To be clear, I wasn’t arguing against applying the outside view—just against the belief that the outside view gives AGI a prior/outside view expected chance of success of (effectively) zero. The outside view should incorporate the fact that some material number of technologies not originally anticipated or even conceived do indeed materialize: we expected flying cars, but we got the internet. Even a 5% chance of Singularity seems more in line with the outside view than the 0% claimed in the reference class article, no?
I agree with your comment on the previous post, incidentally, that the probability of the Singularity as conceived by any individual or even LW in general is low; the possible types of Singularity are so great that it would be rather shocking if we could get it right from our current perspective. Again, I was responding only to the assertion that the outside view shows no successes for the class of breakthroughs containing AGI/cryo/Singularity.
I should note too that the entirety of the quotation you ascribe to me is originally from Eliezer, as the omitted beginning of the quoted sentence indicates.
You’re right. Some reference classes containing the Singularity have a 0% success rate, some fare better. I don’t assign the Singularity exactly zero credence, and I don’t think taw does either.
To be clear, I wasn’t arguing against applying the outside view—just against the belief that the outside view gives AGI a prior/outside view expected chance of success of (effectively) zero. The outside view should incorporate the fact that some material number of technologies not originally anticipated or even conceived do indeed materialize: we expected flying cars, but we got the internet. Even a 5% chance of Singularity seems more in line with the outside view than the 0% claimed in the reference class article, no?
I agree with your comment on the previous post, incidentally, that the probability of the Singularity as conceived by any individual or even LW in general is low; the possible types of Singularity are so great that it would be rather shocking if we could get it right from our current perspective. Again, I was responding only to the assertion that the outside view shows no successes for the class of breakthroughs containing AGI/cryo/Singularity.
I should note too that the entirety of the quotation you ascribe to me is originally from Eliezer, as the omitted beginning of the quoted sentence indicates.
You’re right. Some reference classes containing the Singularity have a 0% success rate, some fare better. I don’t assign the Singularity exactly zero credence, and I don’t think taw does either.