I think Oliver put in a great effort here, and that the two of you have very different information environments, which results in him reading your points (which are underspecified relative to, e.g., Daniel Kokotajlo’s predictions ) differently than you may have intended them.
For instance, as someone in a similar environment to Habryka, that there would soon be dozens of GPT-4 level models around was a common belief by mid-2023, based on estimates of the compute used and Nvidia’s manufacturing projections. In your information environment, your 7-10 number looks ambitious, and you want credit for guessing way higher than other people you talked to (and you should in fact demand credit from those who guessed lower!). In our information environment, 7-10 looks conservative. You were directionally correct compared to your peers, but less correct than people I was talking to at the time (and in fact incorrect, since you gave both a lower and upper bound—you’d have just won the points from Oli on that one if you said ‘7+’ and not 7-10’).
I’m not trying to turn the screw; I think it’s awesome that you’re around here now, and I want to introduce an alternative hypothesis to ‘Oliver is being uncharitable and doing motivated reasoning.’
Oliver’s detailed breakdown above looks, to me, like an olive branch more than anything (I’m pretty surprised he did it!), and I wish I knew how best to encourage you to see it that way.
I think it would be cool for you and someone in Habryka’s reference class to quickly come up with predictions for mid-2026, and drill down on any perceived ambiguities, to increase your confidence in another review to be conducted in the near-ish future. There’s something to be gained from us all learning how best to talk to each other.
I think Oliver put in a great effort here, and that the two of you have very different information environments, which results in him reading your points (which are underspecified relative to, e.g., Daniel Kokotajlo’s predictions ) differently than you may have intended them.
For instance, as someone in a similar environment to Habryka, that there would soon be dozens of GPT-4 level models around was a common belief by mid-2023, based on estimates of the compute used and Nvidia’s manufacturing projections. In your information environment, your 7-10 number looks ambitious, and you want credit for guessing way higher than other people you talked to (and you should in fact demand credit from those who guessed lower!). In our information environment, 7-10 looks conservative. You were directionally correct compared to your peers, but less correct than people I was talking to at the time (and in fact incorrect, since you gave both a lower and upper bound—you’d have just won the points from Oli on that one if you said ‘7+’ and not 7-10’).
I’m not trying to turn the screw; I think it’s awesome that you’re around here now, and I want to introduce an alternative hypothesis to ‘Oliver is being uncharitable and doing motivated reasoning.’
Oliver’s detailed breakdown above looks, to me, like an olive branch more than anything (I’m pretty surprised he did it!), and I wish I knew how best to encourage you to see it that way.
I think it would be cool for you and someone in Habryka’s reference class to quickly come up with predictions for mid-2026, and drill down on any perceived ambiguities, to increase your confidence in another review to be conducted in the near-ish future. There’s something to be gained from us all learning how best to talk to each other.