I can’t see any evidence of anyone invlolved in these discussions doing that. It looks like a straw man to me.
‘Mean’, ‘right’, ‘rational’, etc.
If want to be sure that these terms, as used by a particular person, are magical categories, you need to ask the particular person whether they have a mechanical interpretation in mind—address the argument, not the person.
Whether any particular person has a mechanical interpretation of these concepts in mind cannot be shown by a completely general argument like Ghosts in the Machine . You don’t think that your use of ‘Mean’, ‘right’, ‘rational’, etc is necessarily magical!
But whether someone has a non-magical explanation can easily be shown by asking them. In particular, it is highly reasonable to assume that an actual AI researcher would have such an interpretation. It is not reasonable to interpret sheer absence of evidence—especially a wilful absence of evidence, based on refusal to engage—as evidence of magical thinking.
At the time of writing the MIRI/LW side of this debate is known to be wrong… and that is not despite good, rational epistemology, it is *because of *bad, dogmatic, Ad Hominen, debate. There are multiple occasions where EY instructs his followers not to even engage with the side that turned out to be correct.,
If want to be sure that these terms, as used by a particular person, are magical categories, you need to ask the particular person whether they have a mechanical interpretation in mind—address the argument, not the person.
Whether any particular person has a mechanical interpretation of these concepts in mind cannot be shown by a completely general argument like Ghosts in the Machine . You don’t think that your use of ‘Mean’, ‘right’, ‘rational’, etc is necessarily magical! But whether someone has a non-magical explanation can easily be shown by asking them. In particular, it is highly reasonable to assume that an actual AI researcher would have such an interpretation. It is not reasonable to interpret sheer absence of evidence—especially a wilful absence of evidence, based on refusal to engage—as evidence of magical thinking.
At the time of writing the MIRI/LW side of this debate is known to be wrong… and that is not despite good, rational epistemology, it is *because of *bad, dogmatic, Ad Hominen, debate. There are multiple occasions where EY instructs his followers not to even engage with the side that turned out to be correct.,