Sometimes when I re-read Yudkowsky’s older writings I am still comfortable with the model and conclusion, but the evidence seems less solid than on first reading. In this post, Matthew Barnett poses problems for the evidence from Japan in Yudkowsky’s Inadequacy and Modesty. Broadly he claims that Haruhiko Kuroda’s policy was not as starkly beneficial as Yudkowsky claims, although he doesn’t claim the policy was a mistake.
LessWrong doesn’t have a great system for handling (alleged) flaws in older posts. Higher rated posts have become more visible with the “enriched” feed, which is good, but there isn’t an active mechanism for revising them in the face of critiques. In this case the author is trying to make our extinction more dignified and revisiting Japan’s economy in 2013 isn’t an optimal use of time. In general, authors shouldn’t feel that posting to LessWrong obliges them to defend their writings in detail years or decades later.
I don’t know that Barnett’s critique is important enough to warrant a correction or a footnote. But it makes me wish for an editor or librarian to make that judgment, or for someone to make a second edition, or some other way that I could recommend “Read the Sequences” without disclaimers.
Sometimes when I re-read Yudkowsky’s older writings I am still comfortable with the model and conclusion, but the evidence seems less solid than on first reading. In this post, Matthew Barnett poses problems for the evidence from Japan in Yudkowsky’s Inadequacy and Modesty. Broadly he claims that Haruhiko Kuroda’s policy was not as starkly beneficial as Yudkowsky claims, although he doesn’t claim the policy was a mistake.
LessWrong doesn’t have a great system for handling (alleged) flaws in older posts. Higher rated posts have become more visible with the “enriched” feed, which is good, but there isn’t an active mechanism for revising them in the face of critiques. In this case the author is trying to make our extinction more dignified and revisiting Japan’s economy in 2013 isn’t an optimal use of time. In general, authors shouldn’t feel that posting to LessWrong obliges them to defend their writings in detail years or decades later.
I don’t know that Barnett’s critique is important enough to warrant a correction or a footnote. But it makes me wish for an editor or librarian to make that judgment, or for someone to make a second edition, or some other way that I could recommend “Read the Sequences” without disclaimers.