I give Eliezer a lot of credit for his refusal of this call.
Eliezer does a bunch of cultlike shit that everyone just ignores as if it’s a joke, like claiming to his followers to be the smartest person in the world, or speaking so literally about a utopian “home planet” that it’s unclear to me whether he thinks of Dath Ilan as a real place, occupying a bunch of Everett branches somewhere trading with future Earth. I don’t think he is a malignant narcissist, or that he does these things on purpose, but he is a narcissist, and a large part of the cultishness surrounding Eliezer may be downstream of that narcissism.
Here’s an example I remembered immediately; I’m sure if he’s expressed the sentiment here he’s expressed it other places, and just generally I think subordinates pick up on this vibe without you saying it explicitly:
but for insiders clearly a fiction
I have read Planecrash in full (good book btw) and am familiar with the medianworld concept. I think I qualify as an insider and yet:
The way most people would relate to the concept is to imagine a world that has both positive and negative qualities relative to Earth. To take the prompt “what would the world be like if I were the median person” and straightforwardly imagine a world that is the best most productively organized world seems narcissistic on its own.
Is it really? I know, I know. But like, the community takes the whole multiverse and acausal trade thing really seriously, and it even features as a plot device in many of the settings. Is it actually just a plot device or am I supposed to imagine that there’s a non-trivial amount of everrett branches somehow in a way that will affect the future? The way he speaks about it casually and literally and the way people on the Eliezerfic discord talk about it really encourages this.
I aspire to Jaynes’s level. I aspire to become as much the master of Artificial Intelligence / reflectivity, as Jaynes was master of Bayesian probability theory. I can even plead that the art I’m trying to master is more difficult than Jaynes’s, making a mockery of deference. Even so, and embarrassingly, there is no art of which I am as much the master now, as Jaynes was of probability theory.
Conway:
Or...
...or I’m strictly dumber than Conway, dominated by him along all dimensions. Maybe, if I could find a young proto-Conway and tell them the basics, they would blaze right past me, solve the problems that have weighed on me for years, and zip off to places I can’t follow.
Is it damaging to my ego to confess that last possibility? Yes. It would be futile to deny that.
Have I really accepted that awful possibility, or am I only pretending to myself to have accepted it? Here I will say: “No, I think I have accepted it.” Why do I dare give myself so much credit? Because I’ve invested specific effort into that awful possibility. I am blogging here for many reasons, but a major one is the vision of some younger mind reading these words and zipping off past me. It might happen, it might not.
Eliezer is a great writer, and the Eliezer that wrote the sequences is a pretty different person than the one that wrote the tweet I mentioned. But honestly, while this may sound nitpicky, the quotes you have here mostly prove my point. They do not actually describe either John Conway or Jaynes as broadly more intelligent than Eliezer. The post instead just manages to say that it’s plausible, that there might be someone now, someone in the future, who is more intelligent than Eliezer about the things he cares about. In the years since he has largely decided this is no longer true.
I of course don’t want him to pretend otherwise, if that’s the extent of his feelings.
To take the prompt “what would the world be like if I were the median person” and straightforwardly imagine a world that is the best most productively organized world seems narcissistic on its own.
Doesn’t seem that way to me. The median person in this world has IQ 100. Go 1SD lower, and people are functionally illiterate. Go 2SD higher instead; there you will meet me. Eliezer seems smarter (no, I am not saying the smartest person ever), so maybe add extra 1SD. Now imagine a world where that is the average.
Hard to say what exactly such world would look like, but imagine a world where a typical subreddit is like LessWrong, but specialized on something, and with more users. Imagine such world’s political debates; imagine its institutions. Is it so unlikely that things could be much better? Compared to our world, where if you say “the sky is blue”, many people will immediately object that their holy book says that it is red, or that they have read on social networks that sky is fake; and you can only have policies that such people approve, and you need to staff your institutions with such people.
(But of course, the villains would also be smarter, so there is a chance that would invent smart systems that lock everyone else in their service. The villains would also be better at cooperation.)
Also, it is assumed that the world would not be organized by Eliezer alone, but by a billion copies of him.
When I imagine Earth 2020 in a world with humans 40% smarter I mostly expect that it speed ran the tech tree 40% faster and consequently humans have been extinct for hundreds of years.
To avert this you need the humans to be significantly better at coordination, and that is part of the conceipt of dath ilan. I don’t see much evidence for Yudkowsky being significantly above median at coordination, and his dominant streak likely makes him below Earth median at following & corrigibility. He’s also contrarian and arrogant and loves trolling. That probably doesn’t net out at successful world conspiracy and people predictably doing what Exception Control says.
It is quite possible that dath ilan has deep dysfunctions that Eliezer may be unaware of. For example, what about those near-copies of him that happen to be below average, and fail to channel their energy into becoming a benevolent quasi-cult leader? Will they patiently accept their place at the bottom of the food chain and cooperate, or will they try to overthrow the system? Can the system resist so many smart people trying to overthrow it?
Agree on the likely extinction by smart and enthusiastically pro-tech young Eliezers.
Also, how much does the world actually reflect its median inhabitants? For example, Earth seems both much better (more science) and much worse (more wars) that talking to the median Earth human in isolation would suggest, I think. Some things are median-driven, some things are outlier-driven (science, crime).
The way most people would relate to the concept is to imagine a world that has both positive and negative qualities relative to Earth. To take the prompt “what would the world be like if I were the median person” and straightforwardly imagine a world that is the best most productively organized world seems narcissistic on its own.
