Person X’s activity is more important than that of most other people.
Person X believes their activity is more important than that of most other people.
Person X suffers from delusions of grandeur.
Person X believes that their activity is more important than all other people, and that no other people can do it.
Person X also believes that only this project is likely to save the world.
Person X also believes that FAI will save the world on all axes, including political and biological.
--JRM
Not that many will care, but I should get a brief appearance on Dateline NBC Friday, Aug. 20, at 10 p.m. Eastern/Pacific. A case I prosecuted is getting the Dateline treatment.
Elderly atheist farmer dead; his friend the popular preacher’s the suspect.
--JRM
Not speaking for multi, but, in any x-risk item (blowing up asteroids, stabilizing nuclear powers, global warming, catastrophic viral outbreak, climate change of whatever sort, FAI, whatever) for those working on the problem, there are degrees of realism:
“I am working on a project that may have massive effect on future society. While the chance that I specifically am a key person on the project are remote, given the fine minds at (Google/CDC/CIA/whatever), I still might be, and that’s worth doing.”—Probably sane, even if misguided.
“I am working on a project that may have massive effect on future society. I am the greatest mind in the field. Still, many other smart people are involved. The specific risk I am worried about may or not occur, but efforts to prevent its occurrence are valuable. There is some real possibility that I will the critical person on the project.”—Possibly sane, even if misguided.
“I am working on a project that will save a near-infinite number of universes. In all likelihood, only I can achieve it. All of the people—even people perceived as having better credentials, intelligence, and ability—cannot do what I am doing. All critics of me are either ignorant, stupid, or irrational. If I die, the chance of multiverse collapse is radically increased; no one can do what I do. I don’t care if other people view this as crazy, because they’re crazy if they don’t believe me.”—Clinical diagnosis.
You’re doing direct, substantial harm to your cause, because you and your views appear irrational. Those who hear about SIAI as the lead dog in this effort who are smart, have money, and are connected, will mostly conclude that this effort must not be worth anything.
I believe you had some language for Roko on the wisdom of damaging the cause in order to show off how smart you are.
I’m a little uncomfortable with the heat of my comment here, but other efforts have not been read the way I intended them by you (Others appeared to understand.) I am hopeful this is clear—and let me once again clarify that I had these views before multi’s post. Before. Don’t blame him again; blame me.
I’d like existential risk generally to be better received. In my opinion—and I may be wrong—you’re actively hurting the cause.
--JRM
Gosh, I find this all quite cryptic.
Suppose I, as Lord Chief Prosecutor of the Heathens say:
All heathens should be jailed.
Mentally handicapped Joe is a heathen; he barely understands that there are people, much less the One True God.
One of my opponents says I want Joe jailed. I have not actually uttered that I want Joe jailed, and it would be a soldier against me if I had, because that’s an unpopular position. This is a mark of a political argument gone wrong?
I’m trying to find another logical conclusion to XiXiDu’s cited statements (or a raft of others in the same vein.) Is there one I don’t see? Is it just that you’re probably the most important entity in history, but, you know, maybe not? Is it that there’s only a 5% chance that you’re the most important person in human history?
I have not argued that you should not say these things, BTW. I have argued that you probably should not think them, because they are very unlikely to be true.
Um, I wasn’t basing my conclusion on multifoliaterose’s statements. I had made the Zaphod Beeblebrox analogy due to the statements you personally have made. I had considered doing an open thread comment on this very thing.
Which of these statements do you reject?:
FAI is the most important project on earth, right now, and probably ever.
FAI may be the difference between a doomed multiverse of [very large number] of sentient beings. No project in human history is of greater importance.
You are the most likely person—and SIAI the most likely agency, because of you—to accomplish saving the multiverse.
Number 4 is unnecessary for your being the most important person on earth, but:
People who disagree with you are either stupid or ignorant. If only they had read the sequences, then they would agree with you. Unless they were stupid.
