If we replaced “more advanced minds” with “minds that are better at doing very difficult stuff” or other reasonable alternatives, I would still make the (a) vs (b) distinction, and still say type (b) claims are suspicious.
The structural thing is less the definition of “what sort of mind” and more, instead of saying “gets more X”, saying “if process Z is causing X to increase, what happens?”. (call this a type C claim)
But I’m also not sure what feels sus about Type B claims to you, when X is at least pinned down a bit more.
Yeah it doesn’t necessarily disagree with it. But, framing the question:
seemed like those things were only in some sense false/confused because they are asking the wrong question.
I think “more advanced” still doesn’t feel like really the right way to frame the question, because “advanced” is still very underspecified.
If we replaced “more advanced minds” with “minds that are better at doing very difficult stuff” or other reasonable alternatives, I would still make the (a) vs (b) distinction, and still say type (b) claims are suspicious.
The structural thing is less the definition of “what sort of mind” and more, instead of saying “gets more X”, saying “if process Z is causing X to increase, what happens?”. (call this a type C claim)
But I’m also not sure what feels sus about Type B claims to you, when X is at least pinned down a bit more.