On the one hand I see the argument. On the other hand, do you think the outcomes would be better in the worlds where EY never wrote about AGI risk, Bostrom never wrote Superintelligence, etc.? That instead of writing publicly he could have become the Hari Seldon of the story and ensured future history worked out well?
I think that whatever the arguments made here, my initial rejection does boil down to something like, “You don’t get to blame Einstein-1905 and the publishing of special relativity for Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the cold war. You don’t even get to blame the letter to FDR for that without carefully considering the wide scope of alternative timelines, like how maybe without centralization and military involvement you might get Szilard and Teller not stopping Fermi from publishing on graphite reactors.”
On the one hand I see the argument. On the other hand, do you think the outcomes would be better in the worlds where EY never wrote about AGI risk, Bostrom never wrote Superintelligence, etc.? That instead of writing publicly he could have become the Hari Seldon of the story and ensured future history worked out well?
I think that whatever the arguments made here, my initial rejection does boil down to something like, “You don’t get to blame Einstein-1905 and the publishing of special relativity for Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the cold war. You don’t even get to blame the letter to FDR for that without carefully considering the wide scope of alternative timelines, like how maybe without centralization and military involvement you might get Szilard and Teller not stopping Fermi from publishing on graphite reactors.”