I think your concern with the list of ten format is totally reasonable. I do feel that the tone was a little too bombastic. I personally felt that was mostly justified, but hey, I’m highly biased. I haven’t noticed a flood of top ten lists getting lots of upvotes, though. And I did find that format to be incredibly helpful in getting a post out in reasonable time. I usually struggle and obsess.
I would love to engage on the object level on this particular one. I’m going to resist doing that here because I want to produce a better version of this post, and engage there. I said that this doesn’t solve all of the problems with alignment, including citing my post the alignment stability problem. The reason I thought this was so important is that it’s a huge benefit if, at least in the short term, the easiest way to make more capable AI is also the easiest to align.
Thank you for noticing my defensive and snarky response, and asking for feedback on your tone. I did take your comment to be harsh. I had the thought “oh no, when you make a post that people actually comment on, some of them are going to be mean. This community isn’t as nice as I’d hoped”.
I don’t think I misinterpreted your comment very badly. You said
Even if this post isn’t bad (and I’d argue it is for the suggestions it promotes),
that suggestion was not in this post! I suggested it in a comment, and it was in the alignment stability problem post. Maybe that’s why that post got only ten upvotes on less wrong, and actually had slightly more on the alignment forum where I posted it. And my comment here was roundly criticized and downvoted. You can tell that to the mob of Twits if you want.
You also firmly implied that it was being upvoted for the format and not the ideas. You made that comment while misunderstanding why I was arguing it was important (maybe you read it quickly since it was irritating you, or maybe I didn’t write it clearly enough).
You commented in the post that it irritated you because of the external consequence, but it seems you didn’t adequately compensate for that bias before writing and posting it. Which is fine, we all have feelings and none of us are even close to perfect rationalists.
Including me. I’m getting snarky again, and I shouldn’t since I really don’t think your tone was that bad. But I do wish it was more pleasant. I’m not the tone police, but I do really really value this community’s general spirit of harsh disagreement coupled with pleasant tone.
And tone matters. I’m not going to be mentioning the encryption thing again unnecessarily (despite it playing an absolutely critical role in my overall hope for our survival), because we are now in a PR role. My post on preventing polarization in the AI safety debate says it. I don’t like playing the PR game, but it’s time for us to learn it and do it, because polarization will prevent policy action, like it has in the climate change issue.
Once again, I truly and deeply appreciate you mentioning the tone. It totally restored my enthusiasm for being part of this community as an imperfect but much better corner of the internet. I hope I haven’t been to harsh in response, because I am not overly pleasant by nature, but have been trying to turn myself into a more pleasant person, while still saying important things when they’re useful.
I hope to have your input on future posts. Now, back to writing this one.
I think your concern with the list of ten format is totally reasonable. I do feel that the tone was a little too bombastic. I personally felt that was mostly justified, but hey, I’m highly biased. I haven’t noticed a flood of top ten lists getting lots of upvotes, though. And I did find that format to be incredibly helpful in getting a post out in reasonable time. I usually struggle and obsess.
I would love to engage on the object level on this particular one. I’m going to resist doing that here because I want to produce a better version of this post, and engage there. I said that this doesn’t solve all of the problems with alignment, including citing my post the alignment stability problem. The reason I thought this was so important is that it’s a huge benefit if, at least in the short term, the easiest way to make more capable AI is also the easiest to align.
Thank you for noticing my defensive and snarky response, and asking for feedback on your tone. I did take your comment to be harsh. I had the thought “oh no, when you make a post that people actually comment on, some of them are going to be mean. This community isn’t as nice as I’d hoped”.
I don’t think I misinterpreted your comment very badly. You said
that suggestion was not in this post! I suggested it in a comment, and it was in the alignment stability problem post. Maybe that’s why that post got only ten upvotes on less wrong, and actually had slightly more on the alignment forum where I posted it. And my comment here was roundly criticized and downvoted. You can tell that to the mob of Twits if you want.
You also firmly implied that it was being upvoted for the format and not the ideas. You made that comment while misunderstanding why I was arguing it was important (maybe you read it quickly since it was irritating you, or maybe I didn’t write it clearly enough).
You commented in the post that it irritated you because of the external consequence, but it seems you didn’t adequately compensate for that bias before writing and posting it. Which is fine, we all have feelings and none of us are even close to perfect rationalists.
Including me. I’m getting snarky again, and I shouldn’t since I really don’t think your tone was that bad. But I do wish it was more pleasant. I’m not the tone police, but I do really really value this community’s general spirit of harsh disagreement coupled with pleasant tone.
And tone matters. I’m not going to be mentioning the encryption thing again unnecessarily (despite it playing an absolutely critical role in my overall hope for our survival), because we are now in a PR role. My post on preventing polarization in the AI safety debate says it. I don’t like playing the PR game, but it’s time for us to learn it and do it, because polarization will prevent policy action, like it has in the climate change issue.
Once again, I truly and deeply appreciate you mentioning the tone. It totally restored my enthusiasm for being part of this community as an imperfect but much better corner of the internet. I hope I haven’t been to harsh in response, because I am not overly pleasant by nature, but have been trying to turn myself into a more pleasant person, while still saying important things when they’re useful.
I hope to have your input on future posts. Now, back to writing this one.