Eliezer, that’s actually good news, as it sounds like whether you are an outlier or not is something else that you and Robin disagree on. Now it’s not 100% clear which exact position it is that you are potentially an outlier on, but I gather that it would include whether the chance that initially hand-coded AI may reach a dangerous potentiality within this century is closer to 70% or 1%. The good part is that your outlier-hood is probably something that could be empirically checked pretty easily, by asking a bunch of AI researchers.
Now, from the point of view of exploring how to overcome disagreement this is a bit of a cheat, like looking up the answer in the back of the book. It shouldn’t be necessary to be bothered by anything as mundane as the facts, in order to reach agreement on this issue or any other. But if it happens that facts are available, maybe you should use them. And since one of you would be surprised by the result, it might lead to progress on your larger and more important issue.
Eliezer, that’s actually good news, as it sounds like whether you are an outlier or not is something else that you and Robin disagree on. Now it’s not 100% clear which exact position it is that you are potentially an outlier on, but I gather that it would include whether the chance that initially hand-coded AI may reach a dangerous potentiality within this century is closer to 70% or 1%. The good part is that your outlier-hood is probably something that could be empirically checked pretty easily, by asking a bunch of AI researchers.
Now, from the point of view of exploring how to overcome disagreement this is a bit of a cheat, like looking up the answer in the back of the book. It shouldn’t be necessary to be bothered by anything as mundane as the facts, in order to reach agreement on this issue or any other. But if it happens that facts are available, maybe you should use them. And since one of you would be surprised by the result, it might lead to progress on your larger and more important issue.