I want to make it clear that I bear you or Remmelt no ill will at all, and I apologise if my comment gave the opposite impression in any way.
For an actual argument regarding 1A & 1B, I suppose Iâd point towards David Deutschâs argument that predicting the future orbit of the planet Earth depends both on our projections of planetary physics (~rock solid) but also the future growth of human knowledge, including social knowledge (~basically impossible). So in the Mars/âEarth example, the issue of communication latency and physical differences of the planets would absolutely remain, but human knowledge and social/âsocietal dynamics is harder to predict.
On 2A & 3B, you are absolutely logically correct that arguments being hard to understand has no necessary correlation with their validity or soundness. My concern here is perhaps better phrased as that arguments being hard to parse does effect others understanding them. As you mention in 3B, your offer to write comes at a cost (and I appreciate the time you have already spent here), but so does trying to understand your perspective from my (and seemingly other EAs) point of view. Thereâs no free lunch here, increasing knowledge takes energy and effort! But just like you, I am flawed and human, and I canât increase knowledge in all areas at once.
And so, regarding 2B & 3A, I actually really respect Remmelt for diving in and immersing himself in your work, taking the time to communicate with you and understand your perspective, and coming to a conclusion that he doesnât want to. A better phrasing of my final paragraph was maybe suggesting Remmelt think about ways to facilitate an introduction to your style of thinking, to make it easier for those who do want to pursue your perspective, while allowing you to continue working on the issue that you think are most important without being concerned about my opinions or that of the EA Forum/âCommunity more generally (a more obvious statement never was written!).
In any case, I apologise if I came off as overly dismissive, and I sincerely wish both you and Remmelt well.
Thank you for the kind reply. And I am basically agreed with you. Communicating clearly is important, and I continue to commit to attempting, best as I can, to doing so, (assuming I also continue to have the personal energy and time and ability, etc).
Mostly, given my own nature, I have been preferring to attempt to enable other, better community communicators than myself, in âdirectâ type messaging to them personally, in ways designed for their specific understanding. Hence I am more often having colleagues (like Remmelt) indirectly post things on my behalf, in their own words, if they choose to do so, and even more preferably, as their own work (in the case of x-risk particularly) simply because that is more often a better way of getting necessary things out there than depending at all on my own reputation and/âor basic inability to promote my own work. This leaves me with more time and opportunity to explore more at the edges -- and although that occurs maybe also at the expense of others having easy access to the results, in some more understandable manner. Naturally, this only really works if my enablement of others is actually thatâthat they understand, at least sufficiently fully, the reasoning, so that they can adequately defend whatever points (again, on their choice to invest their time to do such a thing, based on their values, capabilities, etc), and thus, in turn, enable others to understand, etc. Usually, I am exploring concepts in places that most other people will ignore for various reasons, even though often these topics end up being very important overall.
In any case, I usually prefer to be less public, and posting on any sort of an open forum like this one is far from my usual habit. Remmelt, in particular, has elected to keep at least some association of my work with my person, mostly out of regard for my friendship, despite my continued concern that this may end up actually being disadvantageous to him personally.
This current caseâmy posting now, here, directly as myselfâis something of an exception, insofar as it had not really been my intention, even yesterday, not to even mention the larger long term concerns I have been having about the who Earth-Mars thing outside of a few private conversations. I had, in personal conversation, indicated at some time previouslyâmonths agoâthat I âshould document the argumentâ, and it had been something of a side conversation for a while. Yet somehow, it ended up getting mentioned explicitly on Twitter, by Remmelt, with a brief summary explanation of the logic and a few links to transcriptions of some of my direct voice messages to him. Now the Earth-Mars conclusion was, all of the sudden, getting some external attentionârather more than I was ready forâand I found myself this morning attempting to get at least a mostly better, somewhat fuller version of the reasoning down in writing, to replace the much more informal private voice messages, responding to specific questions, etc. Hence the linked post. It did not seem right that anyone else should attempt to defend a logic so recently given (in contrast with the AI/âAGI âsubstrate needsâ work, which has been discussed in detail at great length, written about extensively, etc).
