It seems to me like my position, and the MIRI-cluster position, is (1) closer to “rationality is like fitness” than “rationality is like momentum”
Eliezer is a fan of law thinking, right? Doesn’t the law thinker position imply that intelligence can be characterized in a “lawful” way like momentum?
Whereas the non-MIRI cluster is saying “biologists don’t need to know about evolution.”
As a non-MIRI cluster person, I think deconfusion is valuable (insofar as we’re confused), but I’m skeptical of MIRI because they seem more confused than average to me.
Doesn’t the law thinker position imply that intelligence can be characterized in a “lawful” way like momentum?
It depends on what you mean by “lawful”. Right now, the word “lawful” in that sentence is ill-defined, in much the same way as the purported distinction between momentum and fitness. Moreover, most interpretations of the word I can think of describe concepts like reproductive fitness about as well as they do concepts like momentum, so it’s not clear to me why “law thinking” is relevant in the first place—it seems as though it simply muddies the discussion by introducing additional concepts.
In my experience, if there are several concepts that seem similar, understanding how they relate to one another usually helps with clarity rather than hurting.
That depends on how strict your criteria are for evaluating “similarity”. Often concepts that intuitively evoke a similar “feel” can differ in important ways, or even fail to be talking about the same type of thing, much less the same thing.
In any case, how do you feel law thinking (as characterized by Eliezer) relates to the momentum-fitness distinction (as characterized by ricraz)? It may turn out that those two concepts are in fact linked, but in such a case it would nonetheless be helpful to make the linking explicit.
Eliezer is a fan of law thinking, right? Doesn’t the law thinker position imply that intelligence can be characterized in a “lawful” way like momentum?
As a non-MIRI cluster person, I think deconfusion is valuable (insofar as we’re confused), but I’m skeptical of MIRI because they seem more confused than average to me.
It depends on what you mean by “lawful”. Right now, the word “lawful” in that sentence is ill-defined, in much the same way as the purported distinction between momentum and fitness. Moreover, most interpretations of the word I can think of describe concepts like reproductive fitness about as well as they do concepts like momentum, so it’s not clear to me why “law thinking” is relevant in the first place—it seems as though it simply muddies the discussion by introducing additional concepts.
In my experience, if there are several concepts that seem similar, understanding how they relate to one another usually helps with clarity rather than hurting.
That depends on how strict your criteria are for evaluating “similarity”. Often concepts that intuitively evoke a similar “feel” can differ in important ways, or even fail to be talking about the same type of thing, much less the same thing.
In any case, how do you feel law thinking (as characterized by Eliezer) relates to the momentum-fitness distinction (as characterized by ricraz)? It may turn out that those two concepts are in fact linked, but in such a case it would nonetheless be helpful to make the linking explicit.