Here is an example of someone saying “we” should say that AGI is near regardless of whether it’s near or no. I post it only because it’s something I saw recently and so I could find it easily but my feeling is that I’m seeing more comments like that than I used to (though I recall Eliezer complaining about people proposing conspiracies on public forums so I don’t know if that’s new).
I think this misunderstands my position. I wouldn’t advocate for saying “AGI is near” if it wasn’t possibly near, only that, if you have to communicate something short with no nuance, given there’s non-trivial possibility that AGI is near, it’s better to communicate “AGI is near” if that’s all you can communicate.
For the general public considered as a unit, I think “We don’t know if AGI is near, but it could be.” is much too subtle. I don’t know how to handle that, but I think the right way to talk about it is “this is an environment that does not support enough nuance for this true statement to be heard, how do we handle that?”, not “pretend it can handle more than it can.”[1]
I think this is one reason doing mass advocacy is costly, and not be done lightly. There are a lot of advantages to staying in arenas that don’t render a wide swath of true things unsayable. But I don’t think it’s correct to totally rule out participating in those arenas either.
And yes, I do think the same holds for vegan advocacy in the larger world. I think simplifying to “veganism is totally healthy* (*if you do it right)” is fine-enough for pamphlets and slogans. As long as it’s followed up with more nuanced information later, and not used to suppress equally true information.
I think this is one reason doing mass advocacy is costly, and not be done lightly.
And why I deeply disagree with Eliezer’s choice to break open the Overton window, and FLI’s choice to argue for a pause to open the Overton window, because I believe that the nuances of the situation, especially ML nuance, are very critically important for stuff like “Will AI be safe?”, “Will AI generalize”, and so on.
See my original answer for why I think picking such short messages is necessary. Tl;dr: most people aren’t paying attention and round off details, so you have to communicate with the shortest possible message that can’t be rounded off further in some contexts. Your proposed message will be rounded off to “we don’t know”, which is not a message that seems unlikely to me to inspire the correct actions at this point in time.
I draw a slightly different conclusion from that example: that vegan advocates in particular are a threat to truth-seeking in AI alignment. Because I recognize the name, and that’s a vegan who’s said some extremely facepalm-worthy things about nutrition to me.
Hmm, odd you draw that conclusion, because I’m not a vegan, though I have tried and continue to try to eat a plant-based diet, though due to a combination of dietary issues am often unable to. I think you’d also be hard pressed to say I’m a vegan advocate other than I generally think animals have moral worth and killing them is bad all else equal, but I’m not really trying to get anyone else to eat only plants.
Also, if you’re going to make a claim about me, please @ me so I can respond. I only saw this by luck, and I consider it pretty rude to make claims about someone on this site when you can easily tag them and then don’t.
All those specific points aside, this also seems like overgeneralization, since I’m not advocating in that comment not to seek truth, only to take a particular stance with how to communicate to people who are not so much interested in truth as what action to take based on the recommendation of experts. I don’t really like that the way humans have organized themselves requires communicating low-resolution things that obscure important details of the truth, but I do recognize that’s how our systems work and try to make the best of it.
[Edited to add:] Actually, it dawns on me now this comment makes even less sense because you’re claiming I said “extremely facepalm-worthy things about nutrition” yet I can’t recall ever having done so. We’ve only ever spoken in person a handful of times and mostly to make smalltalk. So I have no idea what you’re trying to do here.
Honestly, the more I think about it, the more your comment reads like libel to me: it’s making claims that defame me in various ways yet is totally unsubstantiated. Perhaps you’ve mixed me up with someone else? Either way, this comment is, in my opinion, in bad taste in that it makes claims against me, gives no evidence for them, and then tries to draw some conclusions based on seemingly made up evidence.
The thing I was referring to was an exchange on Facebook, particularly the comment where you wrote:
also i felt like there was lots of protein, but maybe folks just didn’t realize it? rice and most grains that are not maize have a lot (though less densely packed) and there was a lot of quinoa and nut products too
That exchange was salient to me because, in the process of replying to Elizabeth, I had just searched my FB posting history and reread what veganism-related discussions I’d had, including that one. But I agree, in retrospect, that calling you a “vegan advocate” was incorrect. I extrapolated too far based on remembering you to have been vegan at that time and the stance you took in that conversation. The distinction matters both from the perspective of not generalizing to vegan advocates in general, and because the advocate role carries higher expectations about nutrition-knowledge than participating casually in a Facebook conversation does.
I’ve struck out some of my comment above that, based on your reply, no longer makes sense.
We may still have other disagreements about other things, but your comment seems to break your claim that I’m a threat to truth seeking, so I’m happy to leave it there.
