First of all, I think anecdotal evidence from personal experience with people IRL is always extraordinarily compelling. When, for instance, I go onsite with a client, or when I go to a workshop and do research with people, I feel that I've been vastly more productive per hour than I am when I'm on my own. The standard startup advice is always "talk to customers/users." Talking face to face with the people who do a thing has outsized power in teaching you about the thing.
On the other hand, some of this impression can be illusion. Social reality is strong. Being around people IRL might make you feel like you're learning a lot very fast, but it might just be fairy glamor. Eyewitness accounts are famously unreliable testimony in court.
Basically, how much is it right to update on "I met some people who actually worked on national security, and I tried doing national-security stuff with them, and believe me, it is very serious and very hard and Trump would fuck it up"? How valuable is Eliezer's eyewitness testimony?
I think eyewitness testimony is probably one of the important correctives to news and polls and opinion pieces -- data is better than analysis on the m...
"People who voted for Trump are unrealistically optimists,"
I don't think that's really a fair charge.
Like, reading through Yudkowsky's stuff, his LW writings and HPMOR, there is the persistent sense that he is 2 guys.
One guy is like "Here are all of these things you need to think about to make sure that you are effective at getting your values implemented". I love that guy. Read his stuff. Big fan.
Other guy is like "Here are my values!" That guy...eh, not a fan. Reading him you get the idea that the whole "I am a superhero and I am killing God" stuff is not sarcastic.
It is the second guy who writes his facebook posts.
So when he is accusing us of not paying sufficient attention to the consequences of a Trump victory, I'm more inclined to say that we paid attention, but we don't value those consequences the way he does.
To spell it out: I don't share (and I don't think my side shares), Yudkowsky's fetish for saving every life. When he talks about malaria nets as the most effective way to save lives, I am nodding, but I am nodding along to the idea of finding the most effective way to get what you want done, done. Not at the idea that I've...
I'm a right winger and I totally disagree with this comment.
For me, conservatism is about willingness to face up to the hard facts about reality. I'm just as cosmopolitan in my values as liberals are--but I'm not naive about how to go about achieving them. My goal is to actually help people, not show all my friends how progressive I am.
In practice I think US stability is extremely important for the entire world. Which means I'm against giving impulsive people the nuclear codes, and I'm also against Hillary Clinton's "invade the world, invite the world" foreign policy.
Also: I don't like Yudkowsky, but I would like him and the people in his circle to take criticism seriously, so... could we maybe start spelling his name correctly? It ends in a y. (I think Yudkowsky himself is probably a lost cause, but there are a lot of smart, rational people in his thrall who should not be. And many of them will take the time to read and seriously evaluate critical arguments if they're well-presented.)
The foreign policy issue is coming up a lot. Apparently some people are arguing that Hillary may have been just as dangerous but for different reasons. I don't think myself an expert, so I'm using the 'look at what experts think' heuristic, somewhat like Eliezer.
We all know about the open letter from Republican national security experts.
In a relatively highly upvoted comment, hg00 points out that Eliezer omitted a similar letter from 88 retired high-ranking military officers.
hg00 omits that Clinton received 95 endorsements from retired military leaders (later 110).
The Atlantic points out that Mitt Romney received 500 endorsements in 2012. So both lists of endorsements may be historically low.
An article in the Washington Post cites surveys conducted by the Teaching, Research, and International Policy (TRIP) Project implying that most international relations experts (IR) positively regard Clinton's ability to conduct international relations, and that expert opinions are considerably less polarized than public opinion on each candidate's ability to conduct international relations:
...This survey, the ninth in a series of snap polls conducted by the Teaching, Research and International P
One flaw in this argument could be the assumption that "Clinton will maintain the Level B status quo" implicitly means "everything is fine now and therefor will continue to be fine for much the same reasons".
Eliezer views a Trump election as accepting a higher% risk of annihilation for essentially no reason. What if it's not no reason? What if all the Level B players are just wrong, irrationally buying into a status quo where we need to be engaging in brinksmanship with Russia and China and fighting ground battles in the Middle East in order to defend ourselves? You have to admit it's possible, right? "Smart people can converge en mass on a stupid conclusion" is practically a tenet of our community.
