I don’t think I personally could have written it; if others think they could have, I’d genuinely be interested to hear them brag, even if they can’t prove it.
Maybe I’m beyond hopeless: I don’t even understand the brag inherent in having written it. He keeps talking about coming up with this stuff “from the null string”, but… Isn’t 90% of this post published somewhere else? If someone else had written it wouldn’t he just accuse them of not being able to write it without reading {X}, or something from someone else who read {X}? At present this is mostly a test of recall.
Edit: Not to say I could’ve done even that, just that I expect someone else could have.
The post honestly slightly decreases my confidence in EY’s social assessment capabilities. (I say slightly because of past criticism I’ve had along similar lines). [note here that being good/bad at social assessment is not necessarily correlated to being good/bad at other domains, so like, I don’t see that as taking away from his extremely valid criticism of common “simple solutions” to alignment (which I’ve definitely been guilty of myself). Please don’t read this as denigrating Eliezer’s general intellect or work as a whole.] As you said, the post doesn’t seem incredibly original, and even if it is and we’re both totally missing that aspect, the fact that we’re missing it implies it isn’t getting across the intended message as effectively as it could. Ultimately, I think if I was in Eliezer’s position, there are a very large number of alternative explanations I’d give higher probability to than assuming that there is nobody in the world as competent as I am.
Maybe I’m beyond hopeless: I don’t even understand the brag inherent in having written it. He keeps talking about coming up with this stuff “from the null string”, but… Isn’t 90% of this post published somewhere else? If someone else had written it wouldn’t he just accuse them of not being able to write it without reading {X}, or something from someone else who read {X}? At present this is mostly a test of recall.
Edit: Not to say I could’ve done even that, just that I expect someone else could have.
The post honestly slightly decreases my confidence in EY’s social assessment capabilities. (I say slightly because of past criticism I’ve had along similar lines). [note here that being good/bad at social assessment is not necessarily correlated to being good/bad at other domains, so like, I don’t see that as taking away from his extremely valid criticism of common “simple solutions” to alignment (which I’ve definitely been guilty of myself). Please don’t read this as denigrating Eliezer’s general intellect or work as a whole.] As you said, the post doesn’t seem incredibly original, and even if it is and we’re both totally missing that aspect, the fact that we’re missing it implies it isn’t getting across the intended message as effectively as it could. Ultimately, I think if I was in Eliezer’s position, there are a very large number of alternative explanations I’d give higher probability to than assuming that there is nobody in the world as competent as I am.