Maybe I’m missing something, but it seems that “dignity” only appears once in the OP? Namely, here:
On my model, solutions to how capabilities generalize further than alignment are necessary but not sufficient. There is dignity in attacking a variety of other real problems, and I endorse that practice.
This usage appears to have nothing to do with the April Fool’s Day post.
“Dignity” indeed only occurs once, and I assume it’s calling back to the same “death with dignity” concept from the April Fool’s post (which I agree shouldn’t have been framed as an April Fool’s thing).
I assume EY didn’t expect the post to have such a large impact, in part because he’d already said more or less the same thing, with the same terminology, in a widely-read post back in November 2021:
Anonymous
At a high level one thing I want to ask about is research directions and prioritization. For example, if you were dictator for what researchers here (or within our influence) were working on, how would you reallocate them?
Eliezer Yudkowsky
The first reply that came to mind is “I don’t know.” I consider the present gameboard to look incredibly grim, and I don’t actually see a way out through hard work alone. We can hope there’s a miracle that violates some aspect of my background model, and we can try to prepare for that unknown miracle; preparing for an unknown miracle probably looks like “Trying to die with more dignity on the mainline” (because if you can die with more dignity on the mainline, you are better positioned to take advantage of a miracle if it occurs).
I appreciate the data point about the term being one you find upsetting to run into; thanks for sharing about that, Devin. And, for whatever it’s worth, I’m sorry. I don’t like sharing info (or framings) that cause people distress like that.
I don’t know whether data points like this will update Nate and/or Eliezer all the way to thinking the term is net-negative to use. If not, and this is a competing access needs issue (‘one group finds it much more motivating to use the phrase X; another group finds that exact same phrase extremely demotivating’), then I think somebody should make a post walking folks through a browser text-replacement method that can swap out words like ‘dignity’ and ‘dignified’ (on LW, the EA Forum, the MIRI website, etc.) for something more innocuous/silly.
The word dignity only appears once, but variations appear as well:
“And it sure would be undignified for our world to die of antitrust law at the final extremity.”
“It’s as dignified as any of the other attempts to walk around this hard problem”
Some version of this reference appears mostly when Soares is endorsing efforts to solve a problem in a way that won’t work if the standard MIRI model of doom is correct, but which is still worthwhile in case it isn’t. To be clear, I respect you, Soares, and Yudkowsky a great deal, my impression is that MIRI is a great bunch of folks whose approach is worthwhile, even if I lean somewhat more Christiano/Critch on some of these issues. It is also possible that dignity is a good framing overall and I’m just weird, in which case I fully endorse using it. I just personally don’t like it for the reasons I mentioned, and I think there are many others with similar reactions.
Oops, thanks! I checked for those variants elsewhere but forgot to do so here. :)
It is also possible that dignity is a good framing overall and I’m just weird, in which case I fully endorse using it.
I think it’s a good framing for some people and not for others. I’m confident that many people shouldn’t use this framing regularly in their own thinking. I’m less sure about whether the people who do find it valuable should steer clear of mentioning it, that’s a bit more extreme.
That’s fair, I think it depends how it’s intended. If the point is to talk about how you think about or relate to the issue, talking about the framing that works best for you makes sense. If the purpose is outreach, there are framings that make more or less sense to use.
Maybe I’m missing something, but it seems that “dignity” only appears once in the OP? Namely, here:
This usage appears to have nothing to do with the April Fool’s Day post.
Perhaps Soares made a subsequent edit to the OP?
“Dignity” indeed only occurs once, and I assume it’s calling back to the same “death with dignity” concept from the April Fool’s post (which I agree shouldn’t have been framed as an April Fool’s thing).
I assume EY didn’t expect the post to have such a large impact, in part because he’d already said more or less the same thing, with the same terminology, in a widely-read post back in November 2021:
The term also shows up a ton in the Late 2021 MIRI Conversations, e.g., here and here.
I appreciate the data point about the term being one you find upsetting to run into; thanks for sharing about that, Devin. And, for whatever it’s worth, I’m sorry. I don’t like sharing info (or framings) that cause people distress like that.
I don’t know whether data points like this will update Nate and/or Eliezer all the way to thinking the term is net-negative to use. If not, and this is a competing access needs issue (‘one group finds it much more motivating to use the phrase X; another group finds that exact same phrase extremely demotivating’), then I think somebody should make a post walking folks through a browser text-replacement method that can swap out words like ‘dignity’ and ‘dignified’ (on LW, the EA Forum, the MIRI website, etc.) for something more innocuous/silly.
The word dignity only appears once, but variations appear as well:
“And it sure would be undignified for our world to die of antitrust law at the final extremity.”
“It’s as dignified as any of the other attempts to walk around this hard problem”
Some version of this reference appears mostly when Soares is endorsing efforts to solve a problem in a way that won’t work if the standard MIRI model of doom is correct, but which is still worthwhile in case it isn’t. To be clear, I respect you, Soares, and Yudkowsky a great deal, my impression is that MIRI is a great bunch of folks whose approach is worthwhile, even if I lean somewhat more Christiano/Critch on some of these issues. It is also possible that dignity is a good framing overall and I’m just weird, in which case I fully endorse using it. I just personally don’t like it for the reasons I mentioned, and I think there are many others with similar reactions.
Oops, thanks! I checked for those variants elsewhere but forgot to do so here. :)
I think it’s a good framing for some people and not for others. I’m confident that many people shouldn’t use this framing regularly in their own thinking. I’m less sure about whether the people who do find it valuable should steer clear of mentioning it, that’s a bit more extreme.
That’s fair, I think it depends how it’s intended. If the point is to talk about how you think about or relate to the issue, talking about the framing that works best for you makes sense. If the purpose is outreach, there are framings that make more or less sense to use.