The 80k podcast has good reach inside and outside the EA Community. It can be used to signal-boost lesser known ideas, co-ordinate on important ones, but I think it’s also important to use it to expose EAs to good faith criticisms of our commonly-held positions too.
As such, I’d like to nominate Melanie Mitchell, Davis Professor of Complexity at the Sante Fe Institute. Forum users might know her for taking the Con side on the recent Munk Debate on Artifical Intelligence. Melanie is a highly qualified AI scientist, literally writing the textbook on Genetic Algorithms, and is a sceptic of the likelihood of Strong AI emerging soon and thus the case of AI xRisk.
I expect many EAs, and many users of the Forum, to disagree with her. That’s absolutely your right! But I think it’s important for the AIXR community to listen to its sceptics, identify cruxes with them, and be a willing participant in that dialogue. For example, while I’m more concerned about AIXR than Melanie, I found her recent article summarising the debate on LLM understanding was an absolutely fantastic framing of the issue, well worth reading, and would be a fantastic starting point for a discussion between her sceptical perspective, and Rob (who I believe is much more AIXR concerned).
I know that the episode with Glen Weyl might have limited the desire for this kind of thing, but I still think good-faith dialogue like this critically important for truth-seeking.
short answer: it seemed the 80k conversation with Glen didn’t end up causing any useful updates, though it was perhaps good in a ‘broadening intellectual horizons’ sense. My intuitive take is that few EA critics (even relatively informed ones like Glen) are going to get an 80k invite sometime soon.
long answer: I’ll try my best, though I’m trying to parse past events without really experiencing the context as-it-happened.
In February 2019 Weyl appears on the 80k podcast, but in the ‘critiques of effective altruism’ section they kinda seem to talk past each other
In 2019 Weyl posts Why I Am Not A Technocrat, a pluralistic critique of rationality and EA movements (among others)
In Jan 2021, Scott Alexander reviews this critique but is again unconvinced. Weyl responds, and they get into it in the comments, making very little progress
Remmelt tried to provide some context on Weyl’s perspective. Some commenters liked it, others didn’t. I’m not sure what if anything Galef took from the exchange
In October 21, Weyl posted a more conciliatory post though still critical. I wasn’t even aware of it until I did this deep dive, so not sure how much others noticed
In 2022 Weyl appeared on HearThis Idea, still a critic of EA, and here I still find him unclear and Finn to make some good counterpoints. But 3 years on very little progress on understanding seems to have been made on either side.
I got a lot of this info from a Twitter thread by Remmelt earlier this year, which includes a claim that he discussed Weyl’s interviews with Wiblin & Scott directly, and both said they found Weyl ‘all over the place’ and implicitly unconvincing.
Basically, I don’t think Rob and the 80k team think they got a lot out of the conversation with Glen (note—this is just my impression, and I’m very willing to be corrected). I suspect that they updated away from ‘conversing with critics’ to ‘inform EAs of EA-related people/​work’. I guess that’s fair, it’s their podcast. I just think that these conversations are incredibly important even if difficult. If anything, they should be more explicitly about the disagreements. A really good example of how to do this well, in my view, is Nick Anyos and his Critiques of EA Podcast[1]
The 80k podcast has good reach inside and outside the EA Community. It can be used to signal-boost lesser known ideas, co-ordinate on important ones, but I think it’s also important to use it to expose EAs to good faith criticisms of our commonly-held positions too.
As such, I’d like to nominate Melanie Mitchell, Davis Professor of Complexity at the Sante Fe Institute. Forum users might know her for taking the Con side on the recent Munk Debate on Artifical Intelligence. Melanie is a highly qualified AI scientist, literally writing the textbook on Genetic Algorithms, and is a sceptic of the likelihood of Strong AI emerging soon and thus the case of AI xRisk.
I expect many EAs, and many users of the Forum, to disagree with her. That’s absolutely your right! But I think it’s important for the AIXR community to listen to its sceptics, identify cruxes with them, and be a willing participant in that dialogue. For example, while I’m more concerned about AIXR than Melanie, I found her recent article summarising the debate on LLM understanding was an absolutely fantastic framing of the issue, well worth reading, and would be a fantastic starting point for a discussion between her sceptical perspective, and Rob (who I believe is much more AIXR concerned).
I know that the episode with Glen Weyl might have limited the desire for this kind of thing, but I still think good-faith dialogue like this critically important for truth-seeking.
Could you elaborate on the episode with Glen Weyl?
short answer: it seemed the 80k conversation with Glen didn’t end up causing any useful updates, though it was perhaps good in a ‘broadening intellectual horizons’ sense. My intuitive take is that few EA critics (even relatively informed ones like Glen) are going to get an 80k invite sometime soon.
long answer: I’ll try my best, though I’m trying to parse past events without really experiencing the context as-it-happened.
In February 2019 Weyl appears on the 80k podcast, but in the ‘critiques of effective altruism’ section they kinda seem to talk past each other
In 2019 Weyl posts Why I Am Not A Technocrat, a pluralistic critique of rationality and EA movements (among others)
In Jan 2021, Scott Alexander reviews this critique but is again unconvinced. Weyl responds, and they get into it in the comments, making very little progress
In March 2021, on the rationally speaking podcast, Galef and Buterin discuss Weyl’s critiques and are similarly confused/​unconvinced
Remmelt tried to provide some context on Weyl’s perspective. Some commenters liked it, others didn’t. I’m not sure what if anything Galef took from the exchange
In October 21, Weyl posted a more conciliatory post though still critical. I wasn’t even aware of it until I did this deep dive, so not sure how much others noticed
In 2022 Weyl appeared on Hear This Idea, still a critic of EA, and here I still find him unclear and Finn to make some good counterpoints. But 3 years on very little progress on understanding seems to have been made on either side.
I got a lot of this info from a Twitter thread by Remmelt earlier this year, which includes a claim that he discussed Weyl’s interviews with Wiblin & Scott directly, and both said they found Weyl ‘all over the place’ and implicitly unconvincing.
Basically, I don’t think Rob and the 80k team think they got a lot out of the conversation with Glen (note—this is just my impression, and I’m very willing to be corrected). I suspect that they updated away from ‘conversing with critics’ to ‘inform EAs of EA-related people/​work’. I guess that’s fair, it’s their podcast. I just think that these conversations are incredibly important even if difficult. If anything, they should be more explicitly about the disagreements. A really good example of how to do this well, in my view, is Nick Anyos and his Critiques of EA Podcast[1]
Nick, if you’re reading, please make some more if you have the capacity/​willingness to do so!