Sam FM

I interpreted this concept of wholesomeness to be a least somewhat objective, but perhaps that's not the intention.

Could you clarify how much wholesomeness is a subjective property relative to one's values, vs being a more objective property that would hold constant under different values?

For example, say I lay out a business plan use X natural resources to build Y buildings, that will be used for Z purpose. Would you expect to be able to rate my wholesomeness without knowing how much I value things like nature, humanity, industrial progress, rural/urban lifestyle, etc?
(assuming this business plan only covers some of these things, because considering all things isn't possible)

I think this is more of a disagreement on messaging than a disagreement on facts.

I don't see anyone disputing the "the AI is about as unpredictable as weather" claim, but it's quite a stretch to summarize that as "we have no idea how the AI works."

I understand that abbreviated and exaggerated messaging can be optimal for public messaging, but I don't think there's enough clarification in this post between direct in-group claims and examples of public messaging.

I would break this into three parts, to avoid misunderstandings from poorly contextualized language:
1. What is our level of understanding of AIs?
2. What is the general public's expectation of our level of understanding?
3. What's the best messaging to resolve this probable overestimation?

I think it’s important to recognize that there are in fact nontrivial things that can be done with increased aural discernment. You might notice subtleties of emotional expression, or small choices in musical interpretation that aren’t perceptible to a novice listener.

If you assume there are only trivial benefits to increased aural discernment, then of course the discussion falls apart. The drawbacks of finding amateur music off-putting aren’t trivial, so aural discernment would just be a simple loss in utility.

Sure, there may be larger obvious benefits to wearing glasses than training your musical ear, but it’s arguably just a matter of degree. To me, this is the point of the parallel here: to consider how both rectifying impaired fidelity of perception and increasing beyond typical fidelity of perception are both examples of a difficult-to-calculate pattern of utility changes.

What's supposed to happen with this sentence, cognitively speaking, is that you read the sentence, slot it into a preexisting model of how deterrence and red lines work.

I think it’s a mistake to qualify this interpretation as an example of following decoupling norms. Deterrence and red lines aren’t mentioned in Eliezer’s comment at all; they’re just extra context that you’ve decided to fill in. That’s generally what people do when they read things under contextualizing norms. Interpreting this comment as a suggestion to consider initiating a nuclear exchange is also a contextualized reading, just with a different context filled in.

A highly-decoupled reading, by contrast, would simply interpret “some risk of nuclear exchange” as, well, some unquantified/unspecified risk.

This post doesn't convince me away from the "tautological" objection mentioned at the end.

Caplan is presenting a contrarian position: "Standard signaling models are incorrect. The true cost of making friends is astronomically lower than what most people think it is." It's an intriguing take, but what are those actual and perceived costs?

To me, it's borderline ridiculous to simplify the costs down to "impulse control." Making friends is often difficult, complicated, and at times genuinely risky. It takes so much more effort and commitment than simply saying hello with a smile. Even for the "sincerely friendly" people who have good social intuitions, there's clearly an opportunity cost to having friends.

I'd be interested in an analysis of the perceived vs actual costs of friendship, but I don't see any of that explored in detail here. Even the core claim that "people are impulsive" doesn't seem particularly well supported.
 

Yeah, I think there’s an important distinction to make in the intent of the speaker saying this remark. Sometimes it’s intended as evidence the argument is wrong, and yes, that’s a dirty rhetorical trick. But as you’ve listed here, there are several motivations to give this response as a criticism of someone’s genuinely bad/harmful persuasion tactics.

So I guess when hearing this, it’s worth taking a moment to check whether the speaker is using fallacious rhetoric, or attempting to give helpful social advice. (And then, accordingly, “go for the throat,” or kindly thank them for the presentation feedback.)

Agreed.

It seems like the moral of this parable should be “don’t make foolish, incoherent hedges” — however, the final explanations given by Eternidad don’t touch on this at all. I would be more satisfied by this parable if the concluding explanations focused on the problems of naive data aggregation.

The “three reasons” given are useful ideas, but the king’s decision in this story is foolish even if this scenario was all three: a closed game, an iterated game, and only a betting situation. (Just imagine betting on a hundred coin flips that the coin will land on its edge every time.)