I was skeptical of the claim that no one was “really” being kept ignorant. If you’re sufficiently clever and careful and you remember how language worked when Airstrip One was still Britain, then you can still think, internally, and express yourself as best you can in Newspeak. But a culture in which Newspeak is mandatory, and all of Oceania’s best philosophers have clever arguments for why Newspeak doesn’t distort people’s beliefs doesn’t seem like a culture that could solve AI alignment.
Hm. Is it a crux for you if language retains the categories of “transwoman” and “cis woman” in addition to (now corrupted, in your view) general category of “woman”?
I guess not, but I’m not totally sure what your reason for why not would be.
...or maybe you’re mainly like “it’s fucked up that this particular empirical question propagated so far back into our epistemology that it caused Scott and Eliezer to get a general philosophical question wrong.”
That does seem to me like the most concerning thing about this whole situation, if that is indeed what happened.
Hm. Is it a crux for you if language retains the categories of “transwoman” and “cis woman” in addition to (now corrupted, in your view) general category of “woman”?
I guess not, but I’m not totally sure what your reason for why not would be.
...or maybe you’re mainly like “it’s fucked up that this particular empirical question propagated so far back into our epistemology that it caused Scott and Eliezer to get a general philosophical question wrong.”
That does seem to me like the most concerning thing about this whole situation, if that is indeed what happened.