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I appreciate the credit and have sent you a message with my name, but I have to let you know that while Version 1.2 contains the fix, version 1.3 appears to have reverted back to the unfixed version as if it was made off of version 1.0 instead of 1.2.
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Students asked to defend AGI danger update in favor of AGI riskiness
Fixed.
Hi everyone. Thanks for taking an interest. I'm especially interested in (a) errors committed in the study, (b) what sorts of follow-up studies would be the most useful, (c) how the written presentation of the study could be clarified.
On errors, Michaelos already found one - I forgot to delete some numbers from one of the tables. That error has been fixed and Michaelos has been credited. Can anyone see any other errors?
On follow-up studies, lessdazed has suggested some. I don't know if we need to see what happens when nothing is presented on AGI; I think our "before" surveys are sufficient here. But trying to teach some alternative threat is an interesting idea. I'm interested in other ideas as well.
On clarity of presentation, it will be worth clarifying a few things. For instance, the point of the study was to test a method of persuasion, not to see what students would do with an unbiased presentation of evidence. I'll try to make that more obvious in the next version of the document. It would be good to know what other things might be misunderstood.
Does anyone else see a problem with the data table on page 22 of that PDF file?
The paper mentions this criteria on page 22:
Cells in the “change” column where I did not receive both a “before” answers and an “after” answer have been left blank.
Yet the data points at 15 8:30am, 16 8:30am, and 17 8:30am on page 22 all appear to have blank Before, present After, and a Change which is identical to the After column.
This also appears to affect the change column statistics on page 24, (8:30 a.m) and on page 26 (Both Classes Combined) For page 28, the people who only have one survey are dropped entirely, and I no longer see this problem.
Since he uses the statistics on page 28 for his conclusion, this may not change the conclusion, but I did want to point it out.
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Students asked to defend AGI danger update in favor of AGI riskiness
Thanks for pointing this out. There was in fact an error. I've fixed the error and updated the study. Some of the conclusions embedded in tables change; the final conclusions reported stay the same.
I've credited you on p.3 of the new version. If you want me to credit you by name, please let me know.
Thanks again!
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Geoff,
Of course you and I are pursuing many of the same goals and we have come to many shared conclusions, though our methodologies seem quite different to me, and our models of the human mind are quite different. I take myself to be an epistemic Bayesian and (last I heard) you take yourself to be an epistemic Cartesian. You say things like "Philosophically, there is no known connection between simplicity... and truth," while I take Occam's razor (aka Solomonoff's lightsaber) very seriously. My model of the human mind ignores philosophy almost completely and is instead grounded in the hundreds of messy details from current neuroscience and psychology, while your work on Connection Theory cites almost no cognitive science and instead appears to be motivated by folk psychology, philosophical considerations, and personal anecdote. I place a pretty high probability on physicalism being true (taking "physicalism" to include radical platonism), but you say here that "it follows [from physicalism] that Connection Theory, as stated, is false," but that some variations of CT may still be correct.
Why bring this up? I suspect many LWers are excited (like me) to see another organization working on (among other things) x-risk reduction and rationality training, especially one packed with LW members. But I also suspect many LWers (like me) have many concerns about your research methodology and about connection theory. I think this would be a good place for you to not just introduce yourself (and Leverage Research) but also to address some likely concerns your potential supporters may have (like I did for SI here and here).
For example:
I suspect it will be more beneficial to your organization to address such concerns directly and not let them lurk unanswered for long periods of time. That is one lesson I take from my recent experiences with the Singularity Institute.
BTW, I appreciate how many public-facing documents Leverage produces to explain its ideas to others. Please keep that up.
Hi Luke,
I'm happy to talk about these things.
First, in answer to your third question, Leverage is methodologically pluralistic. Different members of Leverage have different views on scientific methodology and philosophical methodology. We have ongoing discussions about these things. My guess is that probably two or three of our more than twenty members share my views on scientific and philosophical methodology.
If there’s anything methodological we tend to agree on, it’s a process. Writing drafts, getting feedback, paying close attention to detail, being systematic, putting in many, many hours of effort. When you imagine Leverage, don’t imagine a bunch of people thinking with a single mind. Imagine a large number of interacting parallel processes, aimed at a single goal.
Now, I’m happy to discuss my personal views on method. In a nutshell: my philosophical method is essentially Cartesian; in science, I judge theories on the basis of elegance and fit with the evidence. (“Elegance”, in my lingo, is like Occam’s razor, so in practice you and I actually both take Occam’s razor seriously.) My views aren’t the views of Leverage, though, so I’m not sure I should try to give an extended defense here. I’m going to write up some philosophical material for a blog soon, though, so people who are interested in my personal views should check that out.
As for Connection Theory, I could say a bit about where it came from. But the important thing here is why I use it. The primary reason I use CT is because I’ve used it to predict a number of antecedently unlikely phenomena, and the predictions appear to have come true at a very high rate. Of course, I recognize that I might have made some errors somewhere in collecting or assessing the evidence. This is one reason I’m continuing to test CT.
Just as with methodology, people in Leverage have different views on CT. Some people believe it is true. (Not me, actually. I believe it is false; my concern is with how useful it is.) Others believe it is useful in particular contexts. Some think it’s worth investigating, others think it’s unlikely to be useful and not worth examining. A person who thought CT was not useful and who wanted to change the world by figuring out how the mind really works would be welcome at Leverage.
So, in sum, there are many views at Leverage on methodology and CT. We discuss these topics, but no one insists on any particular view and we’re all happy to work together.
I'm glad you like that we're producing public-facing documents. Actually, we're going to be posting a lot more stuff in the relatively near future.