Hillary's campaign strategy has already shown this in principle. The obviously intelligent party elite all converged on a losing strategy, and repeatedly doubled down on it. It is reminiscent of our foreign policy.
Saying "we haven't had a nuclear exchange with Russia yet, therefor our foreign policy and diplomatic strategy is good" is an obvious fallacy. Maybe we've just been lucky. Shit, maybe we've been unlucky and we're having this conversation...
EY's central argument for level B incompetence was that Trump is creating ambiguity around which countries the US will defend against Russia, which could lead to war. Now, I agree that it would be wrong for a sitting president to create that ambiguity, but a presidential candidate has to ask those questions, otherwise the foreign policy can never change. As long as Trump arrives at a concrete policy over which countries the US will defend when he becomes president, I don't see that there is a problem.
I also don't see that the status quo is keeping the world all that safe, with a proxy war between the US and Russia in Syria.
Most substantial variations from the equilibrium are disasters, and if you put a high-variance candidate, someone whose main point is to subvert the status quo, in charge, then with overwhelming probability you're headed off to a cliff.
This is exactly the same as the argument for radical conservatism that the neoreactionaries make. Can you really believe that when the right challenges the status quo, priors are that they almost certainly wrong, but when progressives challenge the status quo they are almost certainly correct? This is extremely motivated reasoning and totally inconsistent.
And EY is all about finding the 'correct contrarians' and subverting the status quo on every other issue.
T̶o̶ ̶s̶u̶m̶m̶a̶r̶i̶z̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶a̶r̶g̶u̶m̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶m̶a̶d̶e̶ ̶a̶g̶a̶i̶n̶s̶t̶ ̶Y̶u̶d̶k̶o̶w̶s̶k̶y̶'̶s̶ ̶r̶e̶a̶s̶o̶n̶i̶n̶g̶:̶ (see my comment below on why the strikethrough)
Here's a summary of the original counter arguments that commenters have brought against Yudkowsky :
1 - Hillary is not necessary a better B player than Trump
2 - existing level B players might deluding themselves that they are making a good job at maintaining the status quo
3 - the local optima might be surrounded by a valley of worse equilibrium, but only if you care about the wellbeing of the whole world equally: if you care only for America's interest, then other equilibria might be more beneficial
4 - Trump was actually testing the waters with his moves, when elected he is going to revert to a saner, albeit different, policy
5 - he is weighting personal experience regarding level B too much, possibly such a level don't exists or its importance isn't too high
6 - Trump's move wasn't bad: Yudkwosky didn't take into account the support of other intellectuals in the same sphere
7 - the letter of those condemning Trump weren't motivated by real preoccupation with Trump declarations but by political enmity
I'll group the ...
Level B
The inversion of the usual ranking is weird. 'B' is usually worse than 'A' -- B list, B movies, plan B -- and here 'B' happens to be the supreme level of knowledge/operation...
Eliezer attended a pretty serious and wide diplomatic simulation game, that made him appreciate how difficult is to just maintain a global equilibrium between countries and avoid nuclear annihilation
Eliezer is being an idiot who forgot his own maxim to not rely on fictional evidence.
This was a game. Let me repeat this: game. I rather doubt its goals were to educate the ...
The election has made me consider one of the opening argument's for the neoreactionary movement a bit more seriously. I have doubts about the goodness of democracy.
Specifically, I don't think the average voter knows anything. About a third of voters can't identify the three branches of government and half don't know their state has two senators.. I've seen polls saying something like 40% of Republicans believe Barack Obama is not a U.S. citizen. I know many people personally who sincerely believe he is a secret Muslim.
But policy governing 300+ million peo...
I am half way through her book on her tenure as Secretary of State (Hard Choices) and I find her thinking just astonishingly pedestrian and unimaginative. Especially when she is trying to sound imaginative and creative.
Some of Yudkowsky's arguments were good, but he was still an embarrassment to the movement. If I recall correctly he posted maybe half a dozen Facebook statuses to the effect of "OMG Trump is THE WORST" before offering any sort of argument. Of course, this plays in to the idea that people who oppose Trump are bullies who care more about optics than substance.
And the evidence he offered us was filtered evidence. He mentioned that open letter, but he didn't mention this list of conservative intellectuals who endorse Trump or this list of general...
