I feel sad that the project is gone before I even understood how it was supposed to work.
I was like: “I have absolutely no idea what this is supposed to be or to do, but smart people seem enthusiastic about it, so it’s probably a smart thing, and maybe later when I have more time, I will examine it more closely.”
Now, my question is… how much should I use this as an outside view for other activities of MIRI?
how much should I use this as an outside view for other activities of MIRI?
I’m unsure whether you should think of it as a MIRI activity, but to the extent you should, then it seems like moderate evidence that MIRI will try many uncertain approaches, and be somewhat sensible about abandoning the ones that reach a dead end.
Don’t use the outside view. Use your brain. If Arbital was confusing, but you didn’t look closer at it, then you didn’t use your brain. If MIRI seems confusing and you don’t look closer at it, then you aren’t using your brain. The whole concept of “smart people” whom you can trust with anything is just wrong. There are only niche experts.
My two cents: Arbital had very little to do with MIRI, aside from Arbital being Eliezer’s idea. But this was definitely out of his realm of expertise. MIRI/AI stuff is not.
One of the things people (rightly) use their brains for is deciding what things merit closer attention. I don’t think it’s fair to say that Viliam didn’t use his brain, merely because the conclusion from using his brain was “I don’t care enough about this to examine it more closely right now”. And his question about the outside view isn’t about how he should have evaluated Arbital before but about how he should evaluate MIRI activities in the future. (Where, again, “not worth looking closer right now” is a perfectly legitimate evaluation.)
Are you suggesting that as a matter of general policy one shouldn’t use the outside view to evaluate how likely something is to succeed, to have large impact, etc.? Or does that only apply to certain projects, and if so which ones?
The fact that a startup pivots doesn’t automatically mean that it’s founders are bad at what they are doing. Most startups fail or pivot from the outside view.
I don’t think Viliam was claiming it means the founders are bad at what they’re doing (in any sense stronger than that they aren’t able to do it in such a way as to make a commercial success). Only that “smart people seem enthusiastic about it” is perfectly consistent with “nothing will come of it in the end”.
I feel sad that the project is gone before I even understood how it was supposed to work.
I was like: “I have absolutely no idea what this is supposed to be or to do, but smart people seem enthusiastic about it, so it’s probably a smart thing, and maybe later when I have more time, I will examine it more closely.”
Now, my question is… how much should I use this as an outside view for other activities of MIRI?
I’m unsure whether you should think of it as a MIRI activity, but to the extent you should, then it seems like moderate evidence that MIRI will try many uncertain approaches, and be somewhat sensible about abandoning the ones that reach a dead end.
Don’t use the outside view. Use your brain. If Arbital was confusing, but you didn’t look closer at it, then you didn’t use your brain. If MIRI seems confusing and you don’t look closer at it, then you aren’t using your brain. The whole concept of “smart people” whom you can trust with anything is just wrong. There are only niche experts.
My two cents: Arbital had very little to do with MIRI, aside from Arbital being Eliezer’s idea. But this was definitely out of his realm of expertise. MIRI/AI stuff is not.
One of the things people (rightly) use their brains for is deciding what things merit closer attention. I don’t think it’s fair to say that Viliam didn’t use his brain, merely because the conclusion from using his brain was “I don’t care enough about this to examine it more closely right now”. And his question about the outside view isn’t about how he should have evaluated Arbital before but about how he should evaluate MIRI activities in the future. (Where, again, “not worth looking closer right now” is a perfectly legitimate evaluation.)
Are you suggesting that as a matter of general policy one shouldn’t use the outside view to evaluate how likely something is to succeed, to have large impact, etc.? Or does that only apply to certain projects, and if so which ones?
The fact that a startup pivots doesn’t automatically mean that it’s founders are bad at what they are doing. Most startups fail or pivot from the outside view.
I don’t think Viliam was claiming it means the founders are bad at what they’re doing (in any sense stronger than that they aren’t able to do it in such a way as to make a commercial success). Only that “smart people seem enthusiastic about it” is perfectly consistent with “nothing will come of it in the end”.