There is a potential instinctive association of protests with violence, riots, vandalism, obstruction of public property, crackpots/conspiracy theorists, et cetera. I don’t think it’s baseless to worry whether this association is strong enough, in a median person’s mind, for any protest towards an unknown cause to be instinctively associated with said negative things, with this first impression then lingering.
Anti-technology protests, in particular, might have an association with Unabomber-style terrorism, and certainly the AGI labs will be eager to reinforce this association. Protests therefore make your cause/movement uniquely vulnerable to this type of attack (via corresponding biased newspaper coverage). The marginal increase in visibility does not necessarily offset it.
It doesn’t seem obvious to me whether the net effects are positive or negative. Do you have theoretical or empirical support for the effects being positive?
Small protests are the only way to get to big protests
I don’t think so, and I’m not even saying small protests bad. I’m saying small protests might be bad without the appropriate groundwork.
My understanding is that I am far from the only person in the LW/EA spaces who has raised this genre of concern against the policy of protests. Plenty of people at least believe that other people have this association, which is almost equivalent to this association actually exiting, and is certainly some evidence in that direction.
Based on your responses, that hadn’t prompted you to make any sort of inquiry – look up research literature, run polls, figure out any high-information-value empirical observations of bystander’s reactions you can collect – regarding whether those concerns are justified?
That implies a very strong degree of confidence in your model. I’m only asking you to outline that model (or whatever inquires you ran, if you did run them).
The thing is there isn’t a great dataset— even with historical case studies where the primary results have been achieved, there are a million uncontrolled variables and we don’t and will never have experimentally established causation. But, yes, I’m confident in my model of social change.
What leapt out to me about your model was that is was very focused how an observer of the protests would react with a rationalist worldview. You didn’t seem to have given much thought to the breadth of social movements and how a diverse public would have experienced them. Like, most people aren’t gonna think PauseAI is anti-tech in general and therefore similar to the unabomber. Rationalists think that way, and few others.
most people aren’t gonna think PauseAI is anti-tech in general and therefore similar to the unabomber
My model of a normal person doesn’t think PauseAI protests are anything in particular, yes. My model of a normal person also by-default feels an instinctive wariness towards an organized group of people who have physically assembled to stand against something, especially if their cause is unknown to me or weird-at-a-glance — which “AGI omnicide” currently is. (Because weird means unpredictable, and unpredictable physical thing means a possible threat).
This wariness will be easy to transform into outright negative feelings/instinctive dismissal by, say, some news article bankrolled by an AGI lab explicitly associating PauseAI with environmental-activism vandals and violence. Doubly so in the current political climate, with pro-AI-progress people running the government.
The difference between protests and other attempts at information proliferation is that (1) seeing a protest communicates little information on the cause (compared to e. g. a flyer or something, which can be instantly navigated to an information-dense resource if it contains links), so you can’t immediately tell that the people behind it are thoughtful and measured and have expert support, instead of a chaotic extremist mob, (2) it is a deliberately loud physical anti-something activity, meaning the people engaging in it are interested in imposing their will on other people.
Like, look at how much mileage they got out of Eliezer’s statements about being willing to enforce the international AGI ban even in the face of nuclear retaliation. Obviously you can’t protect against all possible misrepresentations, but I think some moves can be clearly seen to be exposing too much attack surface for the benefits they provide.
Which, I’m not even saying this is necessarily the case for the protests PauseAI have been doing. But it seems like a reasonable concern to me. I would want to launch at least some organized inquiry to inform my CBAs, in your place.
If you want to get an informed opinion on how the general public perceives PauseAI, get a t-shirt and hand out some flyers in a high foot-traffic public space. If you want to be formal about it, bring a clipboard, track whatever seems interesting in advance, and share your results. It might not be publishable on an academic forum, but you could do it next week.
Here’s what I expect you to find, based on my own experience and the reports of basically everyone who has done this: - No one likes flyers, but get a lot more interested if you can catch their attention enough to say it’s about AI. - Everyone hates AI. - Your biggest initial skepticism will be from people who think you are in favor of AI. - Your biggest actual pushback will be from people who think that social change is impossible. - Roughly 1⁄4 to 1⁄2 are amenable to (or have already heard about!) x-risk, most of the rest won’t actively disagree but you can tell that particular message is not really “landing” and pay a lot more attention if you talk about something else (unemployment, military applications, deepfakes, etc.) - Bring a clipboard for signups. Even if recruitment isn’t your goal, if you don’t have one you’ll feel unprepared when people ask about it.
