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semianonymous comments on Muehlhauser-Wang Dialogue - Less Wrong
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and so on.
I think it'd be great if SIAI would not lath on the most favourable and least informative interpretation of any disagreement, in precisely the way how e.g. any community around free energy devices does. It'd be also great if Luke allowed for the possibility that Wang (and most other people whom are more intelligent, better educated, and more experienced than Luke) are actually correct, and Luke is completely wrong (or not even wrong).
The SIAI hasn't seemed to lath on any interpretations. The quote you make and all the interpretations you disagree with here have been done by commenters from the internet that aren't SIAI affiliated. The main thing Luke does that is a disservice to Wang is to post this conversation publicly, thereby embarrassing the guy and lowering his reputation among anyone who finds the reasoning expressed to be poor. But the conversation was supposed to be public and done with Wang's foreknowledge - presumably the arguments he used he actually wants to be associated with.
As Grognor said (in the quote you made) this particular conversation served to significantly lower the perceived likelyhood that those things are correct. And this could become a real problem if it happens too often. Being exposed to too many bad arguments for a position can serve to bias the reader in the opposite direction to what has been argued. We need to find representatives from "mainstream AI researchers" that don't make the kind of simple errors of reasoning that we see here. Presumably they exist?
2 of these 3 seems to be clearly the case. I'm unsure how you are getting more intelligent. Your point may be valid completely without the intelligence bit in that intelligent people can easily be deeply mistaken about areas they don't have much education, and one sees that not that infrequently. I'm am however curious how you are making the intelligence determination in question.
I'm unsure how you are not. Every single proxy for intelligence indicates a fairly dramatic gap in intelligence in favour of Wang. Of course for politeness sake we assume that they would be at least equally intelligent, and for phyg sake that Luke would be more intelligent, but it is simply very, very, very unlikely.
Can you state explicitly what proxies you are using here that you think indicate a dramatic gap?
Accomplishments of all kinds, the position, the likelihood that Wang has actually managed to move from effectively lower class (third world) to upper class (but I didn't look up where he's from, yet), etc.
What proxies do you think would indicate Luke is more intelligent? I can't seem to think of any.
Wang is accomplished to the point where one can immediately see it simply from glancing at his CV. However, accomplishments are only a rough measure of intelligence. By some metrics, Conscientiousness is a better predictor of success than raw intelligence, and by many metrics it is at least as good a predictor. Relying on academic success as a metric of intelligence isn't that reliable unless one is doing something like comparing the very top in a field. This also makes little sense given that Luke isn't a member of academia.
The claim about the third world is puzzling- Wang is Chinese (a fact that I would think would be obvious from his name, and took me two seconds to verify by looking at his CV) and China has never been considered third world, but rather was (when the term made more sense) second world. Moreover, this isn't just an argument over the meaning of words- China's GDP per a capita, average education level, average literacy level[1], or almost any other metric you choose is far higher than that of most countries classically considered to be in the third world.
Wang is also older than Luke. Wang finished his undergraduate degree in 1983, so he's approximately in his early fifties now. Pei Wang has therefore had far more time to accomplish things. So simply lining up their accomplishment levels doesn't work. (Although Wang clearly does have some accomplishments at a fairly young age, such as his thesis being selected for an Outstanding Dissertation Award by his university.)
I'm not sure why this question is being asked. I'm not aware of any either but it really doesn't have much to do with the matter at hand. You've claimed not just that Wang is likely to be more intelligent but that "Every single proxy for intelligence indicates a fairly dramatic gap in intelligence"- that requires a lot more than simply not having any obvious pointers for Luke to be smarter. Overall, I'm deeply unconvinced that either one is more intelligent. This isn't an issue of Luke being more intelligent. This is an issue of very little data in general.
[1] Some of the entries in that list are measured with different metrics, so this isn't a perfect comparison.
And, it must be noted, more time to crystallize intuitions formed based off the common sense from yesteryear.
That isn't relevant for the immediate issue of intelligence evaluation. It may be relevant to the general point at hand, but it sounds worryingly like a fully general counterargument.
It was a tangent of general interest to the progress of science. It could have been made purely as a relevant-to-intelligence-evaluation point if it were expanded by pointing to the well understood relationship of fluid and crystallized intelligence as they change over time.
It is merely something that tempers the degree to which the fully general argument "This person is more experienced and has collected more prestige therefore he is right" should be given weight. It would become a 'fully general counterargument' when people started using "nah, she's old" in a general context. When used specifically when evaluating the strength of the evidence indicated by prestige it is simply one of the relevant factors under consideration.
There is a world of difference between a minor point of general relevance to the evaluation of a specific kind of evidence and a "fully general counter-argument". The abuse of the former would be required for the latter charge to be justified - and that isn't the case here.
Good point.
If accomplishments is the only proxy you use to evaluate their relative intelligence, then it would have been all-around better if you had said "more accomplished" rather than "more intelligent", as it's more precise, less controversial, and doesn't confuse fact with inference.
It also does not present valid inference. Ideally, you're right but in practice people do not make the inferences they do not like.
If you wanted to present the inference, then present it as an inference.
e.g. "more accomplished (and thus I conclude more intelligent)" would have been vastly better than what you did, which was to just present your conclusion in a manner that would inevitably bait others to dispute it/take offense against it.