To be honest, I had you pegged as being stuck in a partisan spiral. The fact that you are willing to do this is pretty cool. Have some utils on the house. I don’t know if officially responding to your blog is worth MIRI’s time; it would imply some sort of status equivalence.
Also, you published some very embarrassing quotes from Yudkowsky. I’m guessing you caused him quite a bit of distress, so he’s probably not inclined to do you any favors. Mining someone’s juvenilia for outrageous statements is not productive – I mean he was 16 when he wrote some of the stuff you quote. I would remove those pages. Same with the usenet stuff – I know it was posted publicly but it feels like furtively-recorded conversations to me all these years later. Stick to arguments against positions MIRI and Yudkowsky currently hold.
Personally I’ve moved from highly-skeptical of MIRI to moderately approving. I made this comment a year ago:
The fact that MIRI is finally publishing technical research has impressed me. A year ago it seemed, to put it bluntly, that your organization was stalling, spending its funds on the full-time development of Harry Potter fanfiction and popular science books. Perhaps my intuition there was uncharitable, perhaps not. I don’t know how much of your lead researcher’s time was spent on said publications, but it certainly seemed, from the outside, that it was the majority. Regardless, I’m very glad MIRI is focusing on technical research. I don’t know how much farther you have to walk, but it’s clear you’re headed in the right direction.
And MIRI has stayed on course and is becoming a productive think tank with three full-time researchers and, it seems to me, a highly competent CEO. It is a very different organization now than the one you started out criticizing.
For the record, I genuinely object to being thought of as a “highly competent CEO.” I think “non-natural CEO working hard and learning fast and picking up lots of low-hanging fruit but also making lots of mistakes along the way because he had no prior executive experience” is more accurate. The good news is that I’ve been learning even more quickly since Matt Fallshaw joined the Board, since he’s able and willing to put in the time to transfer to me what he’s learned from launching and running multiple startups.
For the record, I genuinely object to being thought of as a “highly competent CEO.”
But that’s exactly what the Dunning-Kruger effect would lead us to expect a highly-competent CEOs to say! s/
non-natural CEO working hard and learning fast and picking up lots of low-hanging fruit but also making lots of mistakes along the way because he had no prior executive experience
To be honest, I didn’t mean much by it. Just that MIRI has been more impressive lately, and presumably a good portion of this is due to your leadership.
So this comment here about a basically unrelated matter to the topic in the title post (but one that it isn’t strange at all that you would reply to of course, since it’s about you), is it essentially a way of communicating that you’ve seen XiXiDu’s post and have chosen to ignore it? I mean, I’m sure it could be very simple and you’re just too busy to deal with this kind of thing, but I can’t help but to notice your appearance in the thread and your conspicuous lack of response of any kind, especially since, you know, you’re the CEO of the organisation XiXiDu is attempting to make peace with.
Hopefully I haven’t been too forward with what I’ve suggested here, and I’m also sorry if I’m speculating in an entirely inaccurate direction.
The short version is that I’m not sure we want to make counterclaims at the top of Alexander’s blog posts. I mostly just wish Alexander was more consistently constructive in his criticism, like many of our other critics are. I think I’m far from alone in the impression that his criticisms are an uneven mix of kinda fair criticisms, deliberate straw men (“the intelligence explosion hypothesis is a tautology”), largely irrelevant character assassination (digging up embarrassing things Eliezer wrote when he was 16), and more. But I was resisting saying even this much, because I worry about putting Alexander in a position where he again feels he’s being misrepresented and needs to defend himself.
Well, I guess let’s see what happens. But I can’t promise I’ll think it’s wise for me to reply further.
To make the first step and show that this is not some kind of evil ploy, I now deleted the (1) Yudkowsky quotes page and (2) the post on his personality (explanation on how that post came about).
I realize that they were unnecessarily offending and apologize for that. If I could turn back the clock I would do a lot differently and probably stay completely silent about MIRI and LW.