So my linked post on âthe Mars colony problemâ is rather more quickly assembled, and not as well written, and as up to my own standards as I would normally like, and it consists of a bit of a jumble of different conversations all piled together, each of which contains some aspect of the basic through-line of the primary reasoning. Remmelt wrote the 1st part, and I added the rest. Even though my internal notes goes back years, and is well validated, something like this generally needs more than a three hours of my time to document even reasonably well. So, yes, my post needs to be re-written, and clarified, and made more accessible, to a wider range of people, and use less opaque language, and not so many tangents, and be easier to parse, etc. Hopefully I will have time for it in the next few weeks.
As such, because there has been less time for anyone other than myself to have sufficient exposure to the underlying logic, basis, and rationale, I am thus here posting a at least a partial defense of it, as myself, rather than attempting to be relying on anyone else to do it (because it is right to do, etc). Given its rather quickly written nature, not discussing all of the cases and conditions, etc, it will probably get more than its fair share of critiques on this (and other) forums, where it has ended up getting posted. At least I will get some feedback on what sort of things I will need to add to make it more defensible.
However, obviously, since there are probably far more people with critical views on each large forum like this, and also people who have more time to post than I have time to answer, there is a very good chance that I will not be able to make the reasoning as clear as I would like, to as many responders as I would need to, and thus that there will therefore be a lot of unaligned misunderstandings. Ie, in any âintellectual evaluativeâ public space, it is far more likely that negative reactive emotional judgements would occur, proportional to both the social scale and the stakesâwhich may seem surprising, but actually makes sense when considering the self definition and skillset(s) of that demographic.
Thus, all that I can ask in the interim is for people to please be at least a little patient and tolerant while we compose at least some better way to make it more easily understandable as to why it may be the case that we can actually predict some relevant aspects of what would very likely necessarily happen over larger scales/âvolumes of human social and technical process over longer time intervals, despite the otherwise appearance of this usually being impossible/âunreasonable.
Hi Forrest, thanks for replying
I want to make it clear that I bear you or Remmelt no ill will at all, and I apologise if my comment gave the opposite impression in any way.
For an actual argument regarding 1A & 1B, I suppose Iâd point towards David Deutschâs argument that predicting the future orbit of the planet Earth depends both on our projections of planetary physics (~rock solid) but also the future growth of human knowledge, including social knowledge (~basically impossible). So in the Mars/âEarth example, the issue of communication latency and physical differences of the planets would absolutely remain, but human knowledge and social/âsocietal dynamics is harder to predict.
On 2A & 3B, you are absolutely logically correct that arguments being hard to understand has no necessary correlation with their validity or soundness. My concern here is perhaps better phrased as that arguments being hard to parse does effect others understanding them. As you mention in 3B, your offer to write comes at a cost (and I appreciate the time you have already spent here), but so does trying to understand your perspective from my (and seemingly other EAs) point of view. Thereâs no free lunch here, increasing knowledge takes energy and effort! But just like you, I am flawed and human, and I canât increase knowledge in all areas at once.
And so, regarding 2B & 3A, I actually really respect Remmelt for diving in and immersing himself in your work, taking the time to communicate with you and understand your perspective, and coming to a conclusion that he doesnât want to. A better phrasing of my final paragraph was maybe suggesting Remmelt think about ways to facilitate an introduction to your style of thinking, to make it easier for those who do want to pursue your perspective, while allowing you to continue working on the issue that you think are most important without being concerned about my opinions or that of the EA Forum/âCommunity more generally (a more obvious statement never was written!).
In any case, I apologise if I came off as overly dismissive, and I sincerely wish both you and Remmelt well.
Hello JWS,
Thank you for the kind reply. And I am basically agreed with you. Communicating clearly is important, and I continue to commit to attempting, best as I can, to doing so, (assuming I also continue to have the personal energy and time and ability, etc).