Here is an example of someone saying “we” should say that AGI is near regardless of whether it’s near or no. I post it only because it’s something I saw recently and so I could find it easily but my feeling is that I’m seeing more comments like that than I used to (though I recall Eliezer complaining about people proposing conspiracies on public forums so I don’t know if that’s new).
I think this misunderstands my position. I wouldn’t advocate for saying “AGI is near” if it wasn’t possibly near, only that, if you have to communicate something short with no nuance, given there’s non-trivial possibility that AGI is near, it’s better to communicate “AGI is near” if that’s all you can communicate.
You are turning this into a hypothetical scenario where your only communication options are “AGI is near” and “AGI is not near”.
“We don’t know if AGI is near, but it could be.” would seem short enough to me.
For the general public considered as a unit, I think “We don’t know if AGI is near, but it could be.” is much too subtle. I don’t know how to handle that, but I think the right way to talk about it is “this is an environment that does not support enough nuance for this true statement to be heard, how do we handle that?”, not “pretend it can handle more than it can.”[1]
I think this is one reason doing mass advocacy is costly, and not be done lightly. There are a lot of advantages to staying in arenas that don’t render a wide swath of true things unsayable. But I don’t think it’s correct to totally rule out participating in those arenas either.
And yes, I do think the same holds for vegan advocacy in the larger world. I think simplifying to “veganism is totally healthy* (*if you do it right)” is fine-enough for pamphlets and slogans. As long as it’s followed up with more nuanced information later, and not used to suppress equally true information.
And why I deeply disagree with Eliezer’s choice to break open the Overton window, and FLI’s choice to argue for a pause to open the Overton window, because I believe that the nuances of the situation, especially ML nuance, are very critically important for stuff like “Will AI be safe?”, “Will AI generalize”, and so on.
See my original answer for why I think picking such short messages is necessary. Tl;dr: most people aren’t paying attention and round off details, so you have to communicate with the shortest possible message that can’t be rounded off further in some contexts. Your proposed message will be rounded off to “we don’t know”, which is not a message that seems unlikely to me to inspire the correct actions at this point in time.
I draw a slightly different conclusion from that example: that vegan advocates in particular are a threat to truth-seeking in AI alignment. Because I recognize the name, and that’s a vegan who’s said some extremely facepalm-worthy things about nutrition to me.
Hmm, odd you draw that conclusion, because I’m not a vegan, though I have tried and continue to try to eat a plant-based diet, though due to a combination of dietary issues am often unable to. I think you’d also be hard pressed to say I’m a vegan advocate other than I generally think animals have moral worth and killing them is bad all else equal, but I’m not really trying to get anyone else to eat only plants.
Also, if you’re going to make a claim about me, please
@me so I can respond. I only saw this by luck, and I consider it pretty rude to make claims about someone on this site when you can easily tag them and then don’t.All those specific points aside, this also seems like overgeneralization, since I’m not advocating in that comment not to seek truth, only to take a particular stance with how to communicate to people who are not so much interested in truth as what action to take based on the recommendation of experts. I don’t really like that the way humans have organized themselves requires communicating low-resolution things that obscure important details of the truth, but I do recognize that’s how our systems work and try to make the best of it.
[Edited to add:] Actually, it dawns on me now this comment makes even less sense because you’re claiming I said “extremely facepalm-worthy things about nutrition” yet I can’t recall ever having done so. We’ve only ever spoken in person a handful of times and mostly to make smalltalk. So I have no idea what you’re trying to do here.Honestly, the more I think about it, the more your comment reads like libel to me: it’s making claims that defame me in various ways yet is totally unsubstantiated. Perhaps you’ve mixed me up with someone else? Either way, this comment is, in my opinion, in bad taste in that it makes claims against me, gives no evidence for them, and then tries to draw some conclusions based on seemingly made up evidence.The thing I was referring to was an exchange on Facebook, particularly the comment where you wrote:
That exchange was salient to me because, in the process of replying to Elizabeth, I had just searched my FB posting history and reread what veganism-related discussions I’d had, including that one. But I agree, in retrospect, that calling you a “vegan advocate” was incorrect. I extrapolated too far based on remembering you to have been vegan at that time and the stance you took in that conversation. The distinction matters both from the perspective of not generalizing to vegan advocates in general, and because the advocate role carries higher expectations about nutrition-knowledge than participating casually in a Facebook conversation does.
I’ve struck out some of my comment above that, based on your reply, no longer makes sense.
We may still have other disagreements about other things, but your comment seems to break your claim that I’m a threat to truth seeking, so I’m happy to leave it there.