That would be a valid reply if I had said it’s all about priors. All I said was that I think priors make up a significant implicit source of the disagreement – as suggested by some people thinking 5% risk of doom seems “high” and me thinking/reacting with “you wouldn’t be saying that if you had anything close to my priors.”
Or maybe what I mean is stronger than “priors.” “Differences in underlying worldviews” seems like the better description. Specifically, the worldview I identify more with, which I think many EAs don’t share, is something like “The Yudkowskian worldview where the world is insane, most institutions are incompetent, Inadequate Equilibria is a big deal, etc.” And that probably affects things like whether we anchor way below 50% or above 50% on what the risks should be that the culmination of accelerating technological progress will go well or not.
In general I’m skeptical of arguments of disagreement which reduce things to differing priors. It’s just not physically or predictively correct, and it feels nice because now you no longer have an epistemological duty to go and see why relevant people have differing opinions.
That’s misdescribing the scope of my point and drawing inappropriate inferences. Last time I made an object-level argument about AI misalignment risk was just 3h before your comment. (Not sure it’s particularly intelligible, but the point is, I’m trying! :) ) So, evidently, I agree that a lot of the discussion should be held at a deeper level than the one of priors/general worldviews.
Quintin has lots of information, I have lots of information, so if we were both acting optimally according to differing priors, our opinions likely would have converged.
I’m a fan of Shard theory and some of the considerations behind it have already updated me towards a lower chance of doom than I had before starting to incorporate it more into my thinking. (Which I’m still in the process of doing.)
That would be a valid reply if I had said it’s all about priors. All I said was that I think priors make up a significant implicit source of the disagreement – as suggested by some people thinking 5% risk of doom seems “high” and me thinking/reacting with “you wouldn’t be saying that if you had anything close to my priors.”
Or maybe what I mean is stronger than “priors.” “Differences in underlying worldviews” seems like the better description. Specifically, the worldview I identify more with, which I think many EAs don’t share, is something like “The Yudkowskian worldview where the world is insane, most institutions are incompetent, Inadequate Equilibria is a big deal, etc.” And that probably affects things like whether we anchor way below 50% or above 50% on what the risks should be that the culmination of accelerating technological progress will go well or not.
That’s misdescribing the scope of my point and drawing inappropriate inferences. Last time I made an object-level argument about AI misalignment risk was just 3h before your comment. (Not sure it’s particularly intelligible, but the point is, I’m trying! :) )
So, evidently, I agree that a lot of the discussion should be held at a deeper level than the one of priors/general worldviews.
I’m a fan of Shard theory and some of the considerations behind it have already updated me towards a lower chance of doom than I had before starting to incorporate it more into my thinking. (Which I’m still in the process of doing.)