One notable difficulty with talking to ordinary people about this stuff is that often, you lay out the basic case and people go “That’s neat. Hey, how about that weather?” There’s a missing mood, a sense that the person listening didn’t grok the implications of what they’re hearing. Now, of course, maybe they just don’t believe you or think you’re spouting nonsense. But in those cases, I’d expect more resistance to the claims, more objections or even claims like “that’s crazy”. Not bland acceptance.
One notable difficulty with talking to ordinary people about this stuff is that often, you lay out the basic case and people go “That’s neat. Hey, how about that weather?” There’s a missing mood, a sense that the person listening didn’t grok the implications of what they’re hearing.
I kinda think that people are correct to do this, given the normal epistemic environment. My model is this: Everyone is pretty frequently bombarded with wild arguments and beliefs that have crazy implications. Like conspiracy theories, political claims, spiritual claims, get-rich-quick schemes, scientific discoveries, news headlines, mental health and wellness claims, alternative medicine, claims about which lifestyles are better. We don’t often have the time (nor expertise or skill or sometimes intelligence) to evaluate them properly. So we usually keep track of a bunch of these beliefs and arguments, and talk about them, but usually require nearby social proof in order to attach the arguments/beliefs to actions and emotions. Rationalists (and the more culty religions and many activist groups, etc.) are extreme in how much they change their everyday lives based on their beliefs.
I think it’s probably okay to let people maintain this detachment? Maybe even better, because it avoids activating antibodies. It’s (usefully) something that’s hard to change with argument. It will plausibly fix itself later, if there ever comes a time when their friends are voting or protesting or something.
I recently told my dad that I wasn’t trying to save for retirement. This horrified him far more than when I had previously told him that I didn’t expect anyone to survive the next couple of decades. The contrast was funny.
I recently told my dad that I wasn’t trying to save for retirement. This horrified him far more than when I had previously told him that I didn’t expect anyone to survive the next couple of decades. The contrast was funny.
I had a similar experience where my dad seemed unbothered by me saying AI might take over the world and some other day I mentioned in passing that I don’t know in how many years we have AI that is a better software engineer than humans, but 5-10 years doesn’t sound strictly impossible. My father being a software engineer found that claim more interesting (He was visibly upset about his job security). I noticed I’ve kinda downplayed the retirement thing to my parents, because implicitly I noticed at that point they might call me insane, but explicitly thinking about it, it might be more effective to communicate what is at stake.
There’s also AIsafety.info’s short-er form and long form explainers.
One notable difficulty with talking to ordinary people about this stuff is that often, you lay out the basic case and people go “That’s neat. Hey, how about that weather?” There’s a missing mood, a sense that the person listening didn’t grok the implications of what they’re hearing. Now, of course, maybe they just don’t believe you or think you’re spouting nonsense. But in those cases, I’d expect more resistance to the claims, more objections or even claims like “that’s crazy”. Not bland acceptance.
I kinda think that people are correct to do this, given the normal epistemic environment. My model is this: Everyone is pretty frequently bombarded with wild arguments and beliefs that have crazy implications. Like conspiracy theories, political claims, spiritual claims, get-rich-quick schemes, scientific discoveries, news headlines, mental health and wellness claims, alternative medicine, claims about which lifestyles are better. We don’t often have the time (nor expertise or skill or sometimes intelligence) to evaluate them properly. So we usually keep track of a bunch of these beliefs and arguments, and talk about them, but usually require nearby social proof in order to attach the arguments/beliefs to actions and emotions. Rationalists (and the more culty religions and many activist groups, etc.) are extreme in how much they change their everyday lives based on their beliefs.
I think it’s probably okay to let people maintain this detachment? Maybe even better, because it avoids activating antibodies. It’s (usefully) something that’s hard to change with argument. It will plausibly fix itself later, if there ever comes a time when their friends are voting or protesting or something.
I recently told my dad that I wasn’t trying to save for retirement. This horrified him far more than when I had previously told him that I didn’t expect anyone to survive the next couple of decades. The contrast was funny.
I had a similar experience where my dad seemed unbothered by me saying AI might take over the world and some other day I mentioned in passing that I don’t know in how many years we have AI that is a better software engineer than humans, but 5-10 years doesn’t sound strictly impossible. My father being a software engineer found that claim more interesting (He was visibly upset about his job security). I noticed I’ve kinda downplayed the retirement thing to my parents, because implicitly I noticed at that point they might call me insane, but explicitly thinking about it, it might be more effective to communicate what is at stake.