I am quite confused about what probabilities here mean, especially with prescriptive sentences like “Build the AI safety community in China” and “Beware of large-scale coordination efforts.”
As I wrote in note 2, I’m here claiming that this claim is more likely to be true under these timelines than the other timelines. But how could I make it clearer without bothering too much? Maybe putting note 2 under the table in italic?
I also disagree with the “vibes” of probability assignment to a bunch of these, and the lack of clarity on what these probabilities entail makes it hard to verbalize these.
I see, I hesitated in the trade-off (1) “put no probabilities” vs (2) “put vague probabilities” because I feel like that the second gives a lot more signal on how confident I am in what I say and allow people to more fruitfully disagree but at the same time it gives a “seriousness” signal which is not good when the predictions are not actual predictions.
Do you think that putting no probabilities would have been better?
By “I also disagree with the vibes of probability assignment to a bunch of these”, do you mean that it seems over/underconfident in a bunch of ways when you try to do a similar exercise?
Prescriptive statements have no truth value — hence I have trouble understanding how they might be more likely to be true.
Comparing “what’s more likely to be true” is also confusing as, naively, you are comparing two probabilities (your best guesses) of X being true conditional on “T ” and “not T;” and one is normally very confident in their arithmetic abilities.
There are less naive ways of interpreting that would make sense, but they should be specified.
Lastly and probably most importantly, a “probability of being more likely under condition” is not illuminating (in these cases, e.g., how much larger expected returns to community building is actually an interesting one).
Sorry for the lack of clarity: I meant that despite my inability to interpret probabilities, I could sense their vibes, and I hold different vibes. And disagreeing with vibes is kinda difficult because you are unsure if you are interpreting them correctly. Typical forecasting questions aim to specify the question and produce probabilities to make underlying vibes more tangible and concrete — maybe allowing to have a more productive discussion. I am generally very sympathetic to the use of these as appropriate.
Hey Misha! Thanks for the comment!
As I wrote in note 2, I’m here claiming that this claim is more likely to be true under these timelines than the other timelines. But how could I make it clearer without bothering too much? Maybe putting note 2 under the table in italic?
I see, I hesitated in the trade-off (1) “put no probabilities” vs (2) “put vague probabilities” because I feel like that the second gives a lot more signal on how confident I am in what I say and allow people to more fruitfully disagree but at the same time it gives a “seriousness” signal which is not good when the predictions are not actual predictions.
Do you think that putting no probabilities would have been better?
By “I also disagree with the vibes of probability assignment to a bunch of these”, do you mean that it seems over/underconfident in a bunch of ways when you try to do a similar exercise?
Well, yeah, I struggle with interpreting that:
Prescriptive statements have no truth value — hence I have trouble understanding how they might be more likely to be true.
Comparing “what’s more likely to be true” is also confusing as, naively, you are comparing two probabilities (your best guesses) of X being true conditional on “T ” and “not T;” and one is normally very confident in their arithmetic abilities.
There are less naive ways of interpreting that would make sense, but they should be specified.
Lastly and probably most importantly, a “probability of being more likely under condition” is not illuminating (in these cases, e.g., how much larger expected returns to community building is actually an interesting one).
Sorry for the lack of clarity: I meant that despite my inability to interpret probabilities, I could sense their vibes, and I hold different vibes. And disagreeing with vibes is kinda difficult because you are unsure if you are interpreting them correctly. Typical forecasting questions aim to specify the question and produce probabilities to make underlying vibes more tangible and concrete — maybe allowing to have a more productive discussion. I am generally very sympathetic to the use of these as appropriate.