I think it’d be great if SIAI would not lath on the most favourable and least informative interpretation of any disagreement
The SIAI hasn’t seemed to lath on any interpretations. The quote you make and all the interpretations you disagree with here have been done by commenters from the internet that aren’t SIAI affiliated. The main thing Luke does that is a disservice to Wang is to post this conversation publicly, thereby embarrassing the guy and lowering his reputation among anyone who finds the reasoning expressed to be poor. But the conversation was supposed to be public and done with Wang’s foreknowledge—presumably the arguments he used he actually wants to be associated with.
It’d be also great if Luke allowed for the possibility that Wang (and most other people whom are more intelligent, better educated, and more experienced than Luke) are actually correct, and Luke is completely wrong (or not even wrong).
As Grognor said (in the quote you made) this particular conversation served to significantly lower the perceived likelyhood that those things are correct. And this could become a real problem if it happens too often. Being exposed to too many bad arguments for a position can serve to bias the reader in the opposite direction to what has been argued. We need to find representatives from “mainstream AI researchers” that don’t make the kind of simple errors of reasoning that we see here. Presumably they exist?
When there is any use of domain specific knowledge and expertise, without a zillion citations for elementary facts, you see “simple errors of reasoning” whereas everyone else sees “you are a clueless dilettante”. Wang is a far more intelligent person than Luke, sorry, the world is unjust and there is nothing Luke or Eliezer can do about their relatively low intelligence compared to people in the field. Lack of education on top of the lower intelligence doesn’t help at all.
edit: I stand by it. I don’t find either Eliezer or Luke to be particularly smart; smarter than average blogger, for sure, but not genuises. I by the way score very high on IQ tests. I can judge not just by accomplishments but simply because I can actually evaluate the difficulty of the work, and, well, they never did anything that’s too difficult for IQ of 120 , maybe 125 . If there is one thing that makes LessWrong a cult, it is the high-confidence belief that the gurus are smartest, or among the smartest people on Earth.
Not sure about the real or perceived intelligence level, but speaking the same language as your partner in a discussion certainly helps. Having reasonable credentials, while not essential, does not hurt, either.
Oh, and my experience is that arguing with wedrifid is futile, just to warn you.
Oh, and my experience is that arguing with wedrifid is futile, just to warn you.
I don’t have any cached assessment of personal experience with arguing with shminux. In my evaluation of how his arguments with other people play out I have concluded that people can often mitigate some of the epistemic damage shminux does while trying to advocate his agenda. It is barely worth even considering that the reason to refute the specific positions shminux takes is anything to do with attempting to change shminux’s mind or directly influence his behavior—that would indeed be futile.
Replying directly to that sort of sniping would be appropriate even if the relevance were limited purely to being a follow up to the personal remark. However, in this case the more significant relevance is:
shminux has been the dominant player on this thread (and a significant player in most recent threads that are relevant). He has a very clear position that he used this conversation to express.
Wedrifid refuted a couple of points that shminux tried to make and, if I recall, was one of the people who answered a rhetorical question of shminux’s with a literal answer—which represents strong opposition to a point shminux wants to be accepted to the degree of being considered obvious.
The meaning conveyed by the quoted sentence from shminux is not limited to being specifically about stopping semianonymous from arguing with wedrifid. (After all, I don’t want the semianonymous account to argue with me and on the purely denotative level I would agree with that recommendation.)
Shminux conveying the connotation “wedrifid is irrational and should be ignored” is a way to encourage others to discount any refutations or contradictory opinions that wedrifid may have made or will make to shminux. In fact it is one of the strongest moves shminux has available to him in the context, for the purpose of countering opposition to his beliefs.
Instead of people taking shminux seriously and discounting anything wedrifid has said in reply I (completely unsurprisingly) think people would be better off taking wedrifid seriously and taking a closer look at just how irrefutable shminux’s advocacy actually is. After all, there is more than one reason why shminux would personally find arguing with wedrifid futile. Not all of them require shminux being right.
Wang is a far more intelligent person than Luke, sorry, the world is unjust and there is nothing Luke or Eliezer can do about their relatively low intelligence compared to people in the field.
