I feel some twinge of monkey regret at something like the … unilateral disarmament? … of the title change, since you’re using a strictly truer and less-manipulative phrasing that will be weaker in practice given others’ refusal to follow suit. Feels a bit like you’re hitting “cooperate” in a world where I strongly predict others will continue to hit “defect.”
but
I do indeed greatly prefer the world where both sides use this superior language, so an additional +1 for being-the-change.
(I think a lot of confusion and conflict would’ve been avoided in the first place if more people habitually said true and defensible things like “Sure does seem to me like MIRI gave up” rather than much shakier things like “MIRI gave up”.)
One of my reasons here is that a pet peeve of mine is people using the word “obviously” as a rhetorical bludgeon, and upon reflection it felt particularly bad to me to have used it.
I actually do think it’s obvious—like, you have to believe like four false things at once in order to get there, several of which are explicitly disclaimed in the very posts people are mainly citing as evidence for “MIRI gave up” (and others of which are disclaimed in the comments).
You have to miss the part where Eliezer said that “dignity” denotes working to try to reduce the probability of existential catastrophe.
Separately, you have to either assume that the title of the post isn’t an April Fool’s joke (even though it doesn’t make sense, because “Death With Dignity” is not a strategy??), or you have to otherwise forget that other people work at MIRI who are not Eliezer.
You have to assume that all the recent LW write-ups by Eliezer, Nate, and other MIRI people are just stuff we’re doing for fun because we like spending our time that way, as opposed to attempts to reduce p(doom).
You have to falsely believe that a version of Eliezer and/or MIRI that had high p(doom) would immediately give up for that reason (e.g., because you’d give up in that circumstance); or you have to believe that a version of Eliezer or MIRI that was feeling sad or burnt out would give up.
You probably have to have false beliefs about the amount of actual technical research MIRI’s doing, given that we were doing a lot less in e.g. 2014? Unless the idea is that doing research while sad means that you’ve given up, but doing research while happy means that you haven’t given up.
You probably have to have false beliefs about MIRI’s counterfactuals? “Giving up” not only suggests that we aren’t doing anything now; it suggests we aren’t trying to find high-impact stuff to do, and wouldn’t jump on an opportunity to do a high-impact thing if we knew of one. “GiveDirectly is pausing most of their donations to re-evaluate its strategy and figure out what to do next, because they’ve realized the thing they were doing wasn’t cost-effectively getting money into poor people’s” is very different from “GiveDirectly has given up on trying to alleviate poverty”.
You have to… misunderstand something sort of fundamental about MIRI’s spirit? And probably misunderstand things about how doomy we already were in 2017, etc.
My main hesitation is that “giving up” is in quotation marks in the title, which in some contexts can signify scare quotes or jargon; I think it’s obvious that MIRI hasn’t given up, but maybe someone has a very nonstandard meaning of “gave up” (e.g., ‘has no object-level strategy they’re particularly bought into at the organizational level, and feels pessimistic about finding such a strategy’) that is either true, or false for non-obvious reasons.
On the other hand, including “IMO” and the question mark addressed this in my books.
If we can bid for long titles, I like: MIRI isn’t “giving up” (obviously so, IMO, as I understand that phrase?)
Yeah, it did feel obvious to me (for largely the reasons you state), and it felt like there was something important about popping the bubble of “if you actually think about it it doesn’t make sense, even if it sure feels true”.
But, a) I do think there is something anti-epistemically bludgeony about saying “obviously” (although I agree the “IMO?” softened it), b) at least some smart thoughtful people seem to earnestly define “giving up” differently from me (even though I still feel like something fishy was going on with their thought process)
I feel some twinge of monkey regret at something like the … unilateral disarmament? … of the title change, since you’re using a strictly truer and less-manipulative phrasing that will be weaker in practice given others’ refusal to follow suit. Feels a bit like you’re hitting “cooperate” in a world where I strongly predict others will continue to hit “defect.”
but
I do indeed greatly prefer the world where both sides use this superior language, so an additional +1 for being-the-change.
(I think a lot of confusion and conflict would’ve been avoided in the first place if more people habitually said true and defensible things like “Sure does seem to me like MIRI gave up” rather than much shakier things like “MIRI gave up”.)
One of my reasons here is that a pet peeve of mine is people using the word “obviously” as a rhetorical bludgeon, and upon reflection it felt particularly bad to me to have used it.
I actually do think it’s obvious—like, you have to believe like four false things at once in order to get there, several of which are explicitly disclaimed in the very posts people are mainly citing as evidence for “MIRI gave up” (and others of which are disclaimed in the comments).
You have to miss the part where Eliezer said that “dignity” denotes working to try to reduce the probability of existential catastrophe.
Separately, you have to either assume that the title of the post isn’t an April Fool’s joke (even though it doesn’t make sense, because “Death With Dignity” is not a strategy??), or you have to otherwise forget that other people work at MIRI who are not Eliezer.
You have to assume that all the recent LW write-ups by Eliezer, Nate, and other MIRI people are just stuff we’re doing for fun because we like spending our time that way, as opposed to attempts to reduce p(doom).
You have to falsely believe that a version of Eliezer and/or MIRI that had high p(doom) would immediately give up for that reason (e.g., because you’d give up in that circumstance); or you have to believe that a version of Eliezer or MIRI that was feeling sad or burnt out would give up.
You probably have to have false beliefs about the amount of actual technical research MIRI’s doing, given that we were doing a lot less in e.g. 2014? Unless the idea is that doing research while sad means that you’ve given up, but doing research while happy means that you haven’t given up.
You probably have to have false beliefs about MIRI’s counterfactuals? “Giving up” not only suggests that we aren’t doing anything now; it suggests we aren’t trying to find high-impact stuff to do, and wouldn’t jump on an opportunity to do a high-impact thing if we knew of one. “GiveDirectly is pausing most of their donations to re-evaluate its strategy and figure out what to do next, because they’ve realized the thing they were doing wasn’t cost-effectively getting money into poor people’s” is very different from “GiveDirectly has given up on trying to alleviate poverty”.
You have to… misunderstand something sort of fundamental about MIRI’s spirit? And probably misunderstand things about how doomy we already were in 2017, etc.
My main hesitation is that “giving up” is in quotation marks in the title, which in some contexts can signify scare quotes or jargon; I think it’s obvious that MIRI hasn’t given up, but maybe someone has a very nonstandard meaning of “gave up” (e.g., ‘has no object-level strategy they’re particularly bought into at the organizational level, and feels pessimistic about finding such a strategy’) that is either true, or false for non-obvious reasons.
On the other hand, including “IMO” and the question mark addressed this in my books.
If we can bid for long titles, I like: MIRI isn’t “giving up” (obviously so, IMO, as I understand that phrase?)
Yeah, it did feel obvious to me (for largely the reasons you state), and it felt like there was something important about popping the bubble of “if you actually think about it it doesn’t make sense, even if it sure feels true”.
But, a) I do think there is something anti-epistemically bludgeony about saying “obviously” (although I agree the “IMO?” softened it), b) at least some smart thoughtful people seem to earnestly define “giving up” differently from me (even though I still feel like something fishy was going on with their thought process)
Kk!