One key thing is that AFAICT, when Paul says ‘slow takeoff’ what he actually means is ‘even faster takeoff, but without a sharp discontinuity’, or something like that. So be careful about how you interpret the debate.
(I also think there’s been fairly continuous debate throughout many other threads. Importantly, I don’t think this is a single concrete disagreement, it’s more like a bunch of subtle disagreements interwoven with each other. Many posts and threads (in LW and in other channels) seem to me to be about disentangling those disagreements.
I think the discussion of Paul’s Research Agenda FAQ (NOT written by Paul), including the comment by Eliezer, is one of the more accessible instances of that, although I’m not sure who if it directly bears on your question)
I just read through those comments, and didn’t really find any rebuttals. Most of them seemed like clarifications, terminology disagreements, and intuitions without supporting arguments. I would be hard-pressed to distill that discussion into anything close to a response.
One key thing is that AFAICT, when Paul says ‘slow takeoff’ what he actually means is ‘even faster takeoff, but without a sharp discontinuity’, or something like that.
Yes, but nonetheless these are extremely different views with large implications for what we should do.
Fwiw, my epistemic state is similar to SoerenMind’s. I basically believe the arguments for slow/continuous takeoff, haven’t fully updated towards them because I know many people still believe in fast takeoff, but am surprised not to have seen a response in over a year. Most of my work now takes continuous takeoff as a premise (because it is not a good idea to premise on fast takeoff when I don’t have any inside-view model that predicts fast takeoff).
Yeah. Rereading the thread I agree it’s not as relevant to this as I thought.
I think a dedicated response would be good.
I do think, when/if such a response comes, it would be valuable to take the opportunity to frame the debate more in terms of “sharp vs smooth takeoff” or “discontinuous vs continuous”.
BTW, I had an interesting meta-experience with this thread, where at first when I was called out for making a false/irrelevant claim, I felt bad (in particular since I saw I had gotten downvoted for it), and felt an impulse to justify the original claim
Then I bucked up, edited the original comment, and wrote the followup comment acknowledging the mistake. But a short while later felt good that the followup comment was upvoted.
This made me overall feel good about LessWrong culture. Admitting mistakes even in small places naturally hurts, and I’m glad that we have good systems to incentivize it. :)
[then I made this self congratulatory meta comment which ummmm ]
Thanks. IIRC the comments didn’t feature that much disagreement and little engagement from established researchers. I didn’t find too much of these in other threads either. I’m not sure if I should infer that little disagreement exists.
Re Paul’s definition, he expects there will be years between 50% and 100% GDP growth rates. I think a lot of people here would disagree but I’m not sure.
[edit: no longer endorse the original phrasing of my opening paragraph, but still seems useful to link to past discussion]
Some previous discussion about this topic was at:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/AfGmsjGPXN97kNp57/arguments-about-fast-takeoff#phQ3sZj7RmCDTjfvn
One key thing is that AFAICT, when Paul says ‘slow takeoff’ what he actually means is ‘even faster takeoff, but without a sharp discontinuity’, or something like that. So be careful about how you interpret the debate.
(I also think there’s been fairly continuous debate throughout many other threads. Importantly, I don’t think this is a single concrete disagreement, it’s more like a bunch of subtle disagreements interwoven with each other. Many posts and threads (in LW and in other channels) seem to me to be about disentangling those disagreements.
I think the discussion of Paul’s Research Agenda FAQ (NOT written by Paul), including the comment by Eliezer, is one of the more accessible instances of that, although I’m not sure who if it directly bears on your question)
I just read through those comments, and didn’t really find any rebuttals. Most of them seemed like clarifications, terminology disagreements, and intuitions without supporting arguments. I would be hard-pressed to distill that discussion into anything close to a response.
Yes, but nonetheless these are extremely different views with large implications for what we should do.
Fwiw, my epistemic state is similar to SoerenMind’s. I basically believe the arguments for slow/continuous takeoff, haven’t fully updated towards them because I know many people still believe in fast takeoff, but am surprised not to have seen a response in over a year. Most of my work now takes continuous takeoff as a premise (because it is not a good idea to premise on fast takeoff when I don’t have any inside-view model that predicts fast takeoff).
Yeah. Rereading the thread I agree it’s not as relevant to this as I thought.
I think a dedicated response would be good.
I do think, when/if such a response comes, it would be valuable to take the opportunity to frame the debate more in terms of “sharp vs smooth takeoff” or “discontinuous vs continuous”.
BTW, I had an interesting meta-experience with this thread, where at first when I was called out for making a false/irrelevant claim, I felt bad (in particular since I saw I had gotten downvoted for it), and felt an impulse to justify the original claim
Then I bucked up, edited the original comment, and wrote the followup comment acknowledging the mistake. But a short while later felt good that the followup comment was upvoted.
This made me overall feel good about LessWrong culture. Admitting mistakes even in small places naturally hurts, and I’m glad that we have good systems to incentivize it. :)
[then I made this self congratulatory meta comment which ummmm ]
Thanks. IIRC the comments didn’t feature that much disagreement and little engagement from established researchers. I didn’t find too much of these in other threads either. I’m not sure if I should infer that little disagreement exists.
Re Paul’s definition, he expects there will be years between 50% and 100% GDP growth rates. I think a lot of people here would disagree but I’m not sure.