These norms / rules make me slightly worried that disagreement with Eliezer will be conflated with not being up-to-speed on the Sequences, or the basic LessWrong material.
I suppose that the owners and moderators of this website are afforded the right to consider anything said on the website to be, or not to be, at the level of quality or standards they wish to keep and maintain here.
But this is a discussion forum, and the incentives of the owners of this website are to facilitate discussion of some kind. Any discussion will be composed of questions and attempts to answer such questions. Questions can implicitly or explicitly point back to any material, no matter how old it is. This is not necessarily debate, if so. However, even if it is, if the intent of the “well-kept garden” is to produce a larger meta-process that produces useful insights, then the garden should be engineered such that even debate produces useful results.
I think it goes without saying that one can disagree with anything in the Sequences and can also be assumed to have read and understood it. If you engage with someone in conversation under the assumption that their disagreement means that they have not understood something about what they are arguing about, then you are at a disadvantage in regards to a charitability asymmetry. This asymmetry carries the risk that you won’t be able to convince the person you’re talking to that they actually don’t understand what they are talking about.
I have, for most of my (adult) life (and especially in intellectual circles), been under the impression that it is always good to assume that whoever you are talking to understands what they are talking about to the maximum extent possible, even if they don’t. To not do this can be treated negatively in many situations.
I think it goes without saying that one can disagree with anything in the Sequences and can also be assumed to have read and understood it
This seems false as stated—some nontrivial content in the Sequences consists of theorems.
More generally, there are some claims in the original Sequences that are false (so agreeing with the claim may be at least some evidence that you didn’t understand it), some that I’d say “I think that’s true, but reasonable people can definitely disagree”, some where it’s very easy for disagreement to update me toward “you didn’t understand that claim”, etc. Possibly you agree with all that, but I want to state it explicitly; this seems extra important to be clear about if you plan to behave as though it’s not true in object-level conversation.
It depends on whether you think what I stated was closer to “completely false” or “technically false, because of the word ‘anything’.” If I had instead said “I think it goes without saying that one can disagree with nearly anything in the Sequences and can also be assumed to have read and understood it”, that might bring it out of “false” territory for you, but I feel we would still have a disagreement.
There are theorems in the Sequences that I disagree with Eliezer’s characterization of, like Löb’s Theorem, where I feel very confident that I have fully understood both my reading of the theorem as well as Eliezer’s interpretation of it to arrive at my conclusions. Also, that this disagreement is fairly substantial, and also may be a key pillar of Eliezer’s case for very high AI Risk in general.
My worry still stands that disagreement with Eliezer (especially about how high AI Risk actually is) will be conflated with not being up-to-speed on the Sequences, or about misunderstanding key material, or about misunderstanding theorems or things that have allegedly been proven. I think the example I gave is one specific case of something where Eliezer’s interpretation of the theorem (which I believe to have been incorrect) was characterized as the theorem itself.
My position that is regardless of whether or not you think all what I just said is preposterous and proof that I don’t understand key material, the norm(s) of good-faith assumption and charitability are still highly advisable to have. I generally believe that in most disagreements, it is possible for both parties to assume that the other party understands them well enough, just that they have assigned very different probabilities to the same statements.
These norms / rules make me slightly worried that disagreement with Eliezer will be conflated with not being up-to-speed on the Sequences, or the basic LessWrong material.
I suppose that the owners and moderators of this website are afforded the right to consider anything said on the website to be, or not to be, at the level of quality or standards they wish to keep and maintain here.
But this is a discussion forum, and the incentives of the owners of this website are to facilitate discussion of some kind. Any discussion will be composed of questions and attempts to answer such questions. Questions can implicitly or explicitly point back to any material, no matter how old it is. This is not necessarily debate, if so. However, even if it is, if the intent of the “well-kept garden” is to produce a larger meta-process that produces useful insights, then the garden should be engineered such that even debate produces useful results.
I think it goes without saying that one can disagree with anything in the Sequences and can also be assumed to have read and understood it. If you engage with someone in conversation under the assumption that their disagreement means that they have not understood something about what they are arguing about, then you are at a disadvantage in regards to a charitability asymmetry. This asymmetry carries the risk that you won’t be able to convince the person you’re talking to that they actually don’t understand what they are talking about.
I have, for most of my (adult) life (and especially in intellectual circles), been under the impression that it is always good to assume that whoever you are talking to understands what they are talking about to the maximum extent possible, even if they don’t. To not do this can be treated negatively in many situations.
This seems false as stated—some nontrivial content in the Sequences consists of theorems.
More generally, there are some claims in the original Sequences that are false (so agreeing with the claim may be at least some evidence that you didn’t understand it), some that I’d say “I think that’s true, but reasonable people can definitely disagree”, some where it’s very easy for disagreement to update me toward “you didn’t understand that claim”, etc. Possibly you agree with all that, but I want to state it explicitly; this seems extra important to be clear about if you plan to behave as though it’s not true in object-level conversation.
It depends on whether you think what I stated was closer to “completely false” or “technically false, because of the word ‘anything’.” If I had instead said “I think it goes without saying that one can disagree with nearly anything in the Sequences and can also be assumed to have read and understood it”, that might bring it out of “false” territory for you, but I feel we would still have a disagreement.
There are theorems in the Sequences that I disagree with Eliezer’s characterization of, like Löb’s Theorem, where I feel very confident that I have fully understood both my reading of the theorem as well as Eliezer’s interpretation of it to arrive at my conclusions. Also, that this disagreement is fairly substantial, and also may be a key pillar of Eliezer’s case for very high AI Risk in general.
My worry still stands that disagreement with Eliezer (especially about how high AI Risk actually is) will be conflated with not being up-to-speed on the Sequences, or about misunderstanding key material, or about misunderstanding theorems or things that have allegedly been proven. I think the example I gave is one specific case of something where Eliezer’s interpretation of the theorem (which I believe to have been incorrect) was characterized as the theorem itself.
My position that is regardless of whether or not you think all what I just said is preposterous and proof that I don’t understand key material, the norm(s) of good-faith assumption and charitability are still highly advisable to have. I generally believe that in most disagreements, it is possible for both parties to assume that the other party understands them well enough, just that they have assigned very different probabilities to the same statements.