Ugh. Y’all just made me get into “EA rhetoric” mode:
I also agree that Karnfosky’s retrospective supports Gwern’s analysis, rather than doing the opposite.
What?
No. Not only is this not true but this is indulging in a trivial rhetorical maneuver.
My comment said that the counterfactual would be better without the involvement of the person mentioned in the OP. I used the retrospective as evidence.
The retrospective includes at least two points for why the author changed their mind:
The book Superintelligence, which they explicitly said was the biggest event
The author moved to SF and learned about DL, and was informed by speaking to non-rationalist AI researchers, and then decided that LessWrong and MIRI were right.
In response to this, Gwern states the point #2, and asserts that this is causal evidence in favor of the person mentioned in the OP being useful.
Why? How?
Notice that #2 above doesn’t at all rule out that the founders or culture was repellent. In fact it seems like a lavish, and unlikely level amount of involvement.
I interpreted Gwern as mostly highlighting that people have updated toward’s Yudkowsky’s views—and using this as evidence in favor of the view we should defer a decent amount to Yudkowsky. I think that was a reasonable move.
There is also a causal question here (‘Has Yudkowsky on-net increased levels of concern about AI risk relative to where they would otherwise be?’), but I didn’t take the causal question to be central to the point Gwern was making. Although now I’m less sure.
I don’t personally have strong views on the causal question—I haven’t thought through the counterfactual.
(I strongly encourage people to go and read it, not just to see what’s before and after the part He screenshots, but because it is a good retrospective which is both informative about the history here and an interesting case study of how people change their minds and what Karnofsky has learned.)
By the way, I didn’t screenshot the pieces that fit my narrative—Gwern’s assertion of bad faith is another device being used.
Yes, much like the OP is voluminous and is the written output with the goal of criticizing a person. You’re familiar with such writings, as you’ve written enough criticizing me. Your point?
Gwern also digs up a previous argument. Not only is that issue entirely unrelated, its sort of exactly the opposite evidence he wants to show: Gwern appeared to borderline or threaten to dox someone who spoke out against him.
I commented. However I do not know anyone involved, such as who Gwern was, but only acting on the content and behaviour I saw, which was outright abusive.
There is no expected benefit to doing this. It’s literally the most principled thing to act in this way and I would do it again.
The consequences of that incident, the fact that this person with this behavior and content had this much status, was a large update for me.
More subtly and perniciously, Gwern’s adverse behavior in this comment chain and the incident mentioned above, is calibrated to the level of “EA rhetoric”. Digs like his above can sail through, with the tailwind of support of a subset of this community, a subset that values authority over content and Truth, to a degree much more than it understands.
On the other hand, in contrast, an outsider, who already has to dance through all the rhetorical devices and elliptical references, has to make a high effort, unemotional comment to try to make a point. Even or especially if they manage to do this, they can expect to be hit with a wall of text with various hostilities.
Like, this is awful. This isn’t just bad but it’s borderline abusive.
It’s wild that that this is the level of discourse here.
Because of the amount of reputation, money and ingroupness, this is probably one of the most extreme forms of tribalism that exists.
Charles, consider going for that walk now if you’re able to. (Maybe I’m missing it, but the rhetorical moves in this thread seem equally bad, and not very bad at that.)
Ugh. Y’all just made me get into “EA rhetoric” mode:
What?
No. Not only is this not true but this is indulging in a trivial rhetorical maneuver.
My comment said that the counterfactual would be better without the involvement of the person mentioned in the OP. I used the retrospective as evidence.
The retrospective includes at least two points for why the author changed their mind:
The book Superintelligence, which they explicitly said was the biggest event
The author moved to SF and learned about DL, and was informed by speaking to non-rationalist AI researchers, and then decided that LessWrong and MIRI were right.
In response to this, Gwern states the point #2, and asserts that this is causal evidence in favor of the person mentioned in the OP being useful.
Why? How?
Notice that #2 above doesn’t at all rule out that the founders or culture was repellent. In fact it seems like a lavish, and unlikely level amount of involvement.
I interpreted Gwern as mostly highlighting that people have updated toward’s Yudkowsky’s views—and using this as evidence in favor of the view we should defer a decent amount to Yudkowsky. I think that was a reasonable move.
There is also a causal question here (‘Has Yudkowsky on-net increased levels of concern about AI risk relative to where they would otherwise be?’), but I didn’t take the causal question to be central to the point Gwern was making. Although now I’m less sure.
I don’t personally have strong views on the causal question—I haven’t thought through the counterfactual.
By the way, I didn’t screenshot the pieces that fit my narrative—Gwern’s assertion of bad faith is another device being used.
Gwern also digs up a previous argument. Not only is that issue entirely unrelated, its sort of exactly the opposite evidence he wants to show: Gwern appeared to borderline or threaten to dox someone who spoke out against him.
I commented. However I do not know anyone involved, such as who Gwern was, but only acting on the content and behaviour I saw, which was outright abusive.
There is no expected benefit to doing this. It’s literally the most principled thing to act in this way and I would do it again.
The consequences of that incident, the fact that this person with this behavior and content had this much status, was a large update for me.
More subtly and perniciously, Gwern’s adverse behavior in this comment chain and the incident mentioned above, is calibrated to the level of “EA rhetoric”. Digs like his above can sail through, with the tailwind of support of a subset of this community, a subset that values authority over content and Truth, to a degree much more than it understands.
On the other hand, in contrast, an outsider, who already has to dance through all the rhetorical devices and elliptical references, has to make a high effort, unemotional comment to try to make a point. Even or especially if they manage to do this, they can expect to be hit with a wall of text with various hostilities.
Like, this is awful. This isn’t just bad but it’s borderline abusive.
It’s wild that that this is the level of discourse here.
Because of the amount of reputation, money and ingroupness, this is probably one of the most extreme forms of tribalism that exists.
Do you know how much has been lost?
Charles, consider going for that walk now if you’re able to. (Maybe I’m missing it, but the rhetorical moves in this thread seem equally bad, and not very bad at that.)
You are right, I don’t think my comments are helping.