Also, protests are about Overton-window shifting, making AI danger a thing that is acceptable to talk about. And even if it makes a specific org look “fringe” (not a given, as Holly has argued), that isn’t necessarily a bad thing for the underlying cause. For example, if I see an XR protest, my thought is (well, was before I knew the underlying methodology): “Ugh, those protestors...I mean, I like what they are fighting for and more really needs to be done, but I don’t like the way they go about it” Notice that middle part. Activation of a sympathetic but passive audience was the point. That’s a win from their perspective. And the people who are put off by methods then go on to (be more likely to) join allied organizations that believe the same things but use more moderate tactics. The even bigger win is when the enthusiasm catches the attention of people who want to be involved but are looking for orgs that are the “real deal,” as measured by willingness to put effort where their words are.
Glad to hear it! If you want more detail, feel free to come by the Discord Server or send me a Direct Message. I run the welcome meetings for new members and am always happy to describe aspects of the org’s methodology that aren’t obvious from the outside and can also connect you with members who have done a lot more on-the-ground protesting and flyering than I have.
As someone who got into this without much prior experience in activism, I was surprised how much subtlety and counterintuitive best practices there are, most of which is learned through direct experience combined with direct mentorship, as opposed to written down & formalized. I made an attempt to synthesize many of the code ideas in this video—it’s from a year ago and looking over it there is quite a bit I would change (spend less time on some philosophical ideas, add more detail re specific methods), but it mostly holds up OK.
NEVER WRITE ON THE CLIPBOARD WHILE THEY ARE TALKING.
If you’re interested in how writing on a clipboard affects the data, sure, that’s actually a pretty interesting experimental treatment. It should not be considered the control.
Also, the dynamics you described with the protests is conjunctive. These aren’t just points of failure, they’re an attack surface, because any political system has many moving parts, and a large proportion of the moving parts are diverse optimizers.
What leapt out to me about your model was that is was very focused how an observer of the protests would react with a rationalist worldview. You didn’t seem to have given much thought to the breadth of social movements and how a diverse public would have experienced them. Like, most people aren’t gonna think PauseAI is anti-tech in general and therefore similar to the unabomber. Rationalists think that way, and few others.
I am confused, did you somehow accidentally forget a negation here? You can argue that Thane is confused, but clearly Thane was arguing from what the public believes, and of course Thane himself doesn’t think that PauseAI is similar to the Unabomber based on vague associations, and certainly almost nobody else on this site believes that (some might believe that non-rationalists believe that, but isn’t that exactly the kind of thinking you are asking for?).
I’m saying he’s projecting his biases onto others. He clearly does think PauseAI rhymes with unabomber somehow, even if he personally knows better. The weird pro-tech vs anti-tech dichotomy, and especially thinking that others are blanketly anti-tech, is very rationalist.
There is a potential instinctive association of protests with violence, riots, vandalism, obstruction of public property, crackpots/conspiracy theorists, et cetera. I don’t think it’s baseless to worry whether this association is strong enough, in a median person’s mind, for any protest towards an unknown cause to be instinctively associated with said negative things, with this first impression then lingering.
Anti-technology protests, in particular, might have an association with Unabomber-style terrorism, and certainly the AGI labs will be eager to reinforce this association. Protests therefore make your cause/movement uniquely vulnerable to this type of attack (via corresponding biased newspaper coverage). The marginal increase in visibility does not necessarily offset it.
It doesn’t seem obvious to me whether the net effects are positive or negative. Do you have theoretical or empirical support for the effects being positive?
I don’t think so, and I’m not even saying small protests bad. I’m saying small protests might be bad without the appropriate groundwork.
Sounds like you are saying that you have those associations and I still see no evidence to justify your level of concern.
My understanding is that I am far from the only person in the LW/EA spaces who has raised this genre of concern against the policy of protests. Plenty of people at least believe that other people have this association, which is almost equivalent to this association actually exiting, and is certainly some evidence in that direction.
Based on your responses, that hadn’t prompted you to make any sort of inquiry – look up research literature, run polls, figure out any high-information-value empirical observations of bystander’s reactions you can collect – regarding whether those concerns are justified?
That implies a very strong degree of confidence in your model. I’m only asking you to outline that model (or whatever inquires you ran, if you did run them).
The thing is there isn’t a great dataset— even with historical case studies where the primary results have been achieved, there are a million uncontrolled variables and we don’t and will never have experimentally established causation. But, yes, I’m confident in my model of social change.
What leapt out to me about your model was that is was very focused how an observer of the protests would react with a rationalist worldview. You didn’t seem to have given much thought to the breadth of social movements and how a diverse public would have experienced them. Like, most people aren’t gonna think PauseAI is anti-tech in general and therefore similar to the unabomber. Rationalists think that way, and few others.
My model of a normal person doesn’t think PauseAI protests are anything in particular, yes. My model of a normal person also by-default feels an instinctive wariness towards an organized group of people who have physically assembled to stand against something, especially if their cause is unknown to me or weird-at-a-glance — which “AGI omnicide” currently is. (Because weird means unpredictable, and unpredictable physical thing means a possible threat).
