Do you feel this conflicts with opinions expressed on your blog? If not, why not?
Your question demands a thoughtful reply. I don't have the time to do so right now.
Maybe the following snippet from a conversation with Holden can shed some light on what is really a very complicated subject:
I even believe that SIAI, even given its shortcomings, is valuable. It makes people think, especially the AI/CS crowd, and causes debate.
I certainly do not envy you for having to decide if it is a worthwhile charity.
What I am saying is that I wouldn't mind if it kept its current funding. Although if I believed that there was even a small chance that they could be building the kind of AI that they envision, then in that case I would probably actively try to make them lose funding.
My position is probably inconsistent and highly volatile.
Just think about it this way. If you asked me if I do desire a world state where people like Eliezer Yudkowsky are able to think about AI risks, then I would say yes. If you asked me how come I wouldn't allocate the money to protect poor people against malaria, then I can only admit that I don't have a good answer. That is an extremely difficult problem.
As I said, I am glad that people like you are thinking about those questions. And if I had to decide, if it was either you, thinking about charitable giving in general, or Eliezer Yudkowsky, thinking about AI risks, then I would certainly fund you.
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I think it would be worth a lot of investment (not 1% of GDP! but more than $500,000 a year) to decrease the likelihood of an agent coming about that is far smarter than humans and hostile to them.
That doesn't mean that I believe that "this is crunch time for the entire human species". If it was at me to allocate the worlds resources I would also fund David Chalmers to think about consciousness.
I wrote that I "would be pleased" if they were to keep their current level of funding. I did not say that I recommend people to contribute money to SIAI or that I would personally donate money.
I might change my mind at any time though. I am still at the beginning of the exploration phase.
My position is probably inconsistent and highly volatile.
Okay.
I was wondering - what fraction of people here agree with Holden's advice regarding donations, and his arguments? What fraction assumes there is a good chance he is essentially correct? What fraction finds it necessary to determine whenever Holden is essentially correct in his assessment, before working on counter argumentation, acknowledging that such investigation should be able to result in dissolution or suspension of SI?
It would seem to me, from the response, that the chosen course of action is to try to improve the presentation of the argument, rather than to try to verify truth values of the assertions (with the non-negligible likelihood of assertions being found false instead). This strikes me as very odd stance.
Ultimately: why SI seems certain that it has badly presented some valid reasoning, rather than tried to present some invalid reasoning?
edit: I am interested in knowing why people agree/disagree with Holden, and what likehood they give to him being essentially correct, rather than a number or a ratio (that would be subject to selection bias).