My intuition is that it’s points that matter to you versus points that matter to the judges
This is pretty much 100% of it. Sometimes “the judges” are people whose opinion is decisive, like Ben’s mom, and sometimes “the judges” are just the universe (e.g. will these actions I’m taking result in the parachute opening or not).
Specifically, “scoring points instead of winning.”
I noticed I was sort of confusedly-in-disagreement with your first couple of paragraphs, and I think that boils down to me explaining things inadequately—your complaints felt invalid and your arguments and clarifications felt totally true, and I don’t think we actually disagreed. The above is an important distinction—it’s not about scoring points being bad in an absolute sense, it’s when you score points instead of winning.
In particular, I wasn’t claiming that Eliezer, Scott, and Brent are the ones doing this. I was claiming that the people who shoot back with something like “I don’t think we should listen to this guy, he doesn’t even have a PhD” are scoring points. They’re not playing the same game that Eliezer and Scott and Brent are playing (a truthseeking, accomplish-stuff sort of game) but rather the simpler, more known game of social status.
My claim there is that even the ones who care about e.g. AI arms races are not in that moment expressing that care—they’ve switched away from engaging with the ideas to engaging with the social subgame. Their true objection to (e.g.) some claim about economics is not “Eliezer doesn’t have a PhD.” They’re ignoring the economics question, and shifting into the trivial subgame and scoring points that are valid in that subgame but futile/useless in the larger game of “will I bring about my will in the world.” Maybe their point-scoring is kind of correlated with winning that larger game (because social status is a useful currency) just like my cousin Ben making logical arguments sometimes has an effect, sort of, maybe, if mom’s in the right mood. But it’s not highly likely to make a difference. It’s mostly pandering or self-gratification or something not motivated by the actual end goal.
(In contrast, something like the Yudkowsky-Hanson debate is not “scoring points instead of winning.” It’s scoring points in the actual relevant game.)
So yeah—I felt like most of your objection was to straw versions of what I was trying to say, and I apologize for the extent to which I set up those strawmen myself (and thus it’s not your fault you found yourself objecting to them). I wasn’t at all claiming that e.g. it’s “pointless to point out economic drivers of arms races” or that it’s “pointless to point out how toxic things evolve.” I was claiming that the response to those claims often shifts the conversation into a pointless subgame where people score futile points that have little-to-no bearing on the original topic, and that indeed this is why people in the Eliezer/Scott/Brent archetype often get tired and just drop out of the discussion at that moment. They recognize that no further progress is likely to be made and they’re not interested in scoring trivial points, so they go off to do something else instead.
Ah, that makes more sense. I agree that we mostly agree. I went back and read the paragraph in question and I see how that part of this happened. I blame pronouns—now that I know who/what everything is referring to it all makes sense. I think if you replaced “those people” with the “those responding” or something like that, this confusion doesn’t happen.
That doesn’t mean this isn’t also my fault, though; I didn’t even see the alternate/actual interpretation, and what you wrote was at worst ambiguous. So I was being somewhat uncharitable there in not looking for an alternate explanation, which seems bad.
This is pretty much 100% of it. Sometimes “the judges” are people whose opinion is decisive, like Ben’s mom, and sometimes “the judges” are just the universe (e.g. will these actions I’m taking result in the parachute opening or not).
I noticed I was sort of confusedly-in-disagreement with your first couple of paragraphs, and I think that boils down to me explaining things inadequately—your complaints felt invalid and your arguments and clarifications felt totally true, and I don’t think we actually disagreed. The above is an important distinction—it’s not about scoring points being bad in an absolute sense, it’s when you score points instead of winning.
In particular, I wasn’t claiming that Eliezer, Scott, and Brent are the ones doing this. I was claiming that the people who shoot back with something like “I don’t think we should listen to this guy, he doesn’t even have a PhD” are scoring points. They’re not playing the same game that Eliezer and Scott and Brent are playing (a truthseeking, accomplish-stuff sort of game) but rather the simpler, more known game of social status.
My claim there is that even the ones who care about e.g. AI arms races are not in that moment expressing that care—they’ve switched away from engaging with the ideas to engaging with the social subgame. Their true objection to (e.g.) some claim about economics is not “Eliezer doesn’t have a PhD.” They’re ignoring the economics question, and shifting into the trivial subgame and scoring points that are valid in that subgame but futile/useless in the larger game of “will I bring about my will in the world.” Maybe their point-scoring is kind of correlated with winning that larger game (because social status is a useful currency) just like my cousin Ben making logical arguments sometimes has an effect, sort of, maybe, if mom’s in the right mood. But it’s not highly likely to make a difference. It’s mostly pandering or self-gratification or something not motivated by the actual end goal.
(In contrast, something like the Yudkowsky-Hanson debate is not “scoring points instead of winning.” It’s scoring points in the actual relevant game.)
So yeah—I felt like most of your objection was to straw versions of what I was trying to say, and I apologize for the extent to which I set up those strawmen myself (and thus it’s not your fault you found yourself objecting to them). I wasn’t at all claiming that e.g. it’s “pointless to point out economic drivers of arms races” or that it’s “pointless to point out how toxic things evolve.” I was claiming that the response to those claims often shifts the conversation into a pointless subgame where people score futile points that have little-to-no bearing on the original topic, and that indeed this is why people in the Eliezer/Scott/Brent archetype often get tired and just drop out of the discussion at that moment. They recognize that no further progress is likely to be made and they’re not interested in scoring trivial points, so they go off to do something else instead.
Ah, that makes more sense. I agree that we mostly agree. I went back and read the paragraph in question and I see how that part of this happened. I blame pronouns—now that I know who/what everything is referring to it all makes sense. I think if you replaced “those people” with the “those responding” or something like that, this confusion doesn’t happen.
That doesn’t mean this isn’t also my fault, though; I didn’t even see the alternate/actual interpretation, and what you wrote was at worst ambiguous. So I was being somewhat uncharitable there in not looking for an alternate explanation, which seems bad.