intuition is from a more strategical perspective, the resource we actually need the most are “more Pauls and Eliezers”, and this may actually help.