This conversation seems to be following what appears to me to be a trend in Robin and Eliezer’s (observable by me) disagreements. This is one reason I would fascinated if Eliezer did cover Robin’s initial question, informed somewhat by Eliezer’sinterpretation.
I recall Eliezer mentioning in a tangential comment that he disagreed with Robin not just on the particular conclusion but more foundationally on how much weight should be given to certain types of evidence or argument. (Excuse my paraphrase from hazy memory, my googling failed me.) This is a difference that extends far beyond just R & E and Eliezer has hinted at insights that intrigue me.
How can you be so confident that you know so much about this topic that no world class AI expert could know something relevant that you do not? Surely they considered the fact that people like you think you a lot about this topic, and they nevertheless thought it reasonable to form a disagreeing opinion based on the attention they had given it. You want to dismiss their judgment as “snap” because they did not spend many hours considering your arguments, but they clearly disagree with that assessment of how much consideration your arguments deserve. Academic authorities are not always or even usually wrong when they disagree with less authoritative contrarians, even when such authorities do not review contrarian arguments in as much detail as contrarians think best. You want to dismiss the rationality of disagreement literature as irrelevant because you don’t think those you disagree with are rational, but they probably don’t think you are rational either, and you are probably both right. But the same essential logic also says that irrational people should take seriously the fact that other irrational people disagree with them.
This conversation seems to be following what appears to me to be a trend in Robin and Eliezer’s (observable by me) disagreements. This is one reason I would fascinated if Eliezer did cover Robin’s initial question, informed somewhat by Eliezer’s interpretation.
I recall Eliezer mentioning in a tangential comment that he disagreed with Robin not just on the particular conclusion but more foundationally on how much weight should be given to certain types of evidence or argument. (Excuse my paraphrase from hazy memory, my googling failed me.) This is a difference that extends far beyond just R & E and Eliezer has hinted at insights that intrigue me.
How can you be so confident that you know so much about this topic that no world class AI expert could know something relevant that you do not? Surely they considered the fact that people like you think you a lot about this topic, and they nevertheless thought it reasonable to form a disagreeing opinion based on the attention they had given it. You want to dismiss their judgment as “snap” because they did not spend many hours considering your arguments, but they clearly disagree with that assessment of how much consideration your arguments deserve. Academic authorities are not always or even usually wrong when they disagree with less authoritative contrarians, even when such authorities do not review contrarian arguments in as much detail as contrarians think best. You want to dismiss the rationality of disagreement literature as irrelevant because you don’t think those you disagree with are rational, but they probably don’t think you are rational either, and you are probably both right. But the same essential logic also says that irrational people should take seriously the fact that other irrational people disagree with them.