You mention “defenses will improve” a few times. Can you go into more detail about this? What kind of defenses do you have in mind? I keep thinking that in the long run, the only defenses are either to solve meta-philosophy so our AIs can distinguish between correct arguments and merely persuasive ones and filter out the latter for us (and for themselves), or go into an info bubble with trusted AIs and humans and block off any communications from the outside. But maybe I’m not being imaginative enough.
I think I mostly agree with you about the long run, but I think we have more short-term hurdles that we need to overcome before we even make it to that point, probably. I will say that I’m optimistic that we haven’t yet thought of all the ways advances in tech will help collective epistemology rather than hinder it. I notice you didn’t mention debate; I am not confident debate will work but it seems like maybe it will.
In the short run, well, there’s also debate I guess. And the internet having conversations being recorded by default and easily findable by everyone was probably something that worked in favor of collective epistemology. Plus there is wikipedia, etc. I think the internet in general has lots of things in it that help collective epistemology… it just also has things that hurt, and recently I think the balance is shifting in a negative direction. But I’m optimistic that maybe the balance will shift back. Maybe.
You mention “defenses will improve” a few times. Can you go into more detail about this? What kind of defenses do you have in mind? I keep thinking that in the long run, the only defenses are either to solve meta-philosophy so our AIs can distinguish between correct arguments and merely persuasive ones and filter out the latter for us (and for themselves), or go into an info bubble with trusted AIs and humans and block off any communications from the outside. But maybe I’m not being imaginative enough.
I think I mostly agree with you about the long run, but I think we have more short-term hurdles that we need to overcome before we even make it to that point, probably. I will say that I’m optimistic that we haven’t yet thought of all the ways advances in tech will help collective epistemology rather than hinder it. I notice you didn’t mention debate; I am not confident debate will work but it seems like maybe it will.
In the short run, well, there’s also debate I guess. And the internet having conversations being recorded by default and easily findable by everyone was probably something that worked in favor of collective epistemology. Plus there is wikipedia, etc. I think the internet in general has lots of things in it that help collective epistemology… it just also has things that hurt, and recently I think the balance is shifting in a negative direction. But I’m optimistic that maybe the balance will shift back. Maybe.