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Nick_Beckstead comments on Thoughts on the Singularity Institute (SI) - Less Wrong
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Comments (1270)
While I have sympathy with the complaint that SI's critics are inarticulate and often say wrong things, Eliezer's comment does seem to be indicative of the mistake Holden and Wei Dai are describing. Most extant presentations of SIAI's views leave much to be desired in terms of clarity, completeness, concision, accessibility, and credibility signals. This makes it harder to make high quality objections. I think it would be more appropriate to react to poor critical engagement more along the lines of "We haven't gotten great critics. That probably means that we need to work on our arguments and their presentation," and less along the lines of "We haven't gotten great critics. That probably means that there's something wrong with the rest of the world."
This. I've been trying to write something about Eliezer's debate with Robin Hanson, but the problem I keep running up against is that Eliezer's points are not clearly articulated at all. Even making my best educated guesses about what's supposed to go in the gaps in his arguments, I still ended up with very little.
Have the key points of that 'debate' subsequently been summarized or clarified on LW? I found that debate exasperating in that Hanson and EY were mainly talking past each other and couldn't seem to hone in on their core disagreements.
I know it generally has to do with hard takeoff / recursive self-improvement vs more gradual EM revolution, but that's not saying all that much.
I'm in the process of writing a summary and analysis of the key arguments and points in that debate.
The most recent version runs at 28 pages - and that's just an outline.
If you need help with grunt work, please send me a message. If (as I suspect is the case) not, then good luck!
Thanks, I'm fine. I posted a half-finished version here, and expect to do some further refinements soon.
Awesome, look forward to it. I'd offer to help but I suspect that wouldn't really help. I'll just wax enthusiastic.
This. Well, the issue is the probability that it's just gaps. Ultimately, its the sort of thing that would only constitute a weak argument from authority iff the speaker had very very impressive accomplishments. Otherwise you're left assuming simplest explanation which doesn't involve presence of unarticulated points of any importance.
A gapless argument, like math proof, could trump authority if valid... an argument with gaps, on the other hand, is the one that is very prone to being trumped.
In fairness I should add that I think Luke M agrees with this assessment and is working on improving these arguments/communications.
Agree with all this.