This wariness will be easy to transform into outright negative feelings/instinctive dismissal by, say, some news article bankrolled by an AGI lab explicitly associating PauseAI with environmental-activism vandals and violence. Doubly so in the current political climate, with pro-AI-progress people running the government.
The difference between protests and other attempts at information proliferation is that (1) seeing a protest communicates little information on the cause (compared to e. g. a flyer or something, which can be instantly navigated to an information-dense resource if it contains links), so you can’t immediately tell that the people behind it are thoughtful and measured and have expert support, instead of a chaotic extremist mob, (2) it is a deliberately loud physical anti-something activity, meaning the people engaging in it are interested in imposing their will on other people.
Like, look at how much mileage they got out of Eliezer’s statements about being willing to enforce the international AGI ban even in the face of nuclear retaliation. Obviously you can’t protect against all possible misrepresentations, but I think some moves can be clearly seen to be exposing too much attack surface for the benefits they provide.
Which, I’m not even saying this is necessarily the case for the protests PauseAI have been doing. But it seems like a reasonable concern to me. I would want to launch at least some organized inquiry to inform my CBAs, in your place.
If you want to get an informed opinion on how the general public perceives PauseAI, get a t-shirt and hand out some flyers in a high foot-traffic public space. If you want to be formal about it, bring a clipboard, track whatever seems interesting in advance, and share your results. It might not be publishable on an academic forum, but you could do it next week.
Here’s what I expect you to find, based on my own experience and the reports of basically everyone who has done this:
- No one likes flyers, but get a lot more interested if you can catch their attention enough to say it’s about AI.
- Everyone hates AI.
- Your biggest initial skepticism will be from people who think you are in favor of AI.
- Your biggest actual pushback will be from people who think that social change is impossible.
- Roughly 1⁄4 to 1⁄2 are amenable to (or have already heard about!) x-risk, most of the rest won’t actively disagree but you can tell that particular message is not really “landing” and pay a lot more attention if you talk about something else (unemployment, military applications, deepfakes, etc.)
- Bring a clipboard for signups. Even if recruitment isn’t your goal, if you don’t have one you’ll feel unprepared when people ask about it.
Also, protests are about Overton-window shifting, making AI danger a thing that is acceptable to talk about. And even if it makes a specific org look “fringe” (not a given, as Holly has argued), that isn’t necessarily a bad thing for the underlying cause. For example, if I see an XR protest, my thought is (well, was before I knew the underlying methodology): “Ugh, those protestors...I mean, I like what they are fighting for and more really needs to be done, but I don’t like the way they go about it” Notice that middle part. Activation of a sympathetic but passive audience was the point. That’s a win from their perspective. And the people who are put off by methods then go on to (be more likely to) join allied organizations that believe the same things but use more moderate tactics. The even bigger win is when the enthusiasm catches the attention of people who want to be involved but are looking for orgs that are the “real deal,” as measured by willingness to put effort where their words are.
Excellent, thank you. That’s the sort of information I was looking for.
Hmm. Good point, I haven’t been taking that factor into account.
Glad to hear it! If you want more detail, feel free to come by the Discord Server or send me a Direct Message. I run the welcome meetings for new members and am always happy to describe aspects of the org’s methodology that aren’t obvious from the outside and can also connect you with members who have done a lot more on-the-ground protesting and flyering than I have.
As someone who got into this without much prior experience in activism, I was surprised how much subtlety and counterintuitive best practices there are, most of which is learned through direct experience combined with direct mentorship, as opposed to written down & formalized. I made an attempt to synthesize many of the code ideas in this video—it’s from a year ago and looking over it there is quite a bit I would change (spend less time on some philosophical ideas, add more detail re specific methods), but it mostly holds up OK.
Multiple talented researchers I know got into alignment because of PauseAI.
NEVER WRITE ON THE CLIPBOARD WHILE THEY ARE TALKING.
If you’re interested in how writing on a clipboard affects the data, sure, that’s actually a pretty interesting experimental treatment. It should not be considered the control.
Also, the dynamics you described with the protests is conjunctive. These aren’t just points of failure, they’re an attack surface, because any political system has many moving parts, and a large proportion of the moving parts are diverse optimizers.
You can also give them the clipboard and pen, works well
I am confused, did you somehow accidentally forget a negation here? You can argue that Thane is confused, but clearly Thane was arguing from what the public believes, and of course Thane himself doesn’t think that PauseAI is similar to the Unabomber based on vague associations, and certainly almost nobody else on this site believes that (some might believe that non-rationalists believe that, but isn’t that exactly the kind of thinking you are asking for?).
?
I’m saying he’s projecting his biases onto others. He clearly does think PauseAI rhymes with unabomber somehow, even if he personally knows better. The weird pro-tech vs anti-tech dichotomy, and especially thinking that others are blanketly anti-tech, is very rationalist.