EDIT: Nvm, I misunderstood the point, I thought the parent comment was arguing that people were good at being concrete, but apparently that was not the point, see followup thread with Ben
Hmm, it seems like the story (to which I am quite sympathetic) is “people are very competent at being concrete in domains where they have tons of feedback from reality, but stop being concrete as soon as you move to a domain in which that’s not the case”.
This story has people being good at the skill when it is actually important for their jobs, so it’s no longer subject to the critique “but this skill is so instrumentally useful that everyone would use it”.
I definitely think Eliezer’s claim is very hyperbolic in its implications[1], but I do think it is pointing at some real phenomenon where many people don’t particularly try to be concrete in domains they don’t have lived experience in.
Though who knows if it is literally false—what does it mean to be in a “lineage”? How many is implied by “one of the last”? I didn’t learn concreteness from Feynman, I can remember using it in random philosophical conversations in high school, long before I knew who Feynman was or what EA / rationality were. Does that mean I wouldn’t count as “one of the last of the lineage”, even if I have the skill?
EDIT: Nvm, I misunderstood the point, I thought the parent comment was arguing that people were good at being concrete, but apparently that was not the point, see followup thread with Ben
Hmm, it seems like the story (to which I am quite sympathetic) is “people are very competent at being concrete in domains where they have tons of feedback from reality, but stop being concrete as soon as you move to a domain in which that’s not the case”.
This story has people being good at the skill when it is actually important for their jobs, so it’s no longer subject to the critique “but this skill is so instrumentally useful that everyone would use it”.
I definitely think Eliezer’s claim is very hyperbolic in its implications[1], but I do think it is pointing at some real phenomenon where many people don’t particularly try to be concrete in domains they don’t have lived experience in.
Though who knows if it is literally false—what does it mean to be in a “lineage”? How many is implied by “one of the last”? I didn’t learn concreteness from Feynman, I can remember using it in random philosophical conversations in high school, long before I knew who Feynman was or what EA / rationality were. Does that mean I wouldn’t count as “one of the last of the lineage”, even if I have the skill?