”Philosophy is pretty much the only subject that I’m very informed about. So as a consequence, I can confidently say Eliezer is eggregiously wrong about most of the controversial views I can fact check him on. That’s . . . worrying.”
And my reply to that:
Some other potentially controversial views that a philosopher might be able to fact-check Eliezer on, based on skimming through an index of the sequences:
Assorted confident statements about the obvious supremacy of Bayesian probability theory and how Frequentists are obviously wrong/crazy/confused/etc. (IMO he’s right about this stuff. But idk if this counts as controversial enough within academia?)
A lot of assorted references to cognitive and evolutionary psychology, including probably a number of studies that haven’t replicated—I think Eliezer has expressed regret at some of this and said he would write the sequences differently today. But there are probably a bunch of somewhat-controversial psychology factoids that Eliezer would still confidently stand by. (IMO you could probably nail him on some stuff here.)
Maybe some assorted claims about the nature of evolution? What it’s optimizing for, what it produces (“adaptation-executors, not fitness-maximizers”), where the logic can & can’t be extended (can corporations be said to evolve? EY says no), whether group selection happens in real life (EY says basically never). Not sure if any of these claims are controversial though.
Lots of confident claims about the idea of “intelligence”—that it is a coherent concept, an important trait, etc. (Vs some philosophers who might say there’s no one thing that can be called intelligence, or that the word intelligence has no meaning, or generally make the kinds of arguments parodied in “On the Impossibility of Supersized Machines”. Surely there are still plenty of these philosophers going around today, even though I think they’re very wrong?)
Some pretty pure philosophy about the nature of words/concepts, and “the relationship between cognition and concept formation”. I feel like philosophers have a lot of hot takes about linguistics, and the way we structure concepts inside our minds, and so forth? (IMO you could at least definitely find some quibbles, even if the big picture looks right.)
Eliezer confidently dismissing what he calls a key tenet of “postmodernism” in several places—the idea that different “truths” can be true for different cultures. (IMO he’s right to dismiss this.)
Some pretty confident (all things considered!) claims about moral anti-realism and the proper ethical attitude to take towards life? (I found his writing helpful and interesting but idk if it’s the last word, personally I feel very uncertain about this stuff.)
Eliezer’s confident rejection of religion at many points. (Is it too obvious, in academic circles, that all major religions are false? Or is this still controversial enough, with however many billions of self-identified believers worldwide, that you can get credit for calling it?)
It also feels like some of the more abstract AI alignment stuff (about the fundamental nature of “agents”, what it means to have a “goal” or “values”, etc) might be amenable to philosophical critique.
Maybe you toss out half of those because they aren’t seriously disputed by any legit academics. But, I am pretty sure that at least postmodern philosophers, “complexity scientists”, people with bad takes on philosophy-of-science / philosophy-of-probability, and people who make “On the Impossibility of Supersized Machines”-style arguments about intelligence, are really out there! They at least consider themselves to be legit, even if you and I are skeptical! So I think EY would come across with a pretty good track record of correct philosophy at the end of the day, if you truly took the entire reference class of “controversial philosophical claims” and somehow graded how correct EY was (in practice, since we haven’t yet solved philosophy—how close he is to your own views?), and compared this to how correct the average philosopher is.
reposting a reply by Omnizoid from Lesswrong:
”Philosophy is pretty much the only subject that I’m very informed about. So as a consequence, I can confidently say Eliezer is eggregiously wrong about most of the controversial views I can fact check him on. That’s . . . worrying.”
And my reply to that:
Some other potentially controversial views that a philosopher might be able to fact-check Eliezer on, based on skimming through an index of the sequences:
Assorted confident statements about the obvious supremacy of Bayesian probability theory and how Frequentists are obviously wrong/crazy/confused/etc. (IMO he’s right about this stuff. But idk if this counts as controversial enough within academia?)
Probably a lot of assorted philosophy-of-science stuff about the nature of evidence, the idea that high-caliber rationality ought to operate “faster than science”, etc. (IMO he’s right about the big picture here, although this topic covers a lot of ground so if you looked closely you could probably find some quibbles.)
The claim / implication that talk of “emergence” or the study of “complexity science” is basically bunk. (Not sure but seems like he’s probably right? Good chance the ultimate resolution would probably be “emergence/complexity is a much less helpful concept than its fans think, but more helpful than zero”.)
A lot of assorted references to cognitive and evolutionary psychology, including probably a number of studies that haven’t replicated—I think Eliezer has expressed regret at some of this and said he would write the sequences differently today. But there are probably a bunch of somewhat-controversial psychology factoids that Eliezer would still confidently stand by. (IMO you could probably nail him on some stuff here.)
Maybe some assorted claims about the nature of evolution? What it’s optimizing for, what it produces (“adaptation-executors, not fitness-maximizers”), where the logic can & can’t be extended (can corporations be said to evolve? EY says no), whether group selection happens in real life (EY says basically never). Not sure if any of these claims are controversial though.
Lots of confident claims about the idea of “intelligence”—that it is a coherent concept, an important trait, etc. (Vs some philosophers who might say there’s no one thing that can be called intelligence, or that the word intelligence has no meaning, or generally make the kinds of arguments parodied in “On the Impossibility of Supersized Machines”. Surely there are still plenty of these philosophers going around today, even though I think they’re very wrong?)
Some pretty pure philosophy about the nature of words/concepts, and “the relationship between cognition and concept formation”. I feel like philosophers have a lot of hot takes about linguistics, and the way we structure concepts inside our minds, and so forth? (IMO you could at least definitely find some quibbles, even if the big picture looks right.)
Eliezer confidently dismissing what he calls a key tenet of “postmodernism” in several places—the idea that different “truths” can be true for different cultures. (IMO he’s right to dismiss this.)
Some pretty confident (all things considered!) claims about moral anti-realism and the proper ethical attitude to take towards life? (I found his writing helpful and interesting but idk if it’s the last word, personally I feel very uncertain about this stuff.)
Eliezer’s confident rejection of religion at many points. (Is it too obvious, in academic circles, that all major religions are false? Or is this still controversial enough, with however many billions of self-identified believers worldwide, that you can get credit for calling it?)
It also feels like some of the more abstract AI alignment stuff (about the fundamental nature of “agents”, what it means to have a “goal” or “values”, etc) might be amenable to philosophical critique.
Maybe you toss out half of those because they aren’t seriously disputed by any legit academics. But, I am pretty sure that at least postmodern philosophers, “complexity scientists”, people with bad takes on philosophy-of-science / philosophy-of-probability, and people who make “On the Impossibility of Supersized Machines”-style arguments about intelligence, are really out there! They at least consider themselves to be legit, even if you and I are skeptical! So I think EY would come across with a pretty good track record of correct philosophy at the end of the day, if you truly took the entire reference class of “controversial philosophical claims” and somehow graded how correct EY was (in practice, since we haven’t yet solved philosophy—how close he is to your own views?), and compared this to how correct the average philosopher is.