rwallace comments on Reflections on a Personal Public Relations Failure: A Lesson in Communication - Less Wrong

37 Post author: multifoliaterose 01 October 2010 12:29AM

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Comment author: jimrandomh 01 October 2010 04:36:14AM 4 points [-]

I feel like you still haven't understood the main criticism of your posts. You have acknowledged every mistake except for having an incorrect conclusion. All the thousands of words you've written avoid confronting the main point, which is whether people should donate to SIAI. To answer this, we need four numbers:

  1. The marginal effect that donating a dollar to SIAI has on the probabilities of of friendly AI being developed, and of human extinction
  2. The utilities of friendly AI and of human extinction
  3. The utility of the marginal next-best use of money.

We don't need exact numbers, but we emphatically do need orders of magnitude. If you get the order magnitude of any one of 1-3 wrong, then your conclusion is shot. The problem is, estimating orders of magnitude is a hard skill; it can be learned, but it is not widespread. And if you don't have that skill, you cannot reason correctly about the topic.

So far, you have given exactly one order of magnitude estimate, and it was shot down as ridiculous by multiple qualified people. Since then, you have consistently refused to give any numbers whatsoever. The logical conclusion is that, like most people, you lack the order of magnitude estimation skill. And unfortunately, that means that you cannot speak credibly on questions where order of magnitude estimation is required.

Comment author: rwallace 01 October 2010 01:25:15PM 6 points [-]

Setting aside for the moment the other questions surrounding this topic, and addressing just your main point in this comment:

The fact of the matter is that we do not have the data to meaningfully estimate numbers like this, not even to an order of magnitude, not even to ten orders of magnitude, and it is best to admit this.

Fortunately, we don't need an order of magnitude to make meaningful decisions. What we really need to know, or at least try to guess with better than random accuracy, is:

  1. The sign (as opposed to magnitude) of the marginal effect of spending a dollar on X.

  2. The relative magnitudes of the marginal effects of spending a dollar on X vs Y.

Both of these are easier to at least coherently reason about, than absolute magnitudes.