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Kaj_Sotala comments on [Link] AlphaGo: Mastering the ancient game of Go with Machine Learning - Less Wrong Discussion

14 Post author: ESRogs 27 January 2016 09:04PM

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Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 29 January 2016 11:11:58AM 6 points [-]

People here didn't say "oh experts said X, I am updating," they said "EY said X on facebook, time for me to change my opinion."

My reaction was more "oh, EY made a good argument about why this is a big deal, so I'll take that argument into account".

Presumably a lot of others felt the same way; attributing the change in opinion to just a deference for tribal authority seems uncharitable.

Comment author: IlyaShpitser 29 January 2016 11:13:19PM 2 points [-]

Say I am worried about this tribal thing happening a lot -- what would put my mind more at ease?

Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 30 January 2016 07:07:01PM *  0 points [-]

I don't know your mind, you tell me? What exactly is it that you find worrying?

My possibly-incorrect guess is that you're worried about something like "the community turning into an echo chamber that only promotes Eliezer's views and makes its members totally ignore expert opinion when forming their views". But if that was your worry, the presence of highly upvoted criticisms of Eliezer's views should do a lot to help, since it shows that the community does still take into account (and even actively reward!) well-reasoned opinions that show dissent from the tribal leaders.

So since you still seem to be worried despite the presence of those comments, I'm assuming that your worry is something slightly different, but I'm not entirely sure of what.

Comment author: Risto_Saarelma 31 January 2016 08:41:56AM 2 points [-]

One problem is that the community has few people actually engaged enough with cutting edge AI / machine learning / whatever-the-respectable-people-call-it-this-decade research to have opinions that are grounded in where the actual research is right now. So a lot of the discussion is going to consist of people either staying quiet or giving uninformed opinions to keep the conversation going. And what incentive structures there are here mostly work for a social club, so there aren't really that many checks and balances that keep things from drifting further away from being grounded in actual reality instead of the local social reality.

Ilya actually is working with cutting edge machine learning, so I pay attention to his expressions of frustration and appreciate that he persists in hanging out here.

Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 31 January 2016 10:12:04AM 0 points [-]

Agreed both with this being a real risk, and it being good that Ilya hangs out here.