When I said it was relevant to his track record as a public intellectual, I was referring to his tendency to make dramatic and overconfident pronouncements (which Ben mentioned in the parent comment). I wasn’t intending to imply that the debate around QM had been settled or that new information had come out. I do think that even at the time Eliezer’s positions on both MWI and why people disagreed with him on it were overconfident though.
I think you’re right that my comment gave too little credit to Eliezer, and possibly misleadingly implied that Eliezer is the only one who holds some kind of extreme MWI or anti-collapse view or that such views are not or cannot be reasonable (especially anti-collapse). I said that MWI is a leading candidate but that’s still probably underselling how many super pro-MWI positions there are. I expanded on this in another comment.
Your story of Eliezer comparing MWI to heliocentrism is a central example of what I’m talking about. It is not that his underlying position is wrong or even unlikely, but that he is significantly overconfident.
I think this is relevant information for people trying to understand Eliezer’s recent writings.
To be clear, I don’t think it’s a particularly important example, and there is a lot of other more important information than whether Eliezer overestimated the case for MWI to some degree while also displaying impressive understanding of physics and possibly/probably being right about MWI.
When I said it was relevant to his track record as a public intellectual, I was referring to his tendency to make dramatic and overconfident pronouncements (which Ben mentioned in the parent comment). I wasn’t intending to imply that the debate around QM had been settled or that new information had come out. I do think that even at the time Eliezer’s positions on both MWI and why people disagreed with him on it were overconfident though.
I think you’re right that my comment gave too little credit to Eliezer, and possibly misleadingly implied that Eliezer is the only one who holds some kind of extreme MWI or anti-collapse view or that such views are not or cannot be reasonable (especially anti-collapse). I said that MWI is a leading candidate but that’s still probably underselling how many super pro-MWI positions there are. I expanded on this in another comment.
Your story of Eliezer comparing MWI to heliocentrism is a central example of what I’m talking about. It is not that his underlying position is wrong or even unlikely, but that he is significantly overconfident.
I think this is relevant information for people trying to understand Eliezer’s recent writings.
To be clear, I don’t think it’s a particularly important example, and there is a lot of other more important information than whether Eliezer overestimated the case for MWI to some degree while also displaying impressive understanding of physics and possibly/probably being right about MWI.