I tend to be a bit gruff around people who merely raise questions; I tend to view the kind of philosophy I do as the track where you need some answers for a specific reason, figure them out, move on, and dance back for repairs if a new insight makes it necessary; and this being a separate track from people who raise lots of questions and are uncomfortable with the notion of settling on an answer. I don’t expect those two tracks to meet much.
Eliezer-2007 quotes Robyn Dawes, saying that the below is “so true it’s not even funny”:
Norman R. F. Maier noted that when a group faces a problem, the natural tendency of its members is to propose possible solutions as they begin to discuss the problem. Consequently, the group interaction focuses on the merits and problems of the proposed solutions, people become emotionally attached to the ones they have suggested, and superior solutions are not suggested. Maier enacted an edict to enhance group problem solving: “Do not propose solutions until the problem has been discussed as thoroughly as possible without suggesting any.”
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I have often used this edict with groups I have led—particularly when they face a very tough problem, which is when group members are most apt to propose solutions immediately. While I have no objective criterion on which to judge the quality of the problem solving of the groups, Maier’s edict appears to foster better solutions to problems.
Is this a change of attitude, or am I just not finding the synthesis?
Eliezer-2011 seems to want to propose solutions very quickly, move on, and come back for repairs if necessary. Eliezer-2007 advises that for difficult problems (one would think that FAI qualifies) we take our time to understand the relevant issues, questions, and problems before proposing solutions.
There’s a big different between “not immediately” and “never”. Don’t propose a solution immediately, but do at least have a detailed working guess at a solution (which can be used to move to the next problem) in a year. Don’t “merely” raise a question, make sure that finding an answer is also part of the agenda.
It’s a matter of the twelfth virtue of rationality, the intention to cut through to the answer, whatever the technique. The purpose of holding off on proposing solutions is to better find solutions, not to stop at asking the question.
I suggest that he still holds both of those positions (at least, I know I do so do not see why he wouldn’t) but that they apply to slightly different contexts. Eliezer’s elaboration in the descendant comments from the first quote seemed to illustrate why fairly well. They also, if I recall, allowed that you do not fit into the ‘actually answering is unsophisticated’ crowd, which further narrows down just what he is meaning.
The impression I get is that EY-2011 believes that he has already taken the necessary time to understand the relevant issues, questions, and problems and that his proposed solution is therefore unlikely to be improved upon by further up-front thinking about the problem, rather than by working on implementing the solution he has in mind and seeing what difficulties come up.
Whether that’s a change of attitude, IMHO, depends a lot on whether his initial standard for what counts as an adequate understanding of the relevant issues, questions, and problems was met, or whether it was lowered.
I’m not really sure what that initial standard was in the first place, so I have no idea which is the case. Nor am I sure it matters; presumably what matters more is whether the current standard is adequate.
The point of the Dawes quote is to hold off on proposing solutions until you’ve thoroughly comprehended the issue, so that you get better solutions. It doesn’t advocate discussing problems simply for the sake of discussing them. Between both quotes there’s a consistent position that the point is to get the right answer, and discussing the question only has a point insofar as it leads to getting that answer. If you’re discussing the question without proposing solutions ad infinitum, you’re not accomplishing anything.
Keep in mind that talking with regard to solutions is just so darn useful. Even if you propose an overly specific solution early, than it has a large surface area of features that can be attacked to prove it incompatible with the problem. You can often salvage and mutate what’s left of the broken idea. There’s not a lot of harm in that, rather there is a natural give and take whereby dismissing a proposed solution requires identifying what part of the problem requirements are contradicted, and it may very well not have occurred to you to specify that requirement in the first place.
I believe it has been observed that experts almost always talk in terms of candidate solutions, and amateurs attempt to build up from a platform of the problem itself. Experts of course having objectively better performance. The algorithm for provably moral superintelligences might not have a lot of prior solutions to draw from, but you could, for instance, find some inspiration even from the outside view of how some human political systems have maintained generally moral dispositions.
