Responding to your critique of the model we put forward:
You still need to argue how and why it is useful and should be used to guide decision-making. In neither of the two cases, from what I can tell, do the authors attempt to understand which of the boxes we are in…
We argue that this model can be used to guide decision-making insofar as the Type II error in particular here seems very reckless from both s-risk and x-risk perspectives—and we currently lack the requisite empirical knowledge that would enable us to determine with any confidence which of these four quadrants we are currently in.
You seem to be claiming that this model would only be useful if we also attempted to predict which quadrant we are in, whereas the entire point we are making is that deep uncertainty surrounding this very question is a sufficiently alarming status quo that we should increase the amount of attention and resources being devoted to understanding what properties predict whether a given system is sentient. Hopefully this work would enable us to predict which quadrant we are in more effectively so that we can act accordingly.
In other words, the fact that we can’t predict with any confidence which of these four worlds we are currently in is troubling given the stakes, and therefore calls for further work so we can be more confident ASAP.
Responding to your critique of the model we put forward:
We argue that this model can be used to guide decision-making insofar as the Type II error in particular here seems very reckless from both s-risk and x-risk perspectives—and we currently lack the requisite empirical knowledge that would enable us to determine with any confidence which of these four quadrants we are currently in.
You seem to be claiming that this model would only be useful if we also attempted to predict which quadrant we are in, whereas the entire point we are making is that deep uncertainty surrounding this very question is a sufficiently alarming status quo that we should increase the amount of attention and resources being devoted to understanding what properties predict whether a given system is sentient. Hopefully this work would enable us to predict which quadrant we are in more effectively so that we can act accordingly.
In other words, the fact that we can’t predict with any confidence which of these four worlds we are currently in is troubling given the stakes, and therefore calls for further work so we can be more confident ASAP.