So it shouldn’t be surprising if acting like you have more status than I assign to you triggers a negative emotion, a slapdown response.
I think there’s a different mechanism here. I don’t like it if Mr. A can’t do X, but doesn’t know about it, publicly announces that he’s going to do X, and gets a lot of prestige upfront. At the same time, I understand that he will not succeed, and he should not get prestige. And after that, A fails, and it makes me feel worse about those who claim that they can do X if they have no experience.
Imagine that some philosopher announces that he is going to create an aligned AGI in a month, after which everyone begins to admire him. That’s exactly the feeling.
In other words, the problem is not that Mr. A doesn’t have enough prestige, but that he doesn’t have enough chances to succeed.
… but even if Mr. A decides to create an aligned AGI in a month without announcing it publicly, then you will wisely say, “This is impossible. Once I also thought that I could do it in a month, but it’s not like that.”. Wait—this is the reaction “juggling 3 balls is impossible”!
What did I understand: most of the exclamations “you don’t have enough experience / look at yourself from the outside / it’s not possible” from experts in this domainare true. I mean, if you decide to do X, but all the experts in the domain say that you will not succeed, this is quite strong Bayesian evidence in favor of the fact that you will not succeed. You can’t dismiss it by deciding that they’re just afraid to share their status.
I think there’s a different mechanism here. I don’t like it if Mr. A can’t do X, but doesn’t know about it, publicly announces that he’s going to do X, and gets a lot of prestige upfront. At the same time, I understand that he will not succeed, and he should not get prestige. And after that, A fails, and it makes me feel worse about those who claim that they can do X if they have no experience.
Imagine that some philosopher announces that he is going to create an aligned AGI in a month, after which everyone begins to admire him. That’s exactly the feeling.
In other words, the problem is not that Mr. A doesn’t have enough prestige, but that he doesn’t have enough chances to succeed.
… but even if Mr. A decides to create an aligned AGI in a month without announcing it publicly, then you will wisely say, “This is impossible. Once I also thought that I could do it in a month, but it’s not like that.”. Wait—this is the reaction “juggling 3 balls is impossible”!
What did I understand: most of the exclamations “you don’t have enough experience / look at yourself from the outside / it’s not possible” from experts in this domainare true. I mean, if you decide to do X, but all the experts in the domain say that you will not succeed, this is quite strong Bayesian evidence in favor of the fact that you will not succeed. You can’t dismiss it by deciding that they’re just afraid to share their status.
But otherwise I agree with Eliezer.