And then you’ve blamed multi for this. He is trying to help an important cause; both multifoliaterose and XiXiDu are, in my opinion, acting in a manner they believe will help the existential risk cause.
And your final statement, that multifoliaterose is damaging an important cause’s PR appears entirely deaf to multi’s post. He’s trying to help the cause—he and XiXiDu are orders of magnitude more sympathetic to the cause of non-war existential risk than just about anyone. You appear to have conflated “Eliezer Yudkowsky,” with “AI existential risk.”
Again.
I might be wrong about my interpretation—but I don’t think I am. If I am wrong, other very smart people who want to view you favorably have done similar things. Maybe the flaw isn’t in the collective ignorance and stupidity in other people. Just a thought.
--JRM
Solid, bold post.
Eliezer’s comments on his personal importance to humanity remind me of the Total Perspective Device from Hitchhiker’s. Everyone who gets perspective from the TPD goes mad; Zaphod Beeblebrox goes in and finds out he’s the most important person in human history.
Eliezer’s saying he’s Zaphod Beeblebrox. Maybe he is, but I’m betting heavily against that for the reasons outlined in the post. I expect AI progress of all sorts to come from people who are able to dedicate long, high-productivity hours to the cause, and who don’t believe that they and only they can accomplish the task.
I also don’t care if the statements are social naivete or not; I think the statements that indicate that he is the most important person in human history—and that seems to me to be what he’s saying—are so seriously mistaken, and made with such a high confidence level, as to massively reduce my estimated likelihood that SIAI is going to be productive at all.
And that’s a good thing. Throwing money into a seriously suboptimal project is a bad idea. SIAI may be good at getting out the word of existential risk (and I do think existential risk is serious, under-discussed business), but the indicators are that it’s not going to solve it. I won’t give to SIAI if Eliezer stops saying these things, because it appears he’ll still be thinking those things.
I expect AI progress to come incrementally, BTW—I don’t expect the Foomination. And I expect it to come from Google or someone similar; a large group of really smart, really hard-working people.
I could be wrong.
--JRM
“How could he turn down a chance, however slight, to debate Christian theology after returning from the dead?”
My answer is: At some point, “however slight” is “too slight.” I stand by my statement. Your initial statement implies that any non-zero chance is enough; that’s not a proper risk analysis.
If a chance is sufficiently slight, it’s not worth putting a substantial amount of money into. You’re moving into Pascal’s Wager territory.
It’s non-arbitrary, but neither is it precise. 100% is clearly too high, and 10% is clearly too low.
And since I started calling it The 40% Rule fifteen years ago or thereabout, a number of my friends and acquaintances have embraced the rule in this incarnation. Obviously, some things are unquantifiable and the specific number has rather limited application. But people like it at this number. That counts for something—and it gets the message across in a way that other formulations don’t.
Some are nonplussed by the rule, but the vigor of support by some supporters gives me some thought that I picked a number people like. Since I never tried another number, I could be wrong—but I don’t think I am.
--JRM
Criminal Law: Yes to Level 2. Yes to teaching a layperson. It would take a while, for sure, but it’s doable. Some of the work requires an understanding of a different lifestyle; if you can’t see the potential issues with prosecuting a robbery by a prostitute and her armed male friend, or you can’t predict that a domestic violence victim will have a non-credible recantation, you’ll need some other education.
I’ve done a lot of instruction in this field. It is common for instruction not to take until there’s other experience in the field which helps things join up.
Bridge: Yes to Level 2. Possibly to teaching a layperson. The ability to play bridge well is correlated heavily to intelligence, but it also correlates to a certain zeal for winning. I have taught one person to play very well indeed, but that may not be replicable, and took years. (On an aside, I am very likely the world’s foremost expert on online bridge cheating; teaching cheating prevention would require teaching bridge first.)
