Reading so many reviews/responses to IABIED, I wish more people had registered how they expected to feel about the book, or how they think a book on x-risk ought to look, prior to the book’s release.
Finalizing any Real Actual Object requires making tradeoffs. I think it’s pretty easy to critique the book on a level of abstraction that respects what it is Trying To Be in only the broadest possible terms, rather than acknowledging various sub-goals (e.g. providing an updated version of Nate + Eliezer’s now very old ‘canonical’ arguments), modulations of the broader goal (e.g. avoiding making strong claims about timelines, knowing this might hamstring the urgency of the message), and constraints (e.g. going through an accelerated version of the traditional publishing timeline, which means the text predates Anthropic’s Agentic Misalignment and, I’m sure, various other important recent findings).
A lot of the takes I see seem to come from a place of defending the ideal version of such a text by the lights of the reviewer, but it’s actually unclear to me whether many of these reviewers would have made the opposite critiques if the book had made the opposite call on the various tradeoffs. I don’t mean to say I think these reviewers are acting in bad faith; I just think it’s easy to avoid confronting how your ideal version couldn’t possibly be realized, and make post-hoc adjustments to that ideal thing in service of some (genuine, worthwhile) critique of the Real Thing.
Previously, it annoyed me that people had pre-judged the book’s contents. Now, I’m grateful to folks who wrote about it, or talked to me about it, before they read it (Buck Shlegeris, Nina Panickserry, a few others), because I can judge the consistency of their rubric myself, rather than just feeling:
Yes, this came up during drafting, but there was a reasonable tradeoff. We won’t know if that was a good call until later. If I had more energy I’d go 20 comments deep with you, and you’d probably agree it was a reasonable call by the end, but still think it was incorrect, and we’d agree to let time tell.
Which is the feeling that’s overtaken me as I read the various reviews from folks throughout the community.
I should say: I’m grateful for all the conversation, including the dissent, because it’s all data, but it is worse data than it would have been if you’d taken it upon yourself to cause a fuss in one of the many LW posts made in the lead-up to the book (and in the future I will be less rude to people who do this, because actually, it’s a kindness!).
Reading so many reviews/responses to IABIED, I wish more people had registered how they expected to feel about the book, or how they think a book on x-risk ought to look, prior to the book’s release.
Finalizing any Real Actual Object requires making tradeoffs. I think it’s pretty easy to critique the book on a level of abstraction that respects what it is Trying To Be in only the broadest possible terms, rather than acknowledging various sub-goals (e.g. providing an updated version of Nate + Eliezer’s now very old ‘canonical’ arguments), modulations of the broader goal (e.g. avoiding making strong claims about timelines, knowing this might hamstring the urgency of the message), and constraints (e.g. going through an accelerated version of the traditional publishing timeline, which means the text predates Anthropic’s Agentic Misalignment and, I’m sure, various other important recent findings).
A lot of the takes I see seem to come from a place of defending the ideal version of such a text by the lights of the reviewer, but it’s actually unclear to me whether many of these reviewers would have made the opposite critiques if the book had made the opposite call on the various tradeoffs. I don’t mean to say I think these reviewers are acting in bad faith; I just think it’s easy to avoid confronting how your ideal version couldn’t possibly be realized, and make post-hoc adjustments to that ideal thing in service of some (genuine, worthwhile) critique of the Real Thing.
Previously, it annoyed me that people had pre-judged the book’s contents. Now, I’m grateful to folks who wrote about it, or talked to me about it, before they read it (Buck Shlegeris, Nina Panickserry, a few others), because I can judge the consistency of their rubric myself, rather than just feeling:
Which is the feeling that’s overtaken me as I read the various reviews from folks throughout the community.
I should say: I’m grateful for all the conversation, including the dissent, because it’s all data, but it is worse data than it would have been if you’d taken it upon yourself to cause a fuss in one of the many LW posts made in the lead-up to the book (and in the future I will be less rude to people who do this, because actually, it’s a kindness!).