I think the Wait But Why posts are quite good, though I usually link them alongside Luke Muehlhauser’s reply.
Cool! Good to get your endorsement. And thanks for pointing me to Muehlhauser’s reply. I’ll check it out.
I dunno what the ‘0%’ means exactly, but it’s obviously not literal. My read of it was something like ‘low enough that it’s hard enough to be calibrated about exactly how low it is’, plus ‘low enough that you can make a lot of progress and still not have double-digit success probability’.
Ok, yeah, that does sound pretty plausible. It still encompasses a pretty wide range though. Like, it could mean one in a billion, I guess? There is a grim tone here. And Eliezer has spoken about his pessimism elsewhere with a similarly grim tone. Maybe I am overreacting to that. I dunno. Like Raemon, I am still feeling confused.
It’s definitely worth noting though that even at a low number like one in a billion, it is still worth working on for sure. And I see that Eliezer believes this as well. So in that sense I take back what I said in my initial comment.
One in a billion seems way, way, way too low to me. (Like, I think that’s a crazy p(win) to have, and I’d be shocked beyond shocked if Eliezer’s p(win) were that low. Like, if he told me that I don’t think I’d believe him.)
Cool! Good to get your endorsement. And thanks for pointing me to Muehlhauser’s reply. I’ll check it out.
Ok, yeah, that does sound pretty plausible. It still encompasses a pretty wide range though. Like, it could mean one in a billion, I guess? There is a grim tone here. And Eliezer has spoken about his pessimism elsewhere with a similarly grim tone. Maybe I am overreacting to that. I dunno. Like Raemon, I am still feeling confused.
It’s definitely worth noting though that even at a low number like one in a billion, it is still worth working on for sure. And I see that Eliezer believes this as well. So in that sense I take back what I said in my initial comment.
One in a billion seems way, way, way too low to me. (Like, I think that’s a crazy p(win) to have, and I’d be shocked beyond shocked if Eliezer’s p(win) were that low. Like, if he told me that I don’t think I’d believe him.)
Ok, that’s good to hear! Just checking, do you feel similarly about 1 in 100k?
No, that’s a lot lower than my probability but it doesn’t trigger the same ‘that can’t be right, we must be miscommunicating somehow’ reaction.
I see. Thanks for the response.