Teaching requires more than reasonable intelligence on the part of the teachee. Some people who are very intelligent are ineducable. (Many of these are violators of my 40% rule: You are allowed to think you are 40% smarter/faster/stronger/better than you are. After that, it’s obnoxious.) Some people are not interested in learning a given subject. Some people will not overcome preset biases. Some people have high aptitudes in some areas and little aptitude in others (though intelligence strongly tends to spill over.)
Anyway, I’m interested in the article. My penultimate effort to explain something to many people—Bayes’ Theorem to lawyers—was a moderate failure; my last effort to explain something less mathy to a crowd was a substantial success. (My last experience in explaining something, with assistance, to 12 people was a complete failure.)
--JRM
Proceed from 0 to x, in increments of 1, (where x =whatever) If divisible by 3, remainder 0, associate fizz with number If divisible by 5, remainder 0, associate buzz with number, Make ordered list from o to x, of numbers associated with fizz OR buzz For numbers associated with fizz NOT buzz, append fizz For numbers associated with buzz NOT fizz, append fizz For numbers associated with fizz AND buzz, append fizzbuzz
I don’t know anything about FizzBuzz, but your program generates no buzzes and lots of fizzes (appending fizz to numbers associated only with fizz or buzz.) This is not a particularly compelling demonstration of your point that it should be easy.
(I’m not a programmer, at least not professionally. The last serious program I wrote was 23 years ago in Fortran.)
Suggestion 1 seems pretty cool, but it has practical downsides. You also can’t watch the jury as an attorney; sometimes those reactions are helpful in fact-giving.
The jury can get readback or playback in criminal trials with redactions for disallowed questions and testimony. So that’s already in place—jurors frequently ask for readback.
Suggestion 2 is allowed in California, a relatively new development, and it’s done exactly like this. Trial judges can allow or disallow such questioning. In short trials (1-3 days), I’m not sure if there’s a substantial benefit, but I tend to like them. In long trials, I think they are great and work great.
Great question. Here are my answers:
Protect society by preventing and deterring crime, both in the specific case of the person being prosecuted and others.
Preventing crime includes doing so by preventing bad actors from being around other people who they could kill or maim or whatever other bad thing they like to do.
When possible, make victims whole.
I don’t believe in punishment as valid, but making victims happier has substantial value. So from a societal point of view, I want punishment to have a specific purpose; part of that purpose may be giving victims a sense of justice.
“Ensuring laws are implemented,” strikes me as a second-order question; we want laws to be implemented fairly and equitably to achieve the above goals. Uniform sentencing for similarly-situated bad actors is something that accomplishes crime prevention.
Make more total utilons for society.
(I’m a prosecutor; that doesn’t mean I’m right about any of this.)
Suppose that Alice and Yelena, on opposite ends of town, drive home drunk from >the bar, and both dazedly speed through a red light, unaware of their surroundings. >Yelena gets through nonetheless, but Alice hits a young pedestrian, killing him >instantly. Alice is liable to be tried for manslaughter or some similar charge; >Yelena, if she is caught, will only receive the drunk driving charge and lose her >license.
This is a fairly classic problem, well-presented. There’s a credible argument to be made for treating them the same, but I don’t think it’s a utilitarian argument.
For these purposes, we can assume that the driving was within normal DUI parameters. The situation gets much easier for people going the wrong way on the freeway, or going 115 on surface streets; they’re murderers. It’s also easy to justify very, very long sentences for very bad driving that kills.
So, the question is why this is treated this way, for which we have an answer:
The law needs to crack down harder when there are actual victims, in order to >provide the victims and families a sense of justice done.
Yep, that. There’s been more harm done.
This is understandable, but surely if we accept this argument, we could >nonetheless satisfy the concerns above by punishing the morally lucky more >severely, not punishing the morally unlucky less severely. This could result in far too many serious, high-level trials. This might be true as far as it goes; however, enforcing strong sentences on the >morally lucky would certainly provide a stronger deterrent, which would provide a >countervailing tendency to the above.
