I particularly agree with the point about the style being much more science-y than I’d expected, in a way that surely filters out large swathes of people. I’m assuming “people who are completely clueless about science and are unable to follow technical arguments” are just not the target audience. To crudely oversimplify, I think the target audience is 120+ IQ people, not 100 IQ people.
I mention this for transparency but also because some seem to be rallying around IABIED, even with its shortcomings, because they don’t think there is another option
I think IABIED should be rallied around because “the MIRI book” is the obvious Schelling point for rallying around. It has brand recognition in our circles, its release is a big visible event, it managed to get into best-seller categories meaning it’s visible to the mainstream audiences, etc. Even if there are other books which are moderately better at doing what IABIED does, it wouldn’t be possible to amplify their impact the same way (even if, say, Eliezer personally recommended them), so IABIED it is.
Further, even if it’s possible to coordinate around and boost a different book the same way, this would require additional time; months or years (if that better book is yet to be written). We don’t have much of that luxury, in expectation.
This still wouldn’t be a good idea if IABIED were actively bad, of course. But it’s not. I think it’s reasonably good, even if we have our quibbles; and MIRI’s pre-release work shows that it seems convincing to non-experts.
We could think about crafting better persuasion-artefacts in the future, but I think rallying around IABIEDis the only option, at this point in time. And it may or may not be a marginally worse option compared to some hypothetical alternatives, but it’s not a bad option.
I think the target audience includes those in various positions and with various backgrounds that would benefit from a more thorough presentation of the ideas, so it’s not just the style issue.
It might depend on what, exactly, rallying means and how you see the implications of that. I thought EY’s appearance on Hard Fork, for example, wasn’t good and the message of AI safety might have been better presented by someone else.
As you read, I agree with Buck that book doesn’t sufficiently argue it’s main points, and this makes it problematic.
We may just disagree on how difficult it would be to recommend my book (as an example) along with IABIED? There are a wide range of options and some require little effort and wouldn’t take away much from IABIED compared to the benefit (yes, I think the difference is that great).
I particularly agree with the point about the style being much more science-y than I’d expected, in a way that surely filters out large swathes of people. I’m assuming “people who are completely clueless about science and are unable to follow technical arguments” are just not the target audience. To crudely oversimplify, I think the target audience is 120+ IQ people, not 100 IQ people.
I think IABIED should be rallied around because “the MIRI book” is the obvious Schelling point for rallying around. It has brand recognition in our circles, its release is a big visible event, it managed to get into best-seller categories meaning it’s visible to the mainstream audiences, etc. Even if there are other books which are moderately better at doing what IABIED does, it wouldn’t be possible to amplify their impact the same way (even if, say, Eliezer personally recommended them), so IABIED it is.
Further, even if it’s possible to coordinate around and boost a different book the same way, this would require additional time; months or years (if that better book is yet to be written). We don’t have much of that luxury, in expectation.
This still wouldn’t be a good idea if IABIED were actively bad, of course. But it’s not. I think it’s reasonably good, even if we have our quibbles; and MIRI’s pre-release work shows that it seems convincing to non-experts.
We could think about crafting better persuasion-artefacts in the future, but I think rallying around IABIED is the only option, at this point in time. And it may or may not be a marginally worse option compared to some hypothetical alternatives, but it’s not a bad option.
I think the target audience includes those in various positions and with various backgrounds that would benefit from a more thorough presentation of the ideas, so it’s not just the style issue.
It might depend on what, exactly, rallying means and how you see the implications of that. I thought EY’s appearance on Hard Fork, for example, wasn’t good and the message of AI safety might have been better presented by someone else.
As you read, I agree with Buck that book doesn’t sufficiently argue it’s main points, and this makes it problematic.
We may just disagree on how difficult it would be to recommend my book (as an example) along with IABIED?
There are a wide range of options and some require little effort and wouldn’t take away much from IABIED compared to the benefit (yes, I think the difference is that great).