I think it’s great, the ideas getting out is what matters. Whether Eliezer gets some credit or not, the whole reason he said this stuff in the first place was so that people would understand it, repeat it and spread the concept, and that’s exactly what’s going on. If anything, Eliezer was trying very early to optimize for most convincing and easily understandable phrases, analogies, arguments, etc. so the fact that other people are repeating them or perhaps convergently evolving towards them shows that he did a good job.
And really, if Eliezer’s status as a non-formally educated autodidact or whatever else is problematic or working against easing the spread of the information, then I don’t see a problem with not crediting him in every single reddit post and news article. The priority is presumably ensuring greater awareness of the problems, and part of that is having prestigious people like Stephen Hawking deliver the info. It’s not like there aren’t dated posts and pdfs online that show Eliezer saying this stuff more than a decade ago, people can find how early he was on this train.
So, Steven Hawking basically quotes Eliezer Yudkowsky almost verbatim, without giving him any credit, as usual: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/3nyn5i/science_ama_series_stephen_hawking_ama_answers/
Example:
Disappointed.
I think it’s great, the ideas getting out is what matters. Whether Eliezer gets some credit or not, the whole reason he said this stuff in the first place was so that people would understand it, repeat it and spread the concept, and that’s exactly what’s going on. If anything, Eliezer was trying very early to optimize for most convincing and easily understandable phrases, analogies, arguments, etc. so the fact that other people are repeating them or perhaps convergently evolving towards them shows that he did a good job.
And really, if Eliezer’s status as a non-formally educated autodidact or whatever else is problematic or working against easing the spread of the information, then I don’t see a problem with not crediting him in every single reddit post and news article. The priority is presumably ensuring greater awareness of the problems, and part of that is having prestigious people like Stephen Hawking deliver the info. It’s not like there aren’t dated posts and pdfs online that show Eliezer saying this stuff more than a decade ago, people can find how early he was on this train.
What’s the saying? Something like “When you’re young, you worry people will steal your ideas, when you’re old, you worry they won’t.”
So academia keeps people forever young.
Unsuprising if someone generated that independently. Even more unsuprising if an intelligent person does. Be more charitable.
As usual for Hawking, or for people quoting Eliezer, or?