Ye, in response to the first point I basically think you’ve misinterpreted my position on this John, so thanks for laying this out so clearly.
I have never (as far as I know, and if I have, I must apologise because I am wrong) accused you or other EA’s of lack of deference to peer reviewed science in the climate space. I essentially agree that you are more in line with the climate expert consensus on climate and xrisk than I am, and I would (and have) defended you against accusations that you don’t know and utilise this literature very well (althouigh I think you do fail to engage with the literature on climate and xrisk, but we’ve already had this discussion and its very tangential to my main point). I just don’t think the present peer reviewed literature actually does a very good job at all at addressing climate and xrisk questions (although again, I think tis is tangential).
I full agree with your second bullet point. But note, again, the statement says “more care put into publication practices for those engaged in research, including greater consideration and conversation of the appropriate role of different fora in the epistemic process, including peer reviewed publications”. I interpreted this as suggesting not ‘peer review is perfect and amazing’ but rather if we are to make this community as epistemically healthy as possible, we need to have consideration for what the appropriate role for peer reviewed publications are. For me anyway, one motivating factor behind this is a question of if we ought to or not have an xrisk journal, or whether we ought to set up an xrisk specific forum (like the alignment forum is). Each of these can play different epistemic roles, and I think there is often a polarised response of peer review is perfect or peer review is the worst. I do think there is a strong argument against peer review in xrisk work, although I also think there are compelling arguments in favour of peer review in certain forms. Indeed, many signatories have made public defences of peer review (eg David Thorstad) and others have been critical (eg Erica Thompson’s Escape from Modelland contains critiques of peer review), but I think we broadly felt that it was a discussion much more worth having in the xrisk space
Ye, in response to the first point I basically think you’ve misinterpreted my position on this John, so thanks for laying this out so clearly.
I have never (as far as I know, and if I have, I must apologise because I am wrong) accused you or other EA’s of lack of deference to peer reviewed science in the climate space. I essentially agree that you are more in line with the climate expert consensus on climate and xrisk than I am, and I would (and have) defended you against accusations that you don’t know and utilise this literature very well (althouigh I think you do fail to engage with the literature on climate and xrisk, but we’ve already had this discussion and its very tangential to my main point). I just don’t think the present peer reviewed literature actually does a very good job at all at addressing climate and xrisk questions (although again, I think tis is tangential).
I full agree with your second bullet point. But note, again, the statement says “more care put into publication practices for those engaged in research, including greater consideration and conversation of the appropriate role of different fora in the epistemic process, including peer reviewed publications”. I interpreted this as suggesting not ‘peer review is perfect and amazing’ but rather if we are to make this community as epistemically healthy as possible, we need to have consideration for what the appropriate role for peer reviewed publications are. For me anyway, one motivating factor behind this is a question of if we ought to or not have an xrisk journal, or whether we ought to set up an xrisk specific forum (like the alignment forum is). Each of these can play different epistemic roles, and I think there is often a polarised response of peer review is perfect or peer review is the worst. I do think there is a strong argument against peer review in xrisk work, although I also think there are compelling arguments in favour of peer review in certain forms. Indeed, many signatories have made public defences of peer review (eg David Thorstad) and others have been critical (eg Erica Thompson’s Escape from Modelland contains critiques of peer review), but I think we broadly felt that it was a discussion much more worth having in the xrisk space