I’ve had emails ignored, responses that amount to “this didn’t come from the right person,” and the occasional reply like this one, from a very prominent member of AI safety:
“Without reading the paper, and just going on your brief description…”
That’s the level of seriousness these ideas are treated with.
I only had time to look at your first post, and then only skimmed it because it’s really long. Asking people you don’t know to read something of this length is more than you can really expect. People are busy and you’re not the only one with demands on their time.
I would advise trying to put something at the beginning to help people understand what you’re about to cover and why they should care about it. For the capitalism post, I agree with most of what you said (although some of your bullet points are unsupported assertions), but I still don’t know what I’m supposed to take out of this, since ending capitalism isn’t tractable, and (as you mention in regards to governments) non-capitalism doesn’t help.
It’s absolutely reasonable to not read my essays. They’re long, and no one owes me their time.
But to not read them and still dismiss them—that’s not rigorous. That’s kneejerk. And unfortunately, that’s been the dominant pattern, both here and elsewhere.
I’m not asking for every random person to read a long essay. I’m pointing out that the very people whose job it is to think about existential risk have either (a) refused to engage on ideological grounds, (b) dismissed the ideas based on superficial impressions, or (c) admitted they haven’t read the arguments, then responded anyway. You just did version (c).
You say some of my bullet points were “unsupported assertions,” but you also say you only skimmed. That’s exactly the kind of shallow engagement I’m pointing to. It lets people react without ever having to actually wrestle with the ideas. If the conclusions are wrong, point to why. If not, the votes shouldn’t be doing the work that reasoning is supposed to.
As for tractability: I’m not claiming to offer a solution. I’m explaining why the outcome—human extinction via AGI driven by capitalism—looks inevitable. “That’s probably true, but we can’t do anything about it” is a valid reaction. “That’s too hard to think about, so I’ll downvote and move on” isn’t.
I thought LessWrong was about thinking, not feeling. That hasn’t been my experience here. And that’s exactly what this essay is addressing.
I only had time to look at your first post, and then only skimmed it because it’s really long. Asking people you don’t know to read something of this length is more than you can really expect. People are busy and you’re not the only one with demands on their time.
I would advise trying to put something at the beginning to help people understand what you’re about to cover and why they should care about it. For the capitalism post, I agree with most of what you said (although some of your bullet points are unsupported assertions), but I still don’t know what I’m supposed to take out of this, since ending capitalism isn’t tractable, and (as you mention in regards to governments) non-capitalism doesn’t help.
It’s absolutely reasonable to not read my essays. They’re long, and no one owes me their time.
But to not read them and still dismiss them—that’s not rigorous. That’s kneejerk. And unfortunately, that’s been the dominant pattern, both here and elsewhere.
I’m not asking for every random person to read a long essay. I’m pointing out that the very people whose job it is to think about existential risk have either (a) refused to engage on ideological grounds, (b) dismissed the ideas based on superficial impressions, or (c) admitted they haven’t read the arguments, then responded anyway. You just did version (c).
You say some of my bullet points were “unsupported assertions,” but you also say you only skimmed. That’s exactly the kind of shallow engagement I’m pointing to. It lets people react without ever having to actually wrestle with the ideas. If the conclusions are wrong, point to why. If not, the votes shouldn’t be doing the work that reasoning is supposed to.
As for tractability: I’m not claiming to offer a solution. I’m explaining why the outcome—human extinction via AGI driven by capitalism—looks inevitable. “That’s probably true, but we can’t do anything about it” is a valid reaction. “That’s too hard to think about, so I’ll downvote and move on” isn’t.
I thought LessWrong was about thinking, not feeling. That hasn’t been my experience here. And that’s exactly what this essay is addressing.