There is a bias to associate your status with ideas you have vocalized in the past since they reflect on the quality of your thinking, but you can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
The Maier quote comes off as way to strong for me. And what’s with this conclusion:
While I have no objective criterion on which to judge the quality of the problem solving of the groups, Maier’s edict appears to foster better solutions to problems.
I think there’s a synthesis possible. There’s a purpose of finding a solid answer, but finding it requires a period of exploration rather than getting extremely specific in the beginning of the search.
Here’s an interesting juxtaposition...
Eliezer-2011 writes:
Eliezer-2007 quotes Robyn Dawes, saying that the below is “so true it’s not even funny”:
Is this a change of attitude, or am I just not finding the synthesis?
Eliezer-2011 seems to want to propose solutions very quickly, move on, and come back for repairs if necessary. Eliezer-2007 advises that for difficult problems (one would think that FAI qualifies) we take our time to understand the relevant issues, questions, and problems before proposing solutions.
There’s a big different between “not immediately” and “never”. Don’t propose a solution immediately, but do at least have a detailed working guess at a solution (which can be used to move to the next problem) in a year. Don’t “merely” raise a question, make sure that finding an answer is also part of the agenda.
It’s a matter of the twelfth virtue of rationality, the intention to cut through to the answer, whatever the technique. The purpose of holding off on proposing solutions is to better find solutions, not to stop at asking the question.
I suggest that he still holds both of those positions (at least, I know I do so do not see why he wouldn’t) but that they apply to slightly different contexts. Eliezer’s elaboration in the descendant comments from the first quote seemed to illustrate why fairly well. They also, if I recall, allowed that you do not fit into the ‘actually answering is unsophisticated’ crowd, which further narrows down just what he is meaning.
The impression I get is that EY-2011 believes that he has already taken the necessary time to understand the relevant issues, questions, and problems and that his proposed solution is therefore unlikely to be improved upon by further up-front thinking about the problem, rather than by working on implementing the solution he has in mind and seeing what difficulties come up.
Whether that’s a change of attitude, IMHO, depends a lot on whether his initial standard for what counts as an adequate understanding of the relevant issues, questions, and problems was met, or whether it was lowered.
I’m not really sure what that initial standard was in the first place, so I have no idea which is the case. Nor am I sure it matters; presumably what matters more is whether the current standard is adequate.
The point of the Dawes quote is to hold off on proposing solutions until you’ve thoroughly comprehended the issue, so that you get better solutions. It doesn’t advocate discussing problems simply for the sake of discussing them. Between both quotes there’s a consistent position that the point is to get the right answer, and discussing the question only has a point insofar as it leads to getting that answer. If you’re discussing the question without proposing solutions ad infinitum, you’re not accomplishing anything.
Keep in mind that talking with regard to solutions is just so darn useful. Even if you propose an overly specific solution early, than it has a large surface area of features that can be attacked to prove it incompatible with the problem. You can often salvage and mutate what’s left of the broken idea. There’s not a lot of harm in that, rather there is a natural give and take whereby dismissing a proposed solution requires identifying what part of the problem requirements are contradicted, and it may very well not have occurred to you to specify that requirement in the first place.
I believe it has been observed that experts almost always talk in terms of candidate solutions, and amateurs attempt to build up from a platform of the problem itself. Experts of course having objectively better performance. The algorithm for provably moral superintelligences might not have a lot of prior solutions to draw from, but you could, for instance, find some inspiration even from the outside view of how some human political systems have maintained generally moral dispositions.
There is a bias to associate your status with ideas you have vocalized in the past since they reflect on the quality of your thinking, but you can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
The Maier quote comes off as way to strong for me. And what’s with this conclusion:
I think there’s a synthesis possible. There’s a purpose of finding a solid answer, but finding it requires a period of exploration rather than getting extremely specific in the beginning of the search.