Thanks for the comment! I agree with this characterization. I think one of the main points I was trying to make in this piece was that as long as the prior for “amount of special sauce in the brain (or needed for TAI)” is a free parameter, the uncertainty in this parameter may dominate the timelines conversation (e.g. people who think that it is big may be basically unmoved by the Bio-Anchors calculation), so I’d love to see more work aimed at estimating it. (Then the rest of my post was an attempt to give some preliminary intuition pumps for why this parameter feels relatively big to me. But I think there are probably better arguments to be made (especially around whether TAI is in the space of current algorithms), and I’ll try to write more about it in the future.)
(BTW, I’m really sorry for the slow reply! I still haven’t figured out how to juggle replying to things on LW in a reasonable time frame with not getting too distracted by reading fun things whenever I log onto LW...)
Nice. I agree with your point about how uncertainty in this parameter may dominate timelines conversation. If you do write more about why the prior on special sauce should be large (e.g. whether TAI is in the space of current algorithms), I’d be interested to read them! Though don’t feel like you have to do this—maybe you have more important projects to do.
(No rush! This sort of conversation doesn’t have a time limit, so it’s not hurting me at all to wait even months before replying. I’m glad you like LW. :) )
Thanks for the comment! I agree with this characterization. I think one of the main points I was trying to make in this piece was that as long as the prior for “amount of special sauce in the brain (or needed for TAI)” is a free parameter, the uncertainty in this parameter may dominate the timelines conversation (e.g. people who think that it is big may be basically unmoved by the Bio-Anchors calculation), so I’d love to see more work aimed at estimating it. (Then the rest of my post was an attempt to give some preliminary intuition pumps for why this parameter feels relatively big to me. But I think there are probably better arguments to be made (especially around whether TAI is in the space of current algorithms), and I’ll try to write more about it in the future.)
(BTW, I’m really sorry for the slow reply! I still haven’t figured out how to juggle replying to things on LW in a reasonable time frame with not getting too distracted by reading fun things whenever I log onto LW...)
Nice. I agree with your point about how uncertainty in this parameter may dominate timelines conversation. If you do write more about why the prior on special sauce should be large (e.g. whether TAI is in the space of current algorithms), I’d be interested to read them! Though don’t feel like you have to do this—maybe you have more important projects to do.
(No rush! This sort of conversation doesn’t have a time limit, so it’s not hurting me at all to wait even months before replying. I’m glad you like LW. :) )