Also, you published some very embarrassing quotes from Yudkowsky. I’m guessing you caused him quite a bit of distress, so he’s probably not inclined to do you any favors.
If I post an embarrassing quote by Sarah Palin, then I am not some kind of school bully who likes causing people distress. Instead I highlight an important shortcoming of an influential person. I have posted quotes of various people other than Yudkowsky. I admire all of them for their achievements and wish them all the best. But as influential people they have to expect that someone might highlight something they said. This is not a smear campaign.
As far as I can tell, Yudkowsky basically grew up on the internet. I think it is more like you went through all the copies of Palin’s school newspaper, and picked up some notes she passed around in class, and then published the most outrageous things she said in such a way that you implied they were written recently. I think this goes against some notion of journalistic tact.
I think it is more like you went through all the copies of Palin’s school newspaper, and picked up some notes she passed around in class, and then published the most outrageous things she said in such a way that you implied they were written recently.
This is exactly the kind of misrepresentation that make me avoid deleting my posts. Most of the most outrageous things he said have been written in the past ten years.
I suppose you are partly referring to the quotes page? Please take a look, there are only two quotes that are older than 2004, for one of which I explicitly note that he doesn’t agree with it anymore, and a second which I believe he still agrees with.
Those two quotes that are dated before 2004 are the least outrageous. They are there mainly to show that he has long been believing into singularitarian ideas and that he can save the world. This is important in evaluating how much of the later arguments are rationalizations of those early beliefs. Which is in turn important because he’s actually asking people for money and giving a whole research field a bad name with his predictions about AI.
Those two quotes that are dated before 2004 are the least outrageous.
This is the most outrageous one to me:
I must warn my reader that my first allegiance is to the Singularity, not humanity. I don’t know what the Singularity will do with us. I don’t know whether Singularities upgrade mortal races, or disassemble us for spare atoms. While possible, I will balance the interests of mortality and Singularity. But if it comes down to Us or Them, I’m with Them. You have been warned.
And it’s clearly the exact opposite of what present Eliezer belives.
The stuff that bothers me are Usenet and mailing list quotes (they are equivalent to passing notes and should be considered off the record) and anything written when he was a teenager. The rest, I suppose, should at least be labeled with the date they were written. And if he has explicitly disclaimed the statement, perhaps that should be mentioned, too.
Young Eliezer was a little crankish and has pretty much grown out of it. I feel like you’re criticising someone who no longer exists.
Also, the page where you try to diagnose him with narsisism just seems mean.
Also, the page where you try to diagnos him with narsisism just seems mean.
I can clarify this. I never intended to write that post but was forced to do so out of self-defense.
I replied to this comment whose author was wondering why Yudkowsky is using Facebook more than LessWrong these days. To which I replied with an on-topic speculation based on evidence.
Then people started viciously attacking me, to which I had to respond. In one of those replies I unfortunately used the term “narcissistic tendencies”. I was then again attacked for using that term. I defended my use of that term with evidence, the result of which is that post.
What do you expect that I do when I am mindlessly attacked by a horde of people? That I just leave it at that and let my name being dragged into dirt?
Many of my posts and comments are direct responses to personal attacks on me from LessWrong members.
So let me get this straight—you did a psychiatric diagnosis over the internet, and instead of saying, ‘obviously I’m using the term colloquially’ you provided evidence.
...
and then you are surprised when you get attacked, and even now characterize these attacks by like as coming from a mindless horde...
when the horde was actually 4 people, only one post was against you personally as opposed to being against that one thing you said, and there were roughly 2 others on your side. And your comments there are upvoted.
Yes, it was a huge overreaction on my side and I shouldn’t have written such a comment in the first place. It was meant as an explanation of how that post came about, it was not meant as an excuse. It was still wrong. The point I want to communicate is that I didn’t do it out of some general interest to cause MIRI distress.
I apologize for offending people and overreacting to what I perceived the way I described it but which was, as you wrote, not that way. I already deleted that post yesterday.
