Nice to hear from you Keiran. That idea is interesting. For me the “figure out what the truth is” aspect is the most important thing. I don’t necessarily think there has to be a “winner” of the debate, I just want two experts to be able to hash out their differences and hopefully in doing so get closer to the truth. Maybe the anti-debate format is conducive to that.
In terms of a wishlist of topics see below for some ideas. This thread has a lot of good ideas. I’m not massively concerned about who is involved as long as they are experts or well-versed in what they’re talking about.
Stuart Russell “vs” someone on whether AI is a significant x-risk that we should focus on or not
Will MacAskill “vs” Toby Ord on ‘hinginess’ of the present/probability of x-risk this century/broad or targeted approaches to long-termism
Someone (maybe Toby Ord) “vs” someone (maybe Simon Knutsson) on whether we should focus on suffering more than on happiness, or should be treating these the same
Hauke Hillebrandt “vs” someone on economic growth vs randomista development
Maybe a debate on population ethics (e.g. total view vs not total view)
Maybe a debate on the validity of long-termism. I’m not actually sure who a prominent critic of long-termism is but such a debate would be very interesting
In short, any debate that is ongoing in EA circles, that has credible voices on either side and that has important implications for what we should do.
By the way I enjoy listening to the Unbelievable? podcast in which the host Justin Brierley often hosts debates between atheists and christians. He moderates pretty well, even though he is a christian it is not clear at all from his moderating which side he is on! You may (or may not) find it useful to check out a debate from that podcast. In normal times they actually get the guests in the same room and video the debate so it’s available as both an audio and visual podcast.
I’m happy to hear that you are keen on the anti-debates idea! I suggested it to the EA Global organizers a few years ago, but it seems they weren’t very interested. (Incidentally, the idea isn’t Will’s, or mine; it dates back at least to this debate between David Chalmers and Guido Tononi from 2016.)
A possible variant is to randomize whether the debate will or will not be reversed, and challenge the audience to guess whether the debaters are arguing for their own positions or their opponents’, disclosing the answer only at the end of the episode. (In some cases, or for some members of the audience, the answer will be obvious from background information about the debaters, but it’s unclear how often this will be the case.)
EDIT: I now see that I misunderstood what was meant by an ‘anti-debate’: not a debate where each person defends the opposite side, but rather a debate that is collaborative rather than competitive. I personally would be interested in anti-debates in either of those senses.
Thanks for this Jack! We’d definitely like to experiment with this.
I’m personally very keen on Will’s ‘Anti-Debates’ idea, which I think takes care of some of the concerns.
I’d be excited to hear suggestions for the dream guests + topics for a pilot version.
Nice to hear from you Keiran. That idea is interesting. For me the “figure out what the truth is” aspect is the most important thing. I don’t necessarily think there has to be a “winner” of the debate, I just want two experts to be able to hash out their differences and hopefully in doing so get closer to the truth. Maybe the anti-debate format is conducive to that.
In terms of a wishlist of topics see below for some ideas. This thread has a lot of good ideas. I’m not massively concerned about who is involved as long as they are experts or well-versed in what they’re talking about.
Stuart Russell “vs” someone on whether AI is a significant x-risk that we should focus on or not
Will MacAskill “vs” Toby Ord on ‘hinginess’ of the present/probability of x-risk this century/broad or targeted approaches to long-termism
Someone (maybe Toby Ord) “vs” someone (maybe Simon Knutsson) on whether we should focus on suffering more than on happiness, or should be treating these the same
Hauke Hillebrandt “vs” someone on economic growth vs randomista development
Maybe a debate on population ethics (e.g. total view vs not total view)
Maybe a debate on the validity of long-termism. I’m not actually sure who a prominent critic of long-termism is but such a debate would be very interesting
In short, any debate that is ongoing in EA circles, that has credible voices on either side and that has important implications for what we should do.
By the way I enjoy listening to the Unbelievable? podcast in which the host Justin Brierley often hosts debates between atheists and christians. He moderates pretty well, even though he is a christian it is not clear at all from his moderating which side he is on! You may (or may not) find it useful to check out a debate from that podcast. In normal times they actually get the guests in the same room and video the debate so it’s available as both an audio and visual podcast.
That almost perfectly matches my own wish list!
Thanks for the ideas Jack, really appreciate it.
Glad to hear it!
I’m happy to hear that you are keen on the anti-debates idea! I suggested it to the EA Global organizers a few years ago, but it seems they weren’t very interested. (Incidentally, the idea isn’t Will’s, or mine; it dates back at least to this debate between David Chalmers and Guido Tononi from 2016.)
A possible variant is to randomize whether the debate will or will not be reversed, and challenge the audience to guess whether the debaters are arguing for their own positions or their opponents’, disclosing the answer only at the end of the episode. (In some cases, or for some members of the audience, the answer will be obvious from background information about the debaters, but it’s unclear how often this will be the case.)
EDIT: I now see that I misunderstood what was meant by an ‘anti-debate’: not a debate where each person defends the opposite side, but rather a debate that is collaborative rather than competitive. I personally would be interested in anti-debates in either of those senses.