I think we have failed, thus far. I’m sad about that. When I began posting in 2018, I assumed that the community was careful and trustworthy. Not easily would undeserved connotations sneak into our work and discourse. I no longer believe that and no longer hold that trust.
I empathize with this, and have complained similarly (e.g. here).
I have also been trying to figure out why I feel quite a strong urge to push back on posts like this one. E.g. in this case I do in fact agree that only a handful of people actually understand AI risk arguments well enough to avoid falling into “suggestive names” traps. But I think there’s a kind of weak man effect where if you point out enough examples of people making these mistakes, it discredits even those people who avoid the trap.
Maybe another way of saying this: of course most people are wrong about a bunch of this stuff. But the jump from that to claiming the community or field has failed isn’t a valid one, because the success of a field is much more dependent on max performance than mean performance.
I empathize with this, and have complained similarly (e.g. here).
I have also been trying to figure out why I feel quite a strong urge to push back on posts like this one. E.g. in this case I do in fact agree that only a handful of people actually understand AI risk arguments well enough to avoid falling into “suggestive names” traps. But I think there’s a kind of weak man effect where if you point out enough examples of people making these mistakes, it discredits even those people who avoid the trap.
Maybe another way of saying this: of course most people are wrong about a bunch of this stuff. But the jump from that to claiming the community or field has failed isn’t a valid one, because the success of a field is much more dependent on max performance than mean performance.