Who is David Brooks, that LW should care what he says? I glanced at the linked article and it looks to me like extruded journalism product by someone with no particular knowledge about AI.
His Wikipedia bio describes him as a “cultural commentator” but it is not clear what he is qualified to comment on. Regarding a book of his, it says that “[a critic of Brooks] reported Brooks as insisting that the book was not intended to be factual but to report his impressions of what he believed an area to be like”.
“Reporting his impressions of what he believes an area to be like.” I suppose that’s what a cultural commentator does for a living, and it is what he has done in that article.
He’s influential and it’s worth knowing what his opinion is because it will become the opinion of many of his readers. Hes also representative of what a lot of other people are (independently) thinking.
What’s Scott Alexander qualified to comment on? Should we not care about the opinion of Joe Biden because he has no particular knowledge about AI? Sure, I’m doubt we learn anything from rebutting his arguments, but once upon a time LW cared about changing the public opinion on this matter and so should absolutely care about reading that public opinion.
Honestly, I embarrassed for us that this needs to be said.
Scott Alexander is, obviously, qualified to write on psychology, psychiatry, related pharmaceuticals, and the ways that US government agencies screw up everything they touch in those areas. When writing outside his professional expertise, he takes care to read thoroughly, lay out his evidence, cite sources, and say how confident he is in the conclusions he draws.
I see none of this in David Brooks’ article. He is writing sermons to the readership of the NYT. They are not addressed to the sort of audience we have here. I doubt that his audience are likely to read LessWrong.
Again, why wouldn’t you want to read things addressed to other sorts of audiences if you thought altering public opinion on that topic was important? Maybe you don’t care about altering public opinion but a large number of people here say they do care.
I just don’t think David Brooks, from what I know of him, is worth spending any time on. The snippets I could access at the NYT give no impression of substance, The criticisms of him on Wikipedia are similar to those I have already seen on Andrew Gelman’s blog: he is more concerned to write witty, urbane prose without much concern for actual truth than to do the sort of thing that, say, Scott Alexander does.
Btw, I have not voted positively or negatively on the OP.
So people feel that LW should be focussed on other things than critiquing influential but unqualified opinions. I am sympathetic to this. It is somewhat of a Sisyphus task to weed out bad opinions from public discourse and responding on LW is probably not the most effient way of doing it in any case.
Personally, when I am convinced of something, I try to find the strongest critiques of that belief. For instance, I’ve looked for criticisms of Yudkowsky and even read a little on r/SneerClub to evaluate whether I’ve been duped by internet lunatics :). If other people acted the same, it would be valuable to have critiques of bad opinions, even if they are posted where the intended audience otherwise never visits. But I suspect few people act like that.
I would be interested in if you have suggestions for what are better ways to effect public opinion than posts like this one. I guess the rationality project of raising the global sanity level is partly aimed at this.
Who is David Brooks, that LW should care what he says? I glanced at the linked article and it looks to me like extruded journalism product by someone with no particular knowledge about AI.
His Wikipedia bio describes him as a “cultural commentator” but it is not clear what he is qualified to comment on. Regarding a book of his, it says that “[a critic of Brooks] reported Brooks as insisting that the book was not intended to be factual but to report his impressions of what he believed an area to be like”.
“Reporting his impressions of what he believes an area to be like.” I suppose that’s what a cultural commentator does for a living, and it is what he has done in that article.
He’s influential and it’s worth knowing what his opinion is because it will become the opinion of many of his readers. Hes also representative of what a lot of other people are (independently) thinking.
What’s Scott Alexander qualified to comment on? Should we not care about the opinion of Joe Biden because he has no particular knowledge about AI? Sure, I’m doubt we learn anything from rebutting his arguments, but once upon a time LW cared about changing the public opinion on this matter and so should absolutely care about reading that public opinion.
Honestly, I embarrassed for us that this needs to be said.
Scott Alexander is, obviously, qualified to write on psychology, psychiatry, related pharmaceuticals, and the ways that US government agencies screw up everything they touch in those areas. When writing outside his professional expertise, he takes care to read thoroughly, lay out his evidence, cite sources, and say how confident he is in the conclusions he draws.
I see none of this in David Brooks’ article. He is writing sermons to the readership of the NYT. They are not addressed to the sort of audience we have here. I doubt that his audience are likely to read LessWrong.
Again, why wouldn’t you want to read things addressed to other sorts of audiences if you thought altering public opinion on that topic was important? Maybe you don’t care about altering public opinion but a large number of people here say they do care.
I just don’t think David Brooks, from what I know of him, is worth spending any time on. The snippets I could access at the NYT give no impression of substance, The criticisms of him on Wikipedia are similar to those I have already seen on Andrew Gelman’s blog: he is more concerned to write witty, urbane prose without much concern for actual truth than to do the sort of thing that, say, Scott Alexander does.
Btw, I have not voted positively or negatively on the OP.
Definitely guilty of preaching to the choir :).
So people feel that LW should be focussed on other things than critiquing influential but unqualified opinions. I am sympathetic to this. It is somewhat of a Sisyphus task to weed out bad opinions from public discourse and responding on LW is probably not the most effient way of doing it in any case.
Personally, when I am convinced of something, I try to find the strongest critiques of that belief. For instance, I’ve looked for criticisms of Yudkowsky and even read a little on r/SneerClub to evaluate whether I’ve been duped by internet lunatics :). If other people acted the same, it would be valuable to have critiques of bad opinions, even if they are posted where the intended audience otherwise never visits. But I suspect few people act like that.
I would be interested in if you have suggestions for what are better ways to effect public opinion than posts like this one. I guess the rationality project of raising the global sanity level is partly aimed at this.