I was a bit disappointed by this post. I think I am sympathetic to the overall take and I’m a bit frustrated that many EAs are promoting or directly working on biorisk without imo compelling reports to suggest a relatively high chance of x-risk.
That said, this post seems to basically make the same error, it says that Ord’s estimates are extremely high but doesn’t really justify that claim or suggest a different estimate. It would be much more reasonable imo to say “Ord’s estimate is much higher than my own prior, and I didn’t see enough evidence to justify such a large update”.
It would be much more reasonable imo to say “Ord’s estimate is much higher than my own prior, and I didn’t see enough evidence to justify such a large update”.
Except the use of Bayesian language, how is that different to the following passage?
We saw in Parts 9-11 of this series that most experts are deeply skeptical of Ord’s claim, and that there are at least a dozen reasons to be wary. This means that we should demand especially detailed and strong arguments from Ord to overcome the case for skepticism.
Thanks for pointing that out. I re-read the post and now think that the OP was more reasonable. I’m sorry I missed that in the first place. I also didn’t convey the more important message of “thank you for critiquing large, thorny, and important conclusions”. Thinking about P(bio x-risk) is really quite hard relative to lots of research reports posted on the forum, and this kind of work seems important.
I don’t care about the use of Bayesian language (or at least I think that bit you quoted does all the Bayesian language stuff I care about).
Maybe I should read the post again more carefully, but the thing I was trying to communicate was that I don’t understand why he thinks that Ord’s estimates are unreasonable, and I don’t think he provided much evidence that Ord had not already accounted for in his estimate. It may have just been because I was jumping in halfway through a sequence—or because I didn’t fully understand the post.
The thing I would have liked to see was something like:
Here is my (somewhat) uninformed prior of P(bio x-risk) and why I think it’s reasonable
Here are a bunch of arguments that should cause updates from my prior
Here is my actual P(bio x-risk)
This seems much lower than Ord’s
or
Here is how Ord did his estimate
Here are the specific methodological issues or ways he interpreted the evidence correctly
Here is my new estimate after updating on the evidence correctly
or
Here is how Ord did his estimate
I don’t think that Ord took into account evidence a,b and c
Here is how I would update on a, b and c
Here is my final estimate (see that it is much lower than Ord’s)
On reflection, I think this is an unreasonable bar or ask, and in any case, I expect to be more satisfied by David’s sequence on his site.
I was a bit disappointed by this post. I think I am sympathetic to the overall take and I’m a bit frustrated that many EAs are promoting or directly working on biorisk without imo compelling reports to suggest a relatively high chance of x-risk.
That said, this post seems to basically make the same error, it says that Ord’s estimates are extremely high but doesn’t really justify that claim or suggest a different estimate. It would be much more reasonable imo to say “Ord’s estimate is much higher than my own prior, and I didn’t see enough evidence to justify such a large update”.
Except the use of Bayesian language, how is that different to the following passage?
Thanks for pointing that out. I re-read the post and now think that the OP was more reasonable. I’m sorry I missed that in the first place. I also didn’t convey the more important message of “thank you for critiquing large, thorny, and important conclusions”. Thinking about P(bio x-risk) is really quite hard relative to lots of research reports posted on the forum, and this kind of work seems important.
I don’t care about the use of Bayesian language (or at least I think that bit you quoted does all the Bayesian language stuff I care about).
Maybe I should read the post again more carefully, but the thing I was trying to communicate was that I don’t understand why he thinks that Ord’s estimates are unreasonable, and I don’t think he provided much evidence that Ord had not already accounted for in his estimate. It may have just been because I was jumping in halfway through a sequence—or because I didn’t fully understand the post.
The thing I would have liked to see was something like:
Here is my (somewhat) uninformed prior of P(bio x-risk) and why I think it’s reasonable
Here are a bunch of arguments that should cause updates from my prior
Here is my actual P(bio x-risk)
This seems much lower than Ord’s
or
Here is how Ord did his estimate
Here are the specific methodological issues or ways he interpreted the evidence correctly
Here is my new estimate after updating on the evidence correctly
or
Here is how Ord did his estimate
I don’t think that Ord took into account evidence a,b and c
Here is how I would update on a, b and c
Here is my final estimate (see that it is much lower than Ord’s)
On reflection, I think this is an unreasonable bar or ask, and in any case, I expect to be more satisfied by David’s sequence on his site.
Thanks Caleb! I give reasons for skepticism about high levels of existential biorisk in Parts 9-11 of this series.