Sure, prison time (as opposed to jail time) for every person who gets a DUI would be a deterrent. But it’s not a good use of societal resources. You’re putting teachable people in prison, useful people. And you don’t have the gain of victims’ families coming in exchange for that.
There’s real utility in having some sense of justice to the family, friends, and community when people are extinguished.
I’d further note that the driving matters for sentencing. If you’re at a .10% BA (and you shouldn’t be; for a 170-pound guy, that’s five or six beers in an hour) and you change lanes without looking and spin out the car next to yours, killing the driver, you can expect things to go better than if you’re at a .22% and run a light in a school zone at 80 and kill someone.
The sentencing will be far less—but still different—in those situations if you don’t hit and injure anyone; the first guy gets pulled over with no collision, and in my jurisdiction, he’ll get 2 days jail (fake jail—plenty of ways to avoid) and fines and fees of a little over $2K. The second driving pattern is going to get you 90 days in jail, at least. (Recidivists get more.)
Let me add another another wrinkle: Megan, at the same bar with Alice and Yelena, drives perpendicular to the two and hits another pedestrian. Alice’s victim’s family want Alice to be incarcerated forever, while Megan’s victim’s family wants her to get off with a warning, and none-too-stern a warning at that. I think this should matter some, though Megan’s got to do some significant time, and Alice isn’t going to get incarcerated forever.
On the jury issue, I’m not sure there’s a better way, but the only ways I know from experience are judges and juries. Juries are not suckers; the joining of 12 is often better than one really smart person. The jury system works pretty well; I’ve been burned (on a couple of occasions severely) by jurors wandering off the reservation, but for the most part, juries do a very good job. Judges usually do a good job, too.
Some LW’ers would doubtless make excellent jurors, but some would not; Judge Judy Sheindlin gets most of her cases right because she reads people well and she has a long history of hearing the same lies, which she catches very quickly. Lack of socialization skills may lead to trouble as a juror. Some of the proposals on this thread would lead to substantially less accurate verdicts; not everyone is going to get excited about math.
The problem with leaving it with the pros is that some degree of corruption would be inevitable. There would be more efforts to go toward particular fact-finders. (The somewhat parallel efforts to screen juries with challenges of various sorts are different—jurors aren’t well-known to the parties—and are, IMO, a very good idea; people who criticize peremptory challenges are seldom people intimately familiar with the system.)
The current system works surprisingly well; outlier-bad results get a lot more press than the many good result. Remember, the McMartins were acquitted and Scott Peterson got convicted.
That’s not to say bad results don’t occur, and certainly not to say that questing for improvements—even, or perhaps especially, marginal, incremental improvements—isn’t a very good thing.
Finally, one statement you make, “the evidence against Truscott being entirely circumstantial,” implying that such evidence must therefore be weak, is mistaken as a matter of logic. Circumstantial evidence can be far more devastating than direct eyewitness evidence. I’ve prosecuted plenty of circumstantial evidence cases (one of which got some national press), and if you think about it, you’ll see that such evidence can be crushing. Fingerprints are circumstantial evidence. Standing in a pool of blood with the victim at your feet and a gun in your hand is going to cause people to think you shot the victim. And rightly so.
And if you’re lying about things, people are going to suspect of doing so for a reason. And rightly so.
[I speak for me. I’m a prosecutor, but I don’t speak for my office.]
Wow. I get involved in interesting conversations with some frequency; I don’t think it’s because I avoid verification or am too credulous. I think your explanations are a false dichotomy.
First, a lot of conversations involve expertise that I don’t have, and I find interesting. Jobs that are not mine are often interesting; I usually try to ask about what things about someone else’s job are fun or interesting.
I’m always happy to talk about my job; being a prosecutor means you’ve got a storehouse of stories.
