Across all of this my impression is that, just like with Torres, there was little to no direct pushback
Strongly agree. I think the TESCREAL/e-acc movements badly mischaracterise the EA community with extremely poor, unsubstantiated arguments, but there doesn’t seem to be much response to this from the EA side.
I think this is very much linked to playing a strong ‘inside game’ to access the halls of power and no ‘outside game’ to gain legitimacy for that use of power
What does this refer to? I’m not familiar.
Other thoughts on this:
Publicly, the quietness from the EA side in response to TESCREAL/e-acc/etc. allegations is harming the community’s image and what it stands for. But ‘winning’ the memetic war is important. If not, then the world outside EA—which has many smart, influential people—ends up seeing the community as a doomer cult (in the case of AI safety) or assigns some equally damaging label that lets them quickly dismiss many of the arguments being made.
I think this is a case where the the epistemic standards of the EA community work against it. Rigorous analysis, expressing second/third-order considerations, etc. are seen as the norm for most writing on the forum. However, in places such as Twitter, these sorts of analyses aren’t ‘memetically fit’ [1].
So, I think we’re in need of more pieces like the Time essay on Pausing AI—a no-punches-pulled sort of piece that gets across the seriousness of what we’re claiming. I’d like to see more Twitter threads and op-ed’s that dismantle claims like “advancements in AI have solved it’s black-box nature”, ones that don’t let clearly false claims like this see the light of day in serious public discourse.
Don’t get me wrong—epistemically rigorous work is great. But when responding to TESCREAL/e-acc ‘critiques’ that continuously hit below the belt, other tactics may be better.
Strongly agree. I think the TESCREAL/e-acc movements badly mischaracterise the EA community with extremely poor, unsubstantiated arguments, but there doesn’t seem to be much response to this from the EA side.
What does this refer to? I’m not familiar.
Other thoughts on this:
Publicly, the quietness from the EA side in response to TESCREAL/e-acc/etc. allegations is harming the community’s image and what it stands for. But ‘winning’ the memetic war is important. If not, then the world outside EA—which has many smart, influential people—ends up seeing the community as a doomer cult (in the case of AI safety) or assigns some equally damaging label that lets them quickly dismiss many of the arguments being made.
I think this is a case where the the epistemic standards of the EA community work against it. Rigorous analysis, expressing second/third-order considerations, etc. are seen as the norm for most writing on the forum. However, in places such as Twitter, these sorts of analyses aren’t ‘memetically fit’ [1].
So, I think we’re in need of more pieces like the Time essay on Pausing AI—a no-punches-pulled sort of piece that gets across the seriousness of what we’re claiming. I’d like to see more Twitter threads and op-ed’s that dismantle claims like “advancements in AI have solved it’s black-box nature”, ones that don’t let clearly false claims like this see the light of day in serious public discourse.
Don’t get me wrong—epistemically rigorous work is great. But when responding to TESCREAL/e-acc ‘critiques’ that continuously hit below the belt, other tactics may be better.