The cited tweet is an extremely arrogant dick move, especially because I think Eliezer does know of people who are smarter than him (though maybe none on twitter?).
It draws attention to how he thinks he’s smarter than everyone, which is rude. He’s also not following the rules of the game, which is also rude.
It’s also an epistemic sin, given that he doesn’t think that he’s literally the smartest person on earth (as far as I know). I agree with the response asking him to at least tag a Jaynes fan account.
Not following the rules of the game is probably the point? It is an annoying situation for be placed in, and his response was a funny way of opting out.
Eliezer does a bunch of cultlike shit that everyone just ignores as if it’s a joke, like claiming to his followers to be the smartest person in the world, or speaking so literally about a utopian “home planet” that it’s unclear to me whether he thinks of Dath Ilan as a real place, occupying a bunch of Everett branches somewhere trading with future Earth. I don’t think he is a malignant narcissist, or that he does these things on purpose, but he is a narcissist, and a large part of the cultishness surrounding Eliezer may be downstream of that narcissism.
Citation needed.
There is a risk that this may be confusing to outsiders, but for insiders clearly a fiction.
Here’s an example I remembered immediately; I’m sure if he’s expressed the sentiment here he’s expressed it other places, and just generally I think subordinates pick up on this vibe without you saying it explicitly:
I have read Planecrash in full (good book btw) and am familiar with the medianworld concept. I think I qualify as an insider and yet:
The way most people would relate to the concept is to imagine a world that has both positive and negative qualities relative to Earth. To take the prompt “what would the world be like if I were the median person” and straightforwardly imagine a world that is the best most productively organized world seems narcissistic on its own.
Is it really? I know, I know. But like, the community takes the whole multiverse and acausal trade thing really seriously, and it even features as a plot device in many of the settings. Is it actually just a plot device or am I supposed to imagine that there’s a non-trivial amount of everrett branches somehow in a way that will affect the future? The way he speaks about it casually and literally and the way people on the Eliezerfic discord talk about it really encourages this.
Here’s Eliezer in the sequences naming two people above his level, one he says is probably smarter than him.
Jaynes:
Conway:
Eliezer is a great writer, and the Eliezer that wrote the sequences is a pretty different person than the one that wrote the tweet I mentioned. But honestly, while this may sound nitpicky, the quotes you have here mostly prove my point. They do not actually describe either John Conway or Jaynes as broadly more intelligent than Eliezer. The post instead just manages to say that it’s plausible, that there might be someone now, someone in the future, who is more intelligent than Eliezer about the things he cares about. In the years since he has largely decided this is no longer true.
I of course don’t want him to pretend otherwise, if that’s the extent of his feelings.
Neither do I, but I’d like to have a more explicit confirmation than a tweet that could be interpreted as a joke.
Doesn’t seem that way to me. The median person in this world has IQ 100. Go 1SD lower, and people are functionally illiterate. Go 2SD higher instead; there you will meet me. Eliezer seems smarter (no, I am not saying the smartest person ever), so maybe add extra 1SD. Now imagine a world where that is the average.
Hard to say what exactly such world would look like, but imagine a world where a typical subreddit is like LessWrong, but specialized on something, and with more users. Imagine such world’s political debates; imagine its institutions. Is it so unlikely that things could be much better? Compared to our world, where if you say “the sky is blue”, many people will immediately object that their holy book says that it is red, or that they have read on social networks that sky is fake; and you can only have policies that such people approve, and you need to staff your institutions with such people.
(But of course, the villains would also be smarter, so there is a chance that would invent smart systems that lock everyone else in their service. The villains would also be better at cooperation.)
Also, it is assumed that the world would not be organized by Eliezer alone, but by a billion copies of him.
When I imagine Earth 2020 in a world with humans 40% smarter I mostly expect that it speed ran the tech tree 40% faster and consequently humans have been extinct for hundreds of years.
To avert this you need the humans to be significantly better at coordination, and that is part of the conceipt of dath ilan. I don’t see much evidence for Yudkowsky being significantly above median at coordination, and his dominant streak likely makes him below Earth median at following & corrigibility. He’s also contrarian and arrogant and loves trolling. That probably doesn’t net out at successful world conspiracy and people predictably doing what Exception Control says.
It is quite possible that dath ilan has deep dysfunctions that Eliezer may be unaware of. For example, what about those near-copies of him that happen to be below average, and fail to channel their energy into becoming a benevolent quasi-cult leader? Will they patiently accept their place at the bottom of the food chain and cooperate, or will they try to overthrow the system? Can the system resist so many smart people trying to overthrow it?
Agree on the likely extinction by smart and enthusiastically pro-tech young Eliezers.
Also, how much does the world actually reflect its median inhabitants? For example, Earth seems both much better (more science) and much worse (more wars) that talking to the median Earth human in isolation would suggest, I think. Some things are median-driven, some things are outlier-driven (science, crime).
I think I agree
The cited tweet is an extremely arrogant dick move, especially because I think Eliezer does know of people who are smarter than him (though maybe none on twitter?).
Am I missing something—his response seems just like the funniest possible reply to the already silly exercise?
It draws attention to how he thinks he’s smarter than everyone, which is rude. He’s also not following the rules of the game, which is also rude.
It’s also an epistemic sin, given that he doesn’t think that he’s literally the smartest person on earth (as far as I know). I agree with the response asking him to at least tag a Jaynes fan account.
Not following the rules of the game is probably the point? It is an annoying situation for be placed in, and his response was a funny way of opting out.
Obviously we have different intuitions here.
A non-rude way to opt out of the game is to just not respond.