In conversations where I am relatively equally situated with my counterpart as far as knowledge, it’s pretty easy to disagree while having a great conversation. I met a guy in September of ’08 after internet discussions on a topic unrelated to politics, and we ended up discussing Biden-Palin for two hours. It was a really fantastic conversation, and we voted opposite ways in the election.
We did this because we conceded points that were true, and we weren’t on The Only Right Team of Properness; we were talking about ideas and facts that we mostly both knew. We also didn’t have our head in the sand. And when one of us gave a factual statement outside the others’ knowledge, the other tended to accept it (I told the story of the missing pallets of hundred dollar bills, which he hadn’t heard.)
Now, I’ve certainly corrected false statements of fact in conversation (ranging in tone from, “Are you sure about that?” to “That’s verifiably false.”) I try not to make false statements of fact, but I have been wrong, and I make it a point to admit wrongness when I’m wrong. (In some circles, given my general propensity for being right and my assertion of a general propensity for being right, this leads to much rejoicing, on the order of Sir Robin’s minstrels getting eaten.)
But there’s something really fun about electric conversations that I think you’re missing here. Fun and funny conversations.… I couldn’t live well without them. And I’m not too credulous. And I take other people—well, many other people—seriously.
--JRM
Hmmm.
One of the hallmarks of unproductive arguments is that they keep going. Once almost everything has been said, and you don’t believe you’ll be convinced by the other person’s position, it seems like being able to let it go is a good thing.
When things are going badly, taking it private seems unlikely to assist.
Slightly related, some general rules for internet debates which I think have merit:
Arguments from Authority are only OK in limited circumstances—if the expertise you’re claiming is clearly outside the expertise on the board. If it’s a rationality board and the discussion goes to table tennis rules or online bridge cheating, actual expertise is useful. Otherwise, don’t care.
No ad hominem attacks. It doesn’t matter if your opposite-side debater hurls puppies into wood chippers. (Well, it matters, but not to the argument.)
Let it go. You don’t need the last word. If the others can’t tell… well, they probably can. If it’s a clear personal attack on you, that’s harder—I recommend an explicit statement that further lack of participation isn’t a concession. But if you have two people who need the last word, that’s quagmire city.
If you might have been wrong, admit it. LW has a substantial number of people who follow this; it makes the debates much better. I generally consider silence after some opposing point to be disagreement, despite the fact that many people in many places only shut up after their position has been shown to be clearly mistaken.
No troll-answering. Ever.
Finally, I agree with Academian that the discussion quality here is very good. Few people violate basic standards.
The usefulness may not reduce the sincerity of the liking, but it certainly reduces the depth. If Steve gives me stuff, and I like him because of that usefulness, and then Steve stops giving me stuff… JRM no more like Steve. Viewing friendships as exchanges isn’t evil or wrong, but if it’s usefulness that’s the prime driver, that’s a different sort of friendship than one I really want.
There are qualities that are troublesome that aren’t physically dangerous. Affiliating yourself mentally with people who don’t care so much about the truth is likely to rub off. I’d like to think of myself as a particularly resilient and incorruptible person, but there’s a certain necessary diligence to retain that self-view (which I believe is related to actual resilience and incorruptibility.)
On liking people not being counterproductive to changing behaviors: You might be right. I was considering the (perhaps) increased willingness to tolerate troublesome behavior and the reward function of friendships coming to those who are troublesome in some serious way. It may depend on the people involved. Or I might just be wrong.
I think when we look at petty problems to determine dislikes (She likes the mundane and stupid American Idol, while I like the brilliant and intellectual Top Chef), that is indeed counterproductive. But most of the limited number of people I take an active dislike to.… I don’t want to try to be their friends. At all. And I think the world is a better place for my lack of trying.
I think the more serious and common error is to put up with malfeasing people past the point it’s reasonable. I also think people tend to trust statements from others overmuch, even when that person has a track record of untrustworthiness. For most, a post on “Staying Away From Hazardous Humans You Like,” would be more beneficial.
