Part of the problem IMO is that both sides of that conversation seem to be mainly engaging in a debate over “yay Bengio” versus “boo Bengio”. That kind of debate (I call it “vibes-based meaningless argument”) is not completely decision-irrelevant, but IMO people in general are motivated to engage in it way out of proportion to its very slight decision-relevance†. Better to focus on what’s really decision-relevant here: mainly “what is the actual truth about reward tampering?” (and perhaps “shall I email the authors and bug them to rewrite that section?” or “shall I publicly complain?”, but probably not, that’s pretty rare).
†For example, it’s slightly useful to have a “general factor of Bengio being correct about stuff”, since that can inform how and whether one will engage with other Bengio content in the future. But it’s not that useful, because really Bengio is gonna be correct about some things and incorrect about other things, just like everyone is.
Yes, that happens a lot. The question is then maybe a differential one: What is the responsibility of the author in a political post vs. one that tries to improve the discourse?
Part of the problem IMO is that both sides of that conversation seem to be mainly engaging in a debate over “yay Bengio” versus “boo Bengio”. That kind of debate (I call it “vibes-based meaningless argument”) is not completely decision-irrelevant, but IMO people in general are motivated to engage in it way out of proportion to its very slight decision-relevance†. Better to focus on what’s really decision-relevant here: mainly “what is the actual truth about reward tampering?” (and perhaps “shall I email the authors and bug them to rewrite that section?” or “shall I publicly complain?”, but probably not, that’s pretty rare).
†For example, it’s slightly useful to have a “general factor of Bengio being correct about stuff”, since that can inform how and whether one will engage with other Bengio content in the future. But it’s not that useful, because really Bengio is gonna be correct about some things and incorrect about other things, just like everyone is.
Yes, that happens a lot. The question is then maybe a differential one: What is the responsibility of the author in a political post vs. one that tries to improve the discourse?