Mostly, given my own nature, I have been preferring to attempt to enable other, better community communicators than myself, in âdirectâ type messaging to them personally, in ways designed for their specific understanding. Hence I am more often having colleagues (like Remmelt) indirectly post things on my behalf, in their own words, if they choose to do so, and even more preferably, as their own work (in the case of x-risk particularly) simply because that is more often a better way of getting necessary things out there than depending at all on my own reputation and/âor basic inability to promote my own work. This leaves me with more time and opportunity to explore more at the edges -- and although that occurs maybe also at the expense of others having easy access to the results, in some more understandable manner. Naturally, this only really works if my enablement of others is actually thatâthat they understand, at least sufficiently fully, the reasoning, so that they can adequately defend whatever points (again, on their choice to invest their time to do such a thing, based on their values, capabilities, etc), and thus, in turn, enable others to understand, etc. Usually, I am exploring concepts in places that most other people will ignore for various reasons, even though often these topics end up being very important overall.
In any case, I usually prefer to be less public, and posting on any sort of an open forum like this one is far from my usual habit. Remmelt, in particular, has elected to keep at least some association of my work with my person, mostly out of regard for my friendship, despite my continued concern that this may end up actually being disadvantageous to him personally.
This current caseâmy posting now, here, directly as myselfâis something of an exception, insofar as it had not really been my intention, even yesterday, not to even mention the larger long term concerns I have been having about the who Earth-Mars thing outside of a few private conversations. I had, in personal conversation, indicated at some time previouslyâmonths agoâthat I âshould document the argumentâ, and it had been something of a side conversation for a while. Yet somehow, it ended up getting mentioned explicitly on Twitter, by Remmelt, with a brief summary explanation of the logic and a few links to transcriptions of some of my direct voice messages to him. Now the Earth-Mars conclusion was, all of the sudden, getting some external attentionârather more than I was ready forâand I found myself this morning attempting to get at least a mostly better, somewhat fuller version of the reasoning down in writing, to replace the much more informal private voice messages, responding to specific questions, etc. Hence the linked post. It did not seem right that anyone else should attempt to defend a logic so recently given (in contrast with the AI/âAGI âsubstrate needsâ work, which has been discussed in detail at great length, written about extensively, etc).
So my linked post on âthe Mars colony problemâ is rather more quickly assembled, and not as well written, and as up to my own standards as I would normally like, and it consists of a bit of a jumble of different conversations all piled together, each of which contains some aspect of the basic through-line of the primary reasoning. Remmelt wrote the 1st part, and I added the rest. Even though my internal notes goes back years, and is well validated, something like this generally needs more than a three hours of my time to document even reasonably well. So, yes, my post needs to be re-written, and clarified, and made more accessible, to a wider range of people, and use less opaque language, and not so many tangents, and be easier to parse, etc. Hopefully I will have time for it in the next few weeks.
As such, because there has been less time for anyone other than myself to have sufficient exposure to the underlying logic, basis, and rationale, I am thus here posting a at least a partial defense of it, as myself, rather than attempting to be relying on anyone else to do it (because it is right to do, etc). Given its rather quickly written nature, not discussing all of the cases and conditions, etc, it will probably get more than its fair share of critiques on this (and other) forums, where it has ended up getting posted. At least I will get some feedback on what sort of things I will need to add to make it more defensible.
However, obviously, since there are probably far more people with critical views on each large forum like this, and also people who have more time to post than I have time to answer, there is a very good chance that I will not be able to make the reasoning as clear as I would like, to as many responders as I would need to, and thus that there will therefore be a lot of unaligned misunderstandings. Ie, in any âintellectual evaluativeâ public space, it is far more likely that negative reactive emotional judgements would occur, proportional to both the social scale and the stakesâwhich may seem surprising, but actually makes sense when considering the self definition and skillset(s) of that demographic.
Thus, all that I can ask in the interim is for people to please be at least a little patient and tolerant while we compose at least some better way to make it more easily understandable as to why it may be the case that we can actually predict some relevant aspects of what would very likely necessarily happen over larger scales/âvolumes of human social and technical process over longer time intervals, despite the otherwise appearance of this usually being impossible/âunreasonable.
Thank you.