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cupholder comments on Open Thread June 2010, Part 3 - Less Wrong
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I made a couple of comments here http://lesswrong.com/lw/1kr/that_other_kind_of_status/255f at Yvain's post titled "That Other Kind of Status." I messed up in writing my first comment in that it did not read as I had intended it to. Please disregard my first comment (I'm leaving it up to keep the responses in context).
I clarified in my second comment. My second comment seems to have gotten buried in the shuffle and so I thought I would post again here.
I've been a lurker in this community for three months and I've found that it's the smartest community that I've ever come across outside of parts of the mathematical community. I recognize a lot of the posters as similar to myself in many ways and so have some sense of having "arrived home."
At the same time the degree of confidence that many posters have about their beliefs in the significance of Less Wrong and SIAI is unsettling to me. A number of posters write as though they're sure that what Less Wrong and SIAI are doing are the most important things that any human could be doing. It seems very likely to me that what Less Wrong and SIAI are doing is not as nearly important (relative to other things) as such posters believe.
I don't want to get involved in a debate about this point now (although I'd be happy to elaborate and give my thoughts in detail if there's interest).
What I want to do is to draw attention to the remarks that I made in my second comment at the link. From what I've read (several hundred assorted threads), I feel like an elephant in the room is the question of whether the reason that those of you who believe that Less Wrong and SIAI doing things of the highest level of importance is because you're a part of these groups (*).
My drawing attention to this question is not out of malice toward any of you - as I indicated above, I feel more comfortable with Less Wrong than I do with almost any other large group that I've ever come across. I like you people and if some of you are suffering from the issue (*) I see this as understandable and am sympathetic - we're all only human.
But I am concerned that I haven't seen much evidence of serious reflection about the possibility of (*) on Less Wrong. The closest that I've seen is Yvain's post titled "Extreme Rationality: It's Not That Great". Even if the most ardent Less Wrong and SIAI supporters are mostly right about their beliefs, (*) is almost certainly at least occasionally present and I think that the community would benefit from a higher level of vigilance concerning the possibility (*).
Any thoughts? I'd also be interested in any relevant references.
[Edited in response to cupholder's comment, deleted extraneous words.]
Comment on markup: I saw the first version of your comment, where you were using "(*)" as a textual marker, and I see you're now using "#" because the asterisks were messing with the markup. You should be able to get the "(*)" marker to work by putting a backslash before the asterisk (and I preferred the "(*)" indicator because that's more easily recognized as a footnote-style marker).
Feels weird to post an entire paragraph just to nitpick someone's markup, so here's an actual comment!
Let me try and rephrase this in a way that might be more testable/easier to think about. It sounds like the question here is what is causing the correlation between being a member of LW/SIAI and agreeing with LW/SIAI that future AI is one of the most important things to worry about. There are several possible causes:
And we want to know whether #1 is strong enough that we're drifting towards a cult attractor or some other groupthink attractor.
I'm not instantly sure how to answer this, but I thought it might help to rephrase this more explicitly in terms of causal inference.
I'm not sure that your rephrasing accurately captures what I was trying to get at. In particular, strictly speaking (*) doesn't require that one be a part of a group , although being part of a group often plays a role in enabling (*).
Also, I'm not only interested in possible irrational causes for LW/SIAI members' belief that future AI is one of the most important things to worry about, but also possible irrational causes for each of:
(1) SIAI members' belief that donating to SIAI in particular is the most leveraged way to reduce existential risks? Note that it's possible to devote ones' live to a project without believing that it's the best project for additional funding - see Givewell's blog posts on Room For More Funding:
For reference, PeerInfinity says
(2) The belief that refining the art of human rationality is very important.
On (2), I basically agree with Yvain's post Extreme Rationality: It's Not That Great.
My own take is that the Less Wrong community has been very enriching in some of its members lives on account of allowing them the opportunity to connect with people similar to themselves, and that their very positive feelings connected with their Less Wrong experience have led some of them to overrate the overall importance of Less Wrong's stated mission. I can write more about this if there's interest.
Thank you for clarifying. I don't think I really have an opinion on this, but I figure it's good to have someone bring it up as a potential issue.
I'm interested. I've been thinking about this issue myself for a bit, and something like an 'internal review' would greatly help in bringing any potential biases the community holds to light.