You do not stand to Eliezer as you stand to Sarah Palin (as a far as public figures go). The equivalent would be a minor congressmen consistently devoting his speaking time to highlight all the stupid things Sarah Palin has said (and retracted). I’m pretty sure such congressman would meet far worse consequences than you have been meeting.
EDIT: Not sure why this comment is being downvoted, but as a clarification I merely meant the difference in social status between Alex and Sarah is bigger than between Eliezer and him. When the gap is big enough, it doesn’t matter what one says about the other, but this is not the case here. Why is that offensive/such a bad idea?
To be honest, I had you pegged as being stuck in a partisan spiral. The fact that you are willing to do this is pretty cool. Have some utils on the house. I don’t know if officially responding to your blog is worth MIRI’s time; it would imply some sort of status equivalence.
Also, you published some very embarrassing quotes from Yudkowsky. I’m guessing you caused him quite a bit of distress, so he’s probably not inclined to do you any favors. Mining someone’s juvenilia for outrageous statements is not productive – I mean he was 16 when he wrote some of the stuff you quote. I would remove those pages. Same with the usenet stuff – I know it was posted publicly but it feels like furtively-recorded conversations to me all these years later. Stick to arguments against positions MIRI and Yudkowsky currently hold. Personally I’ve moved from highly-skeptical of MIRI to moderately approving. I made this comment a year ago:
And MIRI has stayed on course and is becoming a productive think tank with three full-time researchers and, it seems to me, a highly competent CEO. It is a very different organization now than the one you started out criticizing.
For the record, I genuinely object to being thought of as a “highly competent CEO.” I think “non-natural CEO working hard and learning fast and picking up lots of low-hanging fruit but also making lots of mistakes along the way because he had no prior executive experience” is more accurate. The good news is that I’ve been learning even more quickly since Matt Fallshaw joined the Board, since he’s able and willing to put in the time to transfer to me what he’s learned from launching and running multiple startups.
But that’s exactly what the Dunning-Kruger effect would lead us to expect a highly-competent CEOs to say! s/
To be honest, I didn’t mean much by it. Just that MIRI has been more impressive lately, and presumably a good portion of this is due to your leadership.
No. It would lead us to expect that the top quartile would rank themselves well above the median but below their actual scores.
(And then to ask why we’re thinking in such coarse granularity as quartiles.)
So this comment here about a basically unrelated matter to the topic in the title post (but one that it isn’t strange at all that you would reply to of course, since it’s about you), is it essentially a way of communicating that you’ve seen XiXiDu’s post and have chosen to ignore it? I mean, I’m sure it could be very simple and you’re just too busy to deal with this kind of thing, but I can’t help but to notice your appearance in the thread and your conspicuous lack of response of any kind, especially since, you know, you’re the CEO of the organisation XiXiDu is attempting to make peace with.
Hopefully I haven’t been too forward with what I’ve suggested here, and I’m also sorry if I’m speculating in an entirely inaccurate direction.
I haven’t figured out what to say yet. :)
The short version is that I’m not sure we want to make counterclaims at the top of Alexander’s blog posts. I mostly just wish Alexander was more consistently constructive in his criticism, like many of our other critics are. I think I’m far from alone in the impression that his criticisms are an uneven mix of kinda fair criticisms, deliberate straw men (“the intelligence explosion hypothesis is a tautology”), largely irrelevant character assassination (digging up embarrassing things Eliezer wrote when he was 16), and more. But I was resisting saying even this much, because I worry about putting Alexander in a position where he again feels he’s being misrepresented and needs to defend himself.
Well, I guess let’s see what happens. But I can’t promise I’ll think it’s wise for me to reply further.
To make the first step and show that this is not some kind of evil ploy, I now deleted the (1) Yudkowsky quotes page and (2) the post on his personality (explanation on how that post came about).
I realize that they were unnecessarily offending and apologize for that. If I could turn back the clock I would do a lot differently and probably stay completely silent about MIRI and LW.
Thanks.
Things seem basically settled over here, so I’ll just say: kudos for your efforts to break the vicious cycle!