Some of Yudkowsky's arguments were good, but he was still an embarrassment to the movement. If I recall correctly he posted maybe half a dozen Facebook statuses to the effect of "OMG Trump is THE WORST" before offering any sort of argument. Of course, this plays in to the idea that people who oppose Trump are bullies who care more about optics than substance.
This style of argument seems unproductive.
The concrete accusation against Yudkowsky is apparently that he made several posts which mentioned his position on Trump before making the posts which laid out the reasoning behind his position. If that is a vice, it seems like a minor one.
It's possible that there was something specific about Yudkowsky's posts which made them worse, but there are no details given here, nor links which might allow someone to see what exactly he wrote and form their own opinion. Just an uncharitable paraphrase "OMG Trump is THE WORST". Uncharitable paraphrases are a fuel of unproductive political discussions, since they make it easy for people to talk past each other, get caught up in their preferred storylines, and collect reasons for disliking the other side.
The loaded terms (e....
1)
Unless I am much mistaken, the reason that no one has yet used Nuclear Weapons is Mutually Assured Destruction, the idea that there can be no victor in a nuclear war. MAD holds so long as the people in control of nuclear weapons have something to lose if everything gets destroyed, and Trump has grandchildren.
Grandchildren who would burn in nuclear fire if he ever started a nuclear war.
So I am in no way sympathetic to any argument that he's stupid enough to start one. He has far too much to lose.
2)
I believe that the sets of skills necessary to be a g...
Yudkowsky showed laughable naivete (or he was just playing dark arts) by citing a bunch of "foreign policy experts" who were against Trump. They were against Trump because they were neocons who might have a spot in a Clinton administration but certainly not in Trump's. (People who describe themselves as "experts" implying impartiality should never be taken at face value--most of the times they are advocates rather than experts.)
Hillary Clinton's state department pushed the "Arab Spring" policies which turned the middle east an...
Those both sound pretty valid to me. We don't know what we're getting with Trump, except that it would be astonishing if it was consistency and steadiness.
This sounds like really bad news on a 'level B', and I'm pretty sure that level is real.
Real life makes Dwarf Fortress look easy. Random actions lead to 'fun'.
To veer off topic: is there an analogous historical case to "uncontrolled third-world immigration" and if so what happened?
Well, given that his opponent has committed serious crimes, why shouldn't she be jailed? Or do you believe that ex-presidential candidates should be immune from prosecution?
Presidents shouldn't appoint special prosecutors for their political opponents. It's not their role to encourage the justice department to bring suits against political opponents.
Wait, I thought you were against nuclear proliferation.
The Iran deal that Obama did is good at preventing nuclear proliferation. Trying to stop the deal isn't good for nuclear proliferation.
The deal is...
I blocked Eliezer for gossiping too much and doing everything he can via gossip to manufacture support for his views, such as saying he knew Peter Thiel and Thiel wans't going to support Trump, I support both but he did not correct himself afaik and I blocked him because of excessively propagandizing their own views he did it to take the edge off Mr.Thiels endorsement. Julia Galef is another one that cannot stop the excessive posturing fashion show.
The situation in Syria is too important you guys, nothing else matters if we bring that one home we get our p...
Which may explain why Europe is currently being flooded with Muslim youths who are creating no go zones in European cities and engaging in large amounts of rape and other crimes.
Immigration will have a net positive effect on the economy of these countries , criminals are criminals and just as always would be prosecuted , also rape is not as damaging as it was for a population because of birth control , morning after pill and abortion , rapists are getting bred out at a fast rate
You seem to be implying that's a bad thing.
Ehm...channeling public money...
In other words, you know I'm right but don't want to admit it.
Absolutely , I would never contradict a person so in love with this guy that he'd be willing to die for him , have fun at the front while sane people stay at home
You're confusing Trump with Obama again.
No , you're the one confusing a guy who has great temperament , diplomacy skills and the ability to laugh at himself with a thin-skinned scammer con-artist whose only goal in life is to fuck the next man in the ass and get away with it (think of Trump University and all his other scams).....Who is more likely to start a war?
