shminux comments on How many people here agree with Holden? [Actually, who agrees with Holden?] - Less Wrong

4 Post author: private_messaging 14 May 2012 11:44AM

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Comment author: shminux 14 May 2012 11:32:48PM 2 points [-]

I maintain that this is a very hard problem.

Gotta start somewhere. I proposed a step that may or may not lead in the right direction, leveling a criticism that it does not solve the whole problem at once is not very productive. Even the hardest problems tend to yield to incremental approaches. If you have a better idea, by all means, suggest it.

Comment author: [deleted] 15 May 2012 12:00:26AM 1 point [-]

leveling a criticism that it does not solve the whole problem at once is not very productive.

I'm not trying to be negative for the sake of being negative, or even for the sake of criticizing your proposal--I was disagreeing with your prediction that CFAR will have an easier time of meeting GiveWell's requirements.

(I actually like your proposal quite a bit, and I think it's an avenue that CFAR should investigate. But I still think that the verification problem is hard, and hence I predict that CFAR will not be very good at providing GiveWell with a workable rationality metric.)