Thanks! Honestly, I think this kind of project needs to get much more appreciation and should be done more by those who are very confident in their positions and would like to steelman the other side. I also often hear people very confident about their beliefs and truly have no idea what the bets counterarguments are—maybe this uncommon, but I went to an in-person rationalist meetup like last week, and the people were really confident but haven’t heard of a bunch of these counterarguments, which I though is not at all in the LessWrong spirit. That interaction was one of my inspirations for the post.
I think I agree, but I’m having a bit of trouble understanding how you would evaluate arguments so much differently than I am now. I would say my method is pretty different than that of twitter debates (in many ways, I am very sympathetic and influenced by the LessWrong approach). I think I could have made a list of cruxes of each argument, but I didn’t want the post to be too long—much fewer would read it which is why I recommended that people first get a grasp on the general arguments for AI being an existential risk right at the beginning (adding a credence or range, i think, is pretty silly given that people should be able to assign their own, and I’m just some random undergrad on the internet).
Yep—I totally agree. I don’t personally take the argument super seriously (though I attempted to steelman what that argument as I think other people take it very seriously). I was initially going to respond to every argument, but I didn’t want to make a 40+ minute post. I also did qualify that claim a bunch (as I did with others like the intractability argument)
Fair point. I do think the LeCun argument misunderstands a bunch about different aspects of the debate, but he’s probably smarter than me.
I think I’m gonna have to just disagree here. While I defintelely think finding cruxes are extremely important (and this sometimes requires much back and forth), there is a certain type of way arguments can go back and forth that I tend to think has little (and should have little) influence on beliefs—I’m open to being wrong, though!
Different but related point:
I think, generally, I largely agree with you on many things you’ve said and just appreciate the outside view more. A modest epistemology of sorts. Even if I don’t find an argument super compelling, if a bunch of people that I think are pretty smart do (Yann LeCun has done some groundbreaking work in AI stuff, so that seems like a reason to take him seriously), I’m still gonna write about it. This is another reason why I didn’t put credences on these arguments—let the people decide!
Thanks! Honestly, I think this kind of project needs to get much more appreciation and should be done more by those who are very confident in their positions and would like to steelman the other side. I also often hear people very confident about their beliefs and truly have no idea what the bets counterarguments are—maybe this uncommon, but I went to an in-person rationalist meetup like last week, and the people were really confident but haven’t heard of a bunch of these counterarguments, which I though is not at all in the LessWrong spirit. That interaction was one of my inspirations for the post.
I think I agree, but I’m having a bit of trouble understanding how you would evaluate arguments so much differently than I am now. I would say my method is pretty different than that of twitter debates (in many ways, I am very sympathetic and influenced by the LessWrong approach). I think I could have made a list of cruxes of each argument, but I didn’t want the post to be too long—much fewer would read it which is why I recommended that people first get a grasp on the general arguments for AI being an existential risk right at the beginning (adding a credence or range, i think, is pretty silly given that people should be able to assign their own, and I’m just some random undergrad on the internet).
Yep—I totally agree. I don’t personally take the argument super seriously (though I attempted to steelman what that argument as I think other people take it very seriously). I was initially going to respond to every argument, but I didn’t want to make a 40+ minute post. I also did qualify that claim a bunch (as I did with others like the intractability argument)
Fair point. I do think the LeCun argument misunderstands a bunch about different aspects of the debate, but he’s probably smarter than me.
I think I’m gonna have to just disagree here. While I defintelely think finding cruxes are extremely important (and this sometimes requires much back and forth), there is a certain type of way arguments can go back and forth that I tend to think has little (and should have little) influence on beliefs—I’m open to being wrong, though!
Different but related point:
I think, generally, I largely agree with you on many things you’ve said and just appreciate the outside view more. A modest epistemology of sorts. Even if I don’t find an argument super compelling, if a bunch of people that I think are pretty smart do (Yann LeCun has done some groundbreaking work in AI stuff, so that seems like a reason to take him seriously), I’m still gonna write about it. This is another reason why I didn’t put credences on these arguments—let the people decide!