And where did this abundance of resources and inequality come from? Does the dirt north of the Mexican border have somehow magically generate wealth, whereas the dirt south of it tragically doesn't?
Having the most fertile soils in the entire world in the midwest , and having gargantous deposits of coal basically , also being such a large country and enjoying no customs duty or tariffs while the rest of the world had to deal with them and still deals with them today because of the political fragmentation on our planet
...And yet for some reason people buil
Ok dude whatever you say...you might want to head here you'll find many likeminded people..
I must say that it really warms my heart that there are people like you out there so that when this maniac brings us to some other useless war in the Middle East or South East Asia there would hopefully be plenty of suckers ready to enroll and go die for him so that mr.Trump would be able keep his immaculate record of never having to concede anything to the counterparty during a negotiation
The real existential risk is unclear result of elections and civil war in US.
It was real if Trump didn't win - he blackmailed not concede if lost. It still could happen in case of electoral college mess or callexit or protests go to far.
Such civil war would mean end of technological progress, or at least most beneficial part of it, like friendly AI research. Such civil war would have basically the same sides as 1861, geographically and in values.
I want to tell also if I were able to vote, I would vote against Trump, so my point was not to support Trump. My point is to help him to make his presidency be short and boring 4 years. Obama wants basically the same.
Personally I think Trump does increase the odds of human extinction occurring before the Singularity, and that stopping him should have been a priority for everyone with a voice. Basically, doing so was a really efficient way to do X-risk prevention at that time. So I don't have any problems with what S/A or yudkowsky have done whatsoever.
Sorry for the slightly clickbait-y title.
Some commenters have expressed, in the last open thread, their disappointment that figureheads from or near the rationality sphere seemed to have lost their cool when it came to this US election: when they were supposed to be calm and level-headed, they instead campaigned as if Trump was going to be the Basilisk incarnated.
I've not followed many commenters, mainly Scott Alexander and Eliezer Yudkowsky, and they both endorsed Clinton. I'll try to explain what were their arguments, briefly but as faithfully as possible. I'd like to know if you consider them mindkilled and why.
Please notice: I would like this to be a comment on methodology, about if their arguments were sound given what they knew and believed. I most definitely do not want this to decay in a lamentation about the results, or insults to the obviously stupid side, etc.
Yudkowsky made two arguments against Trump: level B incompetence and high variance. Since the second is also more or less the same as Scott's, I'll just go with those.
Level B incompetence
Eliezer attended a pretty serious and wide diplomatic simulation game, that made him appreciate how difficult is to just maintain a global equilibrium between countries and avoid nuclear annihilation. He says that there are three level in politics:
- level 0, where everything that the media report and the politicians say is taken at face value: every drama is true, every problem is important and every cry of outrage deserves consideration;
- level A, where you understand that politics is as much about theatre and emotions as it is about policies: at this level players operate like in pro-wrestling, creating drama and conflict to steer the more gullible viewers towards the preferred direction; at this level cinicism is high and almost every conflict is a farce and probably staged.
But the bucket doesn't stop here. As the diplomacy simulation taught him, there's also:
- level B, where everything becomes serious and important again. At this level, people work very hard at maintaining the status quo (where outside you have mankind extinction), diplomatic relations and subtle international equilibria shield the world from much worse outcomes. Faux pas at this level in the past had resulted in wars, genocides and general widespread badness.
In August fifty Republican security advisors signed a letter condemning Trump for his position on foreign policy: these are, Yudkowsky warned us, exactly those level B player, and they are saying us that Trump is an ill advised choice.
Trump might be a fantastic level A player, but he is an incompetent level B player, and this might very well turn to disaster.
High variance
The second argument is a more general version of the first: if you look at a normal distribution, it's easy to mistake only two possibilities: you either can do worst than the average, or better. But in a three dimensional world, things are much more complicated. Status quo is fragile (see the first argument), surrounded not by an equal amount of things being good or being bad. Most substantial variations from the equilibrium are disasters, and if you put a high-variance candidate, someone whose main point is to subvert the status quo, in charge, then with overwhelming probability you're headed off to a cliff.
People who voted for Trump are unrealistically optimists, thinking that civilization is robust, the current state is bad and variations can definitely help with getting away from a state of bad equilibrium.