I think “highly competent CEO” is judged at least as much by results as by comparison with a hypothetical superb CEO.
Still, it could be nice if XiXiDu put some kind of disclaimer he came up with himself at the top of his posts.
If I post an embarrassing quote by Sarah Palin, then I am not some kind of school bully who likes causing people distress. Instead I highlight an important shortcoming of an influential person. I have posted quotes of various people other than Yudkowsky. I admire all of them for their achievements and wish them all the best. But as influential people they have to expect that someone might highlight something they said. This is not a smear campaign.
As far as I can tell, Yudkowsky basically grew up on the internet. I think it is more like you went through all the copies of Palin’s school newspaper, and picked up some notes she passed around in class, and then published the most outrageous things she said in such a way that you implied they were written recently. I think this goes against some notion of journalistic tact.
This is exactly the kind of misrepresentation that make me avoid deleting my posts. Most of the most outrageous things he said have been written in the past ten years.
I suppose you are partly referring to the quotes page? Please take a look, there are only two quotes that are older than 2004, for one of which I explicitly note that he doesn’t agree with it anymore, and a second which I believe he still agrees with.
Those two quotes that are dated before 2004 are the least outrageous. They are there mainly to show that he has long been believing into singularitarian ideas and that he can save the world. This is important in evaluating how much of the later arguments are rationalizations of those early beliefs. Which is in turn important because he’s actually asking people for money and giving a whole research field a bad name with his predictions about AI.
This is the most outrageous one to me:
And it’s clearly the exact opposite of what present Eliezer belives.
The stuff that bothers me are Usenet and mailing list quotes (they are equivalent to passing notes and should be considered off the record) and anything written when he was a teenager. The rest, I suppose, should at least be labeled with the date they were written. And if he has explicitly disclaimed the statement, perhaps that should be mentioned, too.
Young Eliezer was a little crankish and has pretty much grown out of it. I feel like you’re criticising someone who no longer exists.
Also, the page where you try to diagnose him with narsisism just seems mean.
I can clarify this. I never intended to write that post but was forced to do so out of self-defense.
I replied to this comment whose author was wondering why Yudkowsky is using Facebook more than LessWrong these days. To which I replied with an on-topic speculation based on evidence.
Then people started viciously attacking me, to which I had to respond. In one of those replies I unfortunately used the term “narcissistic tendencies”. I was then again attacked for using that term. I defended my use of that term with evidence, the result of which is that post.
What do you expect that I do when I am mindlessly attacked by a horde of people? That I just leave it at that and let my name being dragged into dirt?
Many of my posts and comments are direct responses to personal attacks on me from LessWrong members.
So let me get this straight—you did a psychiatric diagnosis over the internet, and instead of saying, ‘obviously I’m using the term colloquially’ you provided evidence.
...
and then you are surprised when you get attacked, and even now characterize these attacks by like as coming from a mindless horde...
when the horde was actually 4 people, only one post was against you personally as opposed to being against that one thing you said, and there were roughly 2 others on your side. And your comments there are upvoted.
Yes, it was a huge overreaction on my side and I shouldn’t have written such a comment in the first place. It was meant as an explanation of how that post came about, it was not meant as an excuse. It was still wrong. The point I want to communicate is that I didn’t do it out of some general interest to cause MIRI distress.
I apologize for offending people and overreacting to what I perceived the way I described it but which was, as you wrote, not that way. I already deleted that post yesterday.
OK!
You do not stand to Eliezer as you stand to Sarah Palin (as a far as public figures go). The equivalent would be a minor congressmen consistently devoting his speaking time to highlight all the stupid things Sarah Palin has said (and retracted). I’m pretty sure such congressman would meet far worse consequences than you have been meeting.
EDIT: Not sure why this comment is being downvoted, but as a clarification I merely meant the difference in social status between Alex and Sarah is bigger than between Eliezer and him. When the gap is big enough, it doesn’t matter what one says about the other, but this is not the case here. Why is that offensive/such a bad idea?