This is both petty and ridiculous—to the extent that Wang’s work output can be considered representative of intelligence. Please do not move the discussion to evaluations of pure intelligence. I have no desire to insult the guy but raw intelligence is not the area where you should set up a comparison here.
The SIAI hasn’t seemed to lath on any interpretations. The quote you make and all the interpretations you disagree with here have been done by commenters from the internet that aren’t SIAI affiliated. The main thing Luke does that is a disservice to Wang is to post this conversation publicly, thereby embarrassing the guy and lowering his reputation among anyone who finds the reasoning expressed to be poor. But the conversation was supposed to be public and done with Wang’s foreknowledge—presumably the arguments he used he actually wants to be associated with.
As Grognor said (in the quote you made) this particular conversation served to significantly lower the perceived likelyhood that those things are correct. And this could become a real problem if it happens too often. Being exposed to too many bad arguments for a position can serve to bias the reader in the opposite direction to what has been argued. We need to find representatives from “mainstream AI researchers” that don’t make the kind of simple errors of reasoning that we see here. Presumably they exist?
When there is any use of domain specific knowledge and expertise, without a zillion citations for elementary facts, you see “simple errors of reasoning” whereas everyone else sees “you are a clueless dilettante”. Wang is a far more intelligent person than Luke, sorry, the world is unjust and there is nothing Luke or Eliezer can do about their relatively low intelligence compared to people in the field. Lack of education on top of the lower intelligence doesn’t help at all.
edit: I stand by it. I don’t find either Eliezer or Luke to be particularly smart; smarter than average blogger, for sure, but not genuises. I by the way score very high on IQ tests. I can judge not just by accomplishments but simply because I can actually evaluate the difficulty of the work, and, well, they never did anything that’s too difficult for IQ of 120 , maybe 125 . If there is one thing that makes LessWrong a cult, it is the high-confidence belief that the gurus are smartest, or among the smartest people on Earth.
Not sure about the real or perceived intelligence level, but speaking the same language as your partner in a discussion certainly helps. Having reasonable credentials, while not essential, does not hurt, either.
Oh, and my experience is that arguing with wedrifid is futile, just to warn you.
I don’t have any cached assessment of personal experience with arguing with shminux. In my evaluation of how his arguments with other people play out I have concluded that people can often mitigate some of the epistemic damage shminux does while trying to advocate his agenda. It is barely worth even considering that the reason to refute the specific positions shminux takes is anything to do with attempting to change shminux’s mind or directly influence his behavior—that would indeed be futile.
Upvoted for illustrating my point nicely. Thank you!
How is this relevant? semianonymous doesn’t seem to be in any risk of sinking some utility into an argument with shminux.
Replying directly to that sort of sniping would be appropriate even if the relevance were limited purely to being a follow up to the personal remark. However, in this case the more significant relevance is:
shminux has been the dominant player on this thread (and a significant player in most recent threads that are relevant). He has a very clear position that he used this conversation to express.
Wedrifid refuted a couple of points that shminux tried to make and, if I recall, was one of the people who answered a rhetorical question of shminux’s with a literal answer—which represents strong opposition to a point shminux wants to be accepted to the degree of being considered obvious.
The meaning conveyed by the quoted sentence from shminux is not limited to being specifically about stopping semianonymous from arguing with wedrifid. (After all, I don’t want the semianonymous account to argue with me and on the purely denotative level I would agree with that recommendation.)
Shminux conveying the connotation “wedrifid is irrational and should be ignored” is a way to encourage others to discount any refutations or contradictory opinions that wedrifid may have made or will make to shminux. In fact it is one of the strongest moves shminux has available to him in the context, for the purpose of countering opposition to his beliefs.
Instead of people taking shminux seriously and discounting anything wedrifid has said in reply I (completely unsurprisingly) think people would be better off taking wedrifid seriously and taking a closer look at just how irrefutable shminux’s advocacy actually is. After all, there is more than one reason why shminux would personally find arguing with wedrifid futile. Not all of them require shminux being right.
I guess that makes sense. It seems a bit weird, but so it goes.
This is both petty and ridiculous—to the extent that Wang’s work output can be considered representative of intelligence. Please do not move the discussion to evaluations of pure intelligence. I have no desire to insult the guy but raw intelligence is not the area where you should set up a comparison here.
Are you even serious?