Separately from my other reply explaining that you are not the source of what I’m complaining about here, I thought I’d add more color to explain why I think my assessment here is not “hyperbolic”. Specifically, regarding your claim that reducing AI x-risk through coordination is “not only fine to suggest, but completely uncontroversial accepted wisdom”, please see the OP. Perhaps you have not witnessed such conversations yourself, but I have been party to many of these:
Some people: AI might kill everyone. We should design a godlike super-AI of perfect goodness to prevent that.
Others: wow that sounds extremely ambitious
Some people: yeah but it’s very important and also we are extremely smart so idk it could work
[Work on it for a decade and a half]
Some people: ok that’s pretty hard, we give up
Others: oh huh shouldn’t we maybe try to stop the building of this dangerous AI?
Some people: hmm, that would involve coordinating numerous people—we may be arrogant enough to think that we might build a god-machine that can take over the world and remake it as a paradise, but we aren’t delusional
In other words, I’ve seen people in AI governance being called or treated as “delusional” by loads of people (1-2 dozen?) core to the LessWrong community (not you). I wouldn’t say by a majority, but by an influential minority to say the least, and by more people than would be fair to call “just institution X” for any X, or “just person Y and their friends” for any Y. The pattern is strong enough that for me, pointing to governance as an approach to existential safety on LessWrong indeed feels fraught, because influential people (online or offline) will respond to the idea as “delusional” as Katja puts it. Being called delusional is stressful, and hence “fraught”.
@Oliver, the same goes for your way of referring to sentences you disagree with as “crazy”, such as here.
Generally speaking, on the LessWrong blog itself I’ve observed too many instances of people using insults in response to dissenting views on the epistemic health of the LessWrong community, and receiving applause and karma for doing so, for me to think that there’s not a pattern or problem here.
That’s not to say I think LessWrong has this problem worse than other online communities (i.e., using insults or treating people as ‘crazy’ or ‘delusional’ for dissenting or questioning the status quo); only that I think it’s a problem worth addressing, and a problem I see strongly at play on the topic of coordination and governance.
Just to clarify, the statements that I described as crazy were not statements you professed, but statements that you said I or “the LessWrong community” believe. I am not sure whether that got across (since like, in that context it doesn’t really make sense to say I described sentences I disagree with as crazy, since like, I don’t think you believe those sentences either, that’s why you are criticizing them).
It did not get accross! Interesting. Procedurally I still object to calling people’s arguments “crazy”, but selfishly I guess I’m glad they were not my arguments? At a meta level though I’m still concerned that LessWrong culture is too quick to write off views as “crazy”. Even the the “coordination is delusional”-type views that Katja highlights in her post do not seem “crazy” to me, more like misguided or scarred or something, in a way that warrants a closer look but not being called “crazy”.
Seems plausible that LessWrong culture is too quick to write off views as “crazy”, though I have a bunch of conflicting feeling here. Might be worth going into at some point.
I do think there is something pretty qualitatively different about calling a paraphrase or an ITT of my own opinions “crazy” than to call someone’s actual opinion crazy. In-general my sense is for reacting to paraphrases it’s less bad for the social dynamics to give an honest impression and more important to give a blunt evocative reaction, but I’ll still try to clarify more in the future when I am referring to the meat of my interlocutors opinion vs. their representation of my opinion.
Separately from my other reply explaining that you are not the source of what I’m complaining about here, I thought I’d add more color to explain why I think my assessment here is not “hyperbolic”. Specifically, regarding your claim that reducing AI x-risk through coordination is “not only fine to suggest, but completely uncontroversial accepted wisdom”, please see the OP. Perhaps you have not witnessed such conversations yourself, but I have been party to many of these:
In other words, I’ve seen people in AI governance being called or treated as “delusional” by loads of people (1-2 dozen?) core to the LessWrong community (not you). I wouldn’t say by a majority, but by an influential minority to say the least, and by more people than would be fair to call “just institution X” for any X, or “just person Y and their friends” for any Y. The pattern is strong enough that for me, pointing to governance as an approach to existential safety on LessWrong indeed feels fraught, because influential people (online or offline) will respond to the idea as “delusional” as Katja puts it. Being called delusional is stressful, and hence “fraught”.
@Oliver, the same goes for your way of referring to sentences you disagree with as “crazy”, such as here.
Generally speaking, on the LessWrong blog itself I’ve observed too many instances of people using insults in response to dissenting views on the epistemic health of the LessWrong community, and receiving applause and karma for doing so, for me to think that there’s not a pattern or problem here.
That’s not to say I think LessWrong has this problem worse than other online communities (i.e., using insults or treating people as ‘crazy’ or ‘delusional’ for dissenting or questioning the status quo); only that I think it’s a problem worth addressing, and a problem I see strongly at play on the topic of coordination and governance.
Just to clarify, the statements that I described as crazy were not statements you professed, but statements that you said I or “the LessWrong community” believe. I am not sure whether that got across (since like, in that context it doesn’t really make sense to say I described sentences I disagree with as crazy, since like, I don’t think you believe those sentences either, that’s why you are criticizing them).
It did not get accross! Interesting. Procedurally I still object to calling people’s arguments “crazy”, but selfishly I guess I’m glad they were not my arguments? At a meta level though I’m still concerned that LessWrong culture is too quick to write off views as “crazy”. Even the the “coordination is delusional”-type views that Katja highlights in her post do not seem “crazy” to me, more like misguided or scarred or something, in a way that warrants a closer look but not being called “crazy”.
Oops, yeah, sorry about that not coming across.
Seems plausible that LessWrong culture is too quick to write off views as “crazy”, though I have a bunch of conflicting feeling here. Might be worth going into at some point.
I do think there is something pretty qualitatively different about calling a paraphrase or an ITT of my own opinions “crazy” than to call someone’s actual opinion crazy. In-general my sense is for reacting to paraphrases it’s less bad for the social dynamics to give an honest impression and more important to give a blunt evocative reaction, but I’ll still try to clarify more in the future when I am referring to the meat of my interlocutors opinion vs. their representation of my opinion.