This seems pretty weird to me. Making a prediction with like 30+ people in the room, loudly and clearly is as close as you will usually ever get in this case.
Like sure, sometimes you happen to have a perfectly operationalized prediction on the public internet but “most people can’t make much of an update” is obviously not how this works. It’s clearly a lot of evidence! (I think just my testimony isn’t that much evidence, but like, if someone asked 2-3 people what they remember about what Eliezer has said on this, then I think the resulting quotes would be quite a bit of evidence)
EDIT: I wrote the comment below in response to the first paragraph only, pre-edit. With the new version I think we’re actually very close to agreement!
I don’t understand what seems absurd to you. I didn’t invent the concepts of hearsay, conflicts of interest, fallible human memory, hindsight bias, or selective reporting. I expect you agree that these are real phenomena. Here’s my best guess at our disconnect:
If I’d ever had the faintest, tiniest credence in Anthropic’s “Responsible Scaling Policy”, I’d probably feel pretty betrayed right now!
Claim: Yudkowsky never had the faintest, tiniest credence in Anthropic’s “Responsible Scaling Policy”.
My standard of evidence: minimal. People are allowed to believe what they want about what they believed in the past. Most beliefs occur in the privacy of one’s own head. Others are shared with friends, or verbally. Relatively few people share any of their beliefs in writing, and those that do share only a fraction of their beliefs. In any case, past beliefs are part of a person’s identity and life story, and accepting them as stated is good etiquette.
I ask only that you update, and not always be surprised in the same direction of “huh, Eliezer was right to call it empty”.
Claim: Yudkowsky is a great forecaster, give status and trust.
My standard of evidence: high. Preferably clear advance written predictions. I would also accept personally hearing and recalling clear advance verbal predictions, or contemporaneous reports of such advance verbal predictions. So for the 30+ people who were in the room, yeah, they should update.
My guess is there were a lot of people there who could testify to that as well.
Yes, if that happens then I will also update. This would also address my concerns of not having the exact prediction made, its confidence level, or the other predictions. The typical pattern with events two years ago is that ten witnesses recall ten slightly different versions of events.
I would only be able to make this update because I have basic trust in the people likely to be present at LessOnline 2024. There’s still lots of benefit in getting advance predictions on the record so that they are legible to others.
EDIT: I wrote the comment below in response to the first paragraph only, pre-edit. With the new version I think we’re actually very close to agreement!
Sorry about that! Glad to see we are mostly on the same page, I noticed my original comment was ambiguous, or that I maybe understood you and so edited it.
We should maybe make it so it’s easier to see when someone edits their comment after publishing. I like leaving responses quickly, but without auto-refresh or notifications on the receiving side it’s easy to write a many-paragraph response without notifying you.
This seems pretty weird to me. Making a prediction with like 30+ people in the room, loudly and clearly is as close as you will usually ever get in this case.
Like sure, sometimes you happen to have a perfectly operationalized prediction on the public internet but “most people can’t make much of an update” is obviously not how this works. It’s clearly a lot of evidence! (I think just my testimony isn’t that much evidence, but like, if someone asked 2-3 people what they remember about what Eliezer has said on this, then I think the resulting quotes would be quite a bit of evidence)
EDIT: I wrote the comment below in response to the first paragraph only, pre-edit. With the new version I think we’re actually very close to agreement!
I don’t understand what seems absurd to you. I didn’t invent the concepts of hearsay, conflicts of interest, fallible human memory, hindsight bias, or selective reporting. I expect you agree that these are real phenomena. Here’s my best guess at our disconnect:
Claim: Yudkowsky never had the faintest, tiniest credence in Anthropic’s “Responsible Scaling Policy”.
My standard of evidence: minimal. People are allowed to believe what they want about what they believed in the past. Most beliefs occur in the privacy of one’s own head. Others are shared with friends, or verbally. Relatively few people share any of their beliefs in writing, and those that do share only a fraction of their beliefs. In any case, past beliefs are part of a person’s identity and life story, and accepting them as stated is good etiquette.
Claim: Yudkowsky is a great forecaster, give status and trust.
My standard of evidence: high. Preferably clear advance written predictions. I would also accept personally hearing and recalling clear advance verbal predictions, or contemporaneous reports of such advance verbal predictions. So for the 30+ people who were in the room, yeah, they should update.
Yes, if that happens then I will also update. This would also address my concerns of not having the exact prediction made, its confidence level, or the other predictions. The typical pattern with events two years ago is that ten witnesses recall ten slightly different versions of events.
I would only be able to make this update because I have basic trust in the people likely to be present at LessOnline 2024. There’s still lots of benefit in getting advance predictions on the record so that they are legible to others.
Sorry about that! Glad to see we are mostly on the same page, I noticed my original comment was ambiguous, or that I maybe understood you and so edited it.
We should maybe make it so it’s easier to see when someone edits their comment after publishing. I like leaving responses quickly, but without auto-refresh or notifications on the receiving side it’s easy to write a many-paragraph response without notifying you.