Eliezer seemed quite clear to me when he said (paraphrased) “we are on the left side of the logistical success curve, where success is measured in significant digits of leading 0s you are removing from your probability of success”. The whole post seems to clearly imply that Eliezer thinks that marginal dignity is possible, which he defines as a unit of logistical movement on the probability of success. This clearly implies the probability is not literally 0, but it does clearly argue that the probability (on a linear scale) can be rounded to 0.
Mostly I had no idea if he meant like 0.1, 0.001, or 0.00000001. Also not sure if he’s more like “survival chance is 0%, probably, with some margin of error, maybe it’s 1%”, or “no, I’m making the confident claim that it’s more like 0.0001″
(This was combined with some confusion about Nate Soares saying something in the vein of “if you don’t whole heartedly believe in your plans, you should multiply their EV by 0, and you’re not supposed to pick the plan who’s epsilon value is “least epsilon”)
Also, MIRI isn’t (necessarily) a hive mind, so not sure if Rob, Nate or Abram actually share the same estimate of how doomed we are as Eliezer.
Also, MIRI isn’t (necessarily) a hive mind, so not sure if Rob, Nate or Abram actually share the same estimate of how doomed we are as Eliezer.
Indeed, I expect that the views of at least some individuals working at MIRI vary considerably.
In some ways, the post would seem more accurate to me if it had the Onion-esque headline: Eliezer announces on MIRI’s behalf that “MIRI adopts new ‘Death with Dignity’ strategy.”
Still, I love the post a lot. Also, Eliezer has always been pivotal in MIRI.
Eliezer seemed quite clear to me when he said (paraphrased) “we are on the left side of the logistical success curve, where success is measured in significant digits of leading 0s you are removing from your probability of success”. The whole post seems to clearly imply that Eliezer thinks that marginal dignity is possible, which he defines as a unit of logistical movement on the probability of success. This clearly implies the probability is not literally 0, but it does clearly argue that the probability (on a linear scale) can be rounded to 0.
Mostly I had no idea if he meant like 0.1, 0.001, or 0.00000001. Also not sure if he’s more like “survival chance is 0%, probably, with some margin of error, maybe it’s 1%”, or “no, I’m making the confident claim that it’s more like 0.0001″
(This was combined with some confusion about Nate Soares saying something in the vein of “if you don’t whole heartedly believe in your plans, you should multiply their EV by 0, and you’re not supposed to pick the plan who’s epsilon value is “least epsilon”)
Also, MIRI isn’t (necessarily) a hive mind, so not sure if Rob, Nate or Abram actually share the same estimate of how doomed we are as Eliezer.
Indeed, I expect that the views of at least some individuals working at MIRI vary considerably.
In some ways, the post would seem more accurate to me if it had the Onion-esque headline: Eliezer announces on MIRI’s behalf that “MIRI adopts new ‘Death with Dignity’ strategy.”
Still, I love the post a lot. Also, Eliezer has always been pivotal in MIRI.
The five MIRI responses in my AI x-risk survey (marked with orange dots) show a lot of variation in P(doom):
(Albeit it’s still only five people; maybe a lot of MIRI optimists didn’t reply, or maybe a lot of pessimists didn’t, for some reason.)