komponisto comments on Existential Risk and Public Relations - Less Wrong

36 Post author: multifoliaterose 15 August 2010 07:16AM

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Comment author: multifoliaterose 16 August 2010 09:18:21AM *  9 points [-]

Thanks for your thoughtful comment.

To make this story short, the whole reason I became interested in this topic in the first place was because I was impressed by EY -- specifically his writings on rationality on OB (now known as the Sequences here on LW). Now of course most of those ideas were hardly original with him (indeed many times I had the feeling he was stating the obvious, albeit in a refreshing, enjoyable way) but the fact that he was able to write them down in such a clear, systematic, and readable fashion showed that he understood them thoroughly. This was clearly somebody who knew how to think.

I know some people who have had this sort of experience. My claim is not that Eliezer has uniformly repelled people from thinking about existential risk. My claim is that on average Eliezer's outlandish claims repel people from thinking about existential risk.

Do I simply have an unusual personality that makes me willing to listen to strange-sounding claims?

My guess would be that this is it. I'm the same way.

(But why wouldn't they as well, if they're "smart"?)

It's not clear that willingness to listen to strange-sounding claims exhibits correlation with instrumental rationality, or what the sign of that correlation is. People who are willing to listen to strange-sounding claims statistically end up hanging out with UFO conspiracy theorists, New Age people, etc. more often than usual. Statistically, people who make strange-sounding claims are not worth listening to. Too much willingness to listen to strange-sounding claims can easily result in one wasting large portions of one's life.

Why can't they just read the darn sequences and pick up on the fact that these people are worth listening to?

See my remarks above.

Comment author: komponisto 16 August 2010 11:10:39AM 7 points [-]

Thank you for your thoughtful reply; although, as will be evident, I'm not quite sure I actually got the point across.

(But why wouldn't they as well, if they're "smart"?)

It's not clear that willingness to listen to strange-sounding claims exhibits correlation with instrumental rationality,

I didn't realize at all that by "smart" you meant "instrumentally rational"; I was thinking rather more literally in terms of IQ. And I would indeed expect IQ to correlate positively with what you might call openness. More precisely, although I would expect openness to be only weak evidence of high IQ, I would expect high IQ to be more significant evidence of openness.

People who are willing to listen to strange-sounding claims statistically end up hanging out with UFO conspiracy theorists, New Age people, etc...

Why can't they just read the darn sequences and pick up on the fact that these people are worth listening to?

See my remarks above.

The point of my comment was that reading his writings reveals a huge difference between Eliezer and UFO conspiracy theorists, a difference that should be more than noticeable to anyone with an IQ high enough to be in graduate school in mathematics. Yes, of course, if all you know about a person is that they make strange claims, then you should by default assume they're a UFO/New Age type. But I submit that the fact that Eliezer has written things like these decisively entitles him to a pass on that particular inference, and anyone who doesn't grant it to him just isn't very discriminating.

Comment author: multifoliaterose 16 August 2010 12:04:13PM *  11 points [-]

And I would indeed expect IQ to correlate positively with what you might call openness.

My own experience is that the correlation is not very high. Most of the people who I've met who are as smart as me (e.g. in the sense of having high IQ) are not nearly as open as I am.

I didn't realize at all that by "smart" you meant "instrumentally rational";

I did not intend to equate intelligence with instrumental rationality. The reason why I mentioned instrumental rationality is that ultimately what matters is to get people with high instrumental rationality (whether they're open minded or not) interested in existential risk.

My point is that people who are closed minded should not be barred from consideration as potentially useful existential risk researchers, that although people are being irrational to dismiss Eliezer as fast as they do, that doesn't mean that they're holistically irrational. My own experience has been that my openness has both benefits and drawbacks.

The point of my comment was that reading his writings reveals a huge difference between Eliezer and UFO conspiracy theorists, a difference that should be more than noticeable to anyone with an IQ high enough to be in graduate school in mathematics.

Math grad students can see a huge difference between Eliezer and UFO conspiracy theorists - they recognize that Eliezer's intellectually sophisticated. They're still biased to dismiss him out of hand. See bentram's comment

Edit: You might wonder where the bias to dismiss Eliezer comes from. I think it comes mostly from conformity, which is, sadly, very high even among very smart people.

Comment author: komponisto 16 August 2010 12:33:25PM *  4 points [-]

My point is that people who are closed minded should not be barred from consideration as potentially useful existential risk researchers

You may be right about this; perhaps Eliezer should in fact work on his PR skills. At the same time, we shouldn't underestimate the difficulty of "recruiting" folks who are inclined to be conformists; unless there's a major change in the general sanity level of the population, x-risk talk is inevitably going to sound "weird".

Math grad students can see a huge difference between Eliezer and UFO conspiracy theorists - they recognize that Eliezer's intellectually sophisticated. They're still biased to dismiss him out of hand

This is a problem; no question about it.

Comment author: multifoliaterose 16 August 2010 12:39:14PM *  6 points [-]

At the same time we shouldn't underestimate the difficulty of "recruiting" folks who are inclined to be conformists; unless there's a major change in the general sanity level of the population, x-risk talk is inevitably going to sound "weird".

I agree with this. It's all a matter of degree. Maybe at present one has to be in the top 1% of the population in nonconformity to be interested in existential risk and with better PR one could reduce the level of nonconformity required to the top 5% level.

(I don't know whether these numbers are right, but this is the sort of thing that I have in mind - I find it very likely that there are people who are nonconformist enough to potentially be interested in existential risk but too conformist to take it seriously unless the people who are involved seem highly credible.)

Comment author: wedrifid 16 August 2010 12:52:27PM 0 points [-]

Edit: You might wonder where the bias to dismiss Eliezer comes from. I think it comes mostly from conformity, which is, sadly, very high even among very smart people.

I would perhaps expand 'conformity' to include neighbouring social factors - in-group/outgroup, personal affiliation/alliances, territorialism, etc.

Comment author: multifoliaterose 16 August 2010 12:23:40PM 5 points [-]

One more point - though I could immediately recognize that there's something important to some of what Eliezer says, the fact that he makes outlandish claims did make me take longer to get around to thinking seriously about existential risk. This is because of a factor that I mention in my post which I quote below.

There is also a social effect which compounds the issue which I just mentioned. The issue which I just mentioned makes people who are not directly influenced by the issue that I just mentioned less likely to think seriously about existential risk on account of their desire to avoid being perceived as associated with claims that people find uncredible.

I'm not proud that I'm so influenced, but I'm only human. I find it very plausible that there are others like me.

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