This but to the extent that people reading him have not clearly already decided on their conclusion, it might be worth it to engage.
The purpose of a debate is not to persuade the debater, it’s to persuade the audience. (Modulo that this frame is more soldier-mindset-y than truth-seeking but you know what I mean.)
I do know what you mean, and still think the soldier mindset both here and in the post are counterproductive to the actual conversation.
In my experience, when I point out a mistake to Gary without attacking him, he is willing to.admit he was wrong, and often happy to update. So this type of attacking non-engagement seems very bad—especially since him changing his mind is more useful for informing his audience than attacking him.
I’ve engaged with Gary 3-4 times in good faith. He responded in very frustrating and IMO bad faith ways every time. I’ve also seen this 10+ times in other threads.
I have certainly seen that type of frustrating unwillingness to update on his part at times occur as well, but I haven’t seen indications of bad faith. (I suspect this could be because your interpretation of the phrase “bad faith” is different and far more extensive than mine.)
I think it’s just not worth engaging with his claims about the limits of AI, he’s clearly already decided on his conclusion
This but to the extent that people reading him have not clearly already decided on their conclusion, it might be worth it to engage.
The purpose of a debate is not to persuade the debater, it’s to persuade the audience. (Modulo that this frame is more soldier-mindset-y than truth-seeking but you know what I mean.)
I do know what you mean, and still think the soldier mindset both here and in the post are counterproductive to the actual conversation.
In my experience, when I point out a mistake to Gary without attacking him, he is willing to.admit he was wrong, and often happy to update. So this type of attacking non-engagement seems very bad—especially since him changing his mind is more useful for informing his audience than attacking him.
I’ve engaged with Gary 3-4 times in good faith. He responded in very frustrating and IMO bad faith ways every time. I’ve also seen this 10+ times in other threads.
I have certainly seen that type of frustrating unwillingness to update on his part at times occur as well, but I haven’t seen indications of bad faith. (I suspect this could be because your interpretation of the phrase “bad faith” is different and far more extensive than mine.)
I’m open to that and felt unsure the post was a good idea after I released it. I had some discussion with him on twitter afterwards, where we smoothed things over a bit: https://x.com/GaryMarcus/status/1888604860523946354
@Veedrac—if you want concrete examples, search for both of our usernames on twitter, or more recently, on bluesky.
I failed to find an example easily when checking twitter this way.
A few examples of being reasonable which I found looking through quickly; https://twitter.com/GaryMarcus/status/1835396298142625991 / https://x.com/GaryMarcus/status/1802039925027881390 / https://twitter.com/GaryMarcus/status/1739276513541820428 / https://x.com/GaryMarcus/status/1688210549665075201