I think personally I’m more grim and more traumatized than most people around here, and other people are too happy and not neurotic enough to understand how fucked alignment research is; and yet I have much longer timelines than most people around here.
Two notes:
I think this is a little evidence against the trauma model, but not much. Most forms of trauma don’t cause people to become AI doomers, just like most forms of trauma don’t cause most people to become alcoholics. I think the form of the trauma, and the set of coping mechanisms, and the set of life opportunities, all have to converge to result in this specific flavor of doom focus. (And I hypothesize that LW has long been an attractor for people who’ve been hit with that set!)
I don’t care that much about the trauma model in particular. I should have been clearer in the OP. What I meant was more like, “Gosh it sure seems to me that fixating on doom seems to be a drive independent of truth. Keeps happening all over the place. Sure looks like that’s maybe happening here too. That seems important.” The trauma thing was meant to both (a) highlight the type of phenomenon I’m talking about and (b) give an example of a loosely gearsy mechanism for producing it. I think you’re offering a slightly different model — which is great! I think they could be empirically distinguished (and aren’t mutually exclusive, and the whole scene is probably multifaceted).
Two notes:
I think this is a little evidence against the trauma model, but not much. Most forms of trauma don’t cause people to become AI doomers, just like most forms of trauma don’t cause most people to become alcoholics. I think the form of the trauma, and the set of coping mechanisms, and the set of life opportunities, all have to converge to result in this specific flavor of doom focus. (And I hypothesize that LW has long been an attractor for people who’ve been hit with that set!)
I don’t care that much about the trauma model in particular. I should have been clearer in the OP. What I meant was more like, “Gosh it sure seems to me that fixating on doom seems to be a drive independent of truth. Keeps happening all over the place. Sure looks like that’s maybe happening here too. That seems important.” The trauma thing was meant to both (a) highlight the type of phenomenon I’m talking about and (b) give an example of a loosely gearsy mechanism for producing it. I think you’re offering a slightly different model — which is great! I think they could be empirically distinguished (and aren’t mutually exclusive, and the whole scene is probably multifaceted).
Overall I like your comment.