--JRM
I’m not sure I want to like more people all that much.
I have a generally cheerful disposition, and I have no trouble with civility toward those I dislike. There have been people who clearly disliked me whom I thought well of nonetheless; I’ve met me, and I recognize this particular combination of attributes isn’t to everyone’s taste.
But I’ve never had a situation where I wanted to make an effort to like someone who I didn’t like. I think the goals here are typically anti-productive, assuming reasonable socialization skills and some pre-existing friends.
It is useful to like people. For one thing, if you have to be around them, liking >them makes this far more pleasant. For another, well, they can often tell, and if >they know you to like them this will often be instrumentally useful to you.
Let’s take a look at these advantages:
More pleasant. Yes, true. Point well taken.
Puppeteering. OK, maybe a bit too harsh, but “instrumentally useful,” sounds like that. I certainly want people to do lots of things, but I don’t usually trade in on personal relationships quite that way.
Disadvantages:
Personal rot. There are qualities in people that it is unwise to overlook, because the cognitive dissonance is so strong. “He’s fun, except for the light stealing,” is not going to lead to healthy thinking. This is inevitably corrupting.
If you’re admiring something that’s interesting but maybe not admirable, you’re changing yourself in some way that might not be good.
Failure to change people a little tiny bit. Yeah, your view toward the other human is unlikely to change them a lot if they’re adults, because people are bad at learning or attempting to learn new modes of socialization. (This is doubtless why Alicorn’s posts on these topics are popular; the deliberate reinvention and aiming of self is both impressive and interesting. And quite rare.) But a little change might be brought about through social cues that recreational puppy-stomping is frowned on.
A lot of effort that might be spent better elsewhere. Overall effort’s not fixed, so you might gain extra effort points by doing this, but there’s still got to be a net loss.
Premise rejection:
People know more about themselves than you do. As far as experiences, yes, As far as who they are and what they are good at… maybe not.
Anyway, it’s a very interesting post, much as I think it’s a bad idea. I note that I was and remain a big fan of niceness in most circumstances and a big fan of the niceness post linked at the top of this one. I think this is dangerous step past that.
On a side note, I apologize for failing to honor the tone norm in this thread and addressing the post. For whatever reason, I found the post more interesting than the comment thread, which I gather was moved over from Gawker.
--JRM
It’s illegal for the prosecution or defense to do so in court. Apologies for the lack of context.
The 1971 paper that cites the .70-.74 numbers causes me to believe the people who participated were unbelievably bad at quantation, or that the flaws pointed out in 2006 paper of the 1971 paper are sufficient to destroy the value of that finding, or that this is one of many studies with fatal flaws. I expect there are very few jurors indeed who would convict with a belief that the defendant was 25% to be innocent.
I wonder if quantation interferes with analysis for some large group of people? Perhaps just the mention of math interferes with efficient analysis. I don’t know; I can say that in math- or physics-intensive cases, both sides try to simplify for the jury.
In fact, we have some types of cases with fact patterns that give us fairly narrow confidence ranges; if there’s a case where I’m 75% certain the guy did it, and no likely evidence or investigation will improve that number, that’s either not issued, or if that state has been reached post-issuance, the case is dismissed.
Hey, I’ll do the survey on me:
A: Yes. Of course, if I do go to Vegas soon, that’s a fait accompli (I bet on the Padres to win the NL and the Reds to win the World Series, among other bets.)
But in general, yes. I expect to win on the bets I place. I go to Las Vegas with my wife to play in the sun and see shows and enjoy the vibe, but I go one week a year by myself to win cash money.
B. If I come back a loser, the experience can still be OK. But I’m betting sports and playing poker, and I expect to win, so it’s not quite so fun to lose. That said, a light gambling win—not enough to pay for the hotel, say—leaving me down considering expenses gives me enough hedons to incentivize coming back.
--JRM