You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

RichardKennaway comments on Steelmanning MIRI critics - Less Wrong Discussion

6 Post author: fowlertm 19 August 2014 03:14AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (67)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: RichardKennaway 21 August 2014 12:37:26PM 0 points [-]

Between outside view, Dunning-Krueger, and rhetorical questions about biases with no attempt to provide answers to them, you've built a schema for arguing against anything at all without the burden of bringing evidence to the table. I guess evidence would be the dreaded inside view, although that doesn't stop you demanding it from the other side. Bostrom's recent book? The arguments in the Sequences? No, that doesn't count, it's not exceptional enough, and besides, Dunning-Krueger means no-one ever knows they're wrong, and (contd. p.94).

Maybe a better name for "outside view" would be "spectator's view", or "armchair view".

Comment author: V_V 21 August 2014 01:46:22PM *  1 point [-]

Between outside view, Dunning-Krueger, and rhetorical questions about biases with no attempt to provide answers to them, you've built a schema for arguing against anything at all without the burden of bringing evidence to the table.

I don't think so. Try to use this scheme to argue against, say, quantum mechanics.

Bostrom's recent book? The arguments in the Sequences? No, that doesn't count, it's not exceptional enough

I haven't read Bostrom's recent book. Given that he's a guy who takes the simulation hypothesis seriously, I'd don't expect much valuable insight from him, but I could be wrong of course. If you think he has some substatially novel strong argument, feel free to point it out to me.

The Sequences discuss cryonics using weak arguments (e.g. the hard drive analogy). AFAIK they don't focus on intelligence explosion.
I think that Yudkowsky/Muehlhauser/MIRI argument for intelligence explosion is Good's argument, variously expanded and articulated in the Yudkowsky/Hanson debate. Needless to say, I don't find this line of argument very convincing.
Again, feel free to refer me to any strong argument that I might be missing.