A major point of this post is to shift the conversation away from “does Eliezer vibe Too Confident?” to “what actually are the specific points where people disagree?”.
(Yet the literal reading of the title of this post is about the claim of “everyone dies” being “reasonable”, so discussing credence in that particular claim seems relevant. I guess it’s consistent for a post that argues against paying too much attention to the title of a book to also implicitly endorse people not paying too much attention to the post’s own title.)
I think one of my points (admittedly not super spelled out, maybe it should be) is “when you’re evaluating a title, you should do a bit of work to see what the title is actually claiming before forming a judgment about it.” (I think I say it implicitly-but-pointedly in the paragraph about a “Nuclear war would kill everyone” book).
The title of the IABI is “If anyone builds it everyone dies.” The text of the book specifies that “it” means superintelligence, current understanding, etc. If you’re judging the book as reasonable, you should be actually evaluating whether it backs up it’s claim.
The title of my post is “the title is reasonable.” Near the opening sections, I go on about how there are a bunch of disagreements people seem to feel they have, which are not actually contradicting the book’s thesis. I think this is reasonably clear on “one of the main gears for why I think it’s reasonable is that the it does actually defend it’s core claim, if you’re paying attention and not knee-jerk reacting to vibe”, with IMO is a fairly explicit “and, therefore, you should be paying attention to it’s actual claims, not just vibe.”
If you think this is actually important to spell out more in the post, seems maybe reasonable.
The book really is defending that claim, but that doesn’t make the claim itself reasonable. Maybe it makes it a reasonable title for the book. Hence my qualifier of only the “literal reading of the title of this post” being about the claim in the book title itself being reasonable, since there is another meaning of the title of the post that’s about a different thing (the choice to title the book this way being reasonable).
I don’t think it’s actually important to spell any of this out, or that IABI vs. IABIED is actually important, or even that the title of the book being reasonable is actually important. I think it’s actually important to avoid any pressure for people to not point out that the claim in the book title seems unreasonable and that the book fails to convince them that the claim’s truth holds with very high credence. And similarly it’s important that there is no pressure to avoid pointing out that ironically, the literal interpretation of the title of this post is claiming that the claim in the book title is reasonable, even if the body of the post might suggest that the title isn’t quite about that, and certainly the post itself is not about that.
(Yet the literal reading of the title of this post is about the claim of “everyone dies” being “reasonable”, so discussing credence in that particular claim seems relevant. I guess it’s consistent for a post that argues against paying too much attention to the title of a book to also implicitly endorse people not paying too much attention to the post’s own title.)
I think one of my points (admittedly not super spelled out, maybe it should be) is “when you’re evaluating a title, you should do a bit of work to see what the title is actually claiming before forming a judgment about it.” (I think I say it implicitly-but-pointedly in the paragraph about a “Nuclear war would kill everyone” book).
The title of the IABI is “If anyone builds it everyone dies.” The text of the book specifies that “it” means superintelligence, current understanding, etc. If you’re judging the book as reasonable, you should be actually evaluating whether it backs up it’s claim.
The title of my post is “the title is reasonable.” Near the opening sections, I go on about how there are a bunch of disagreements people seem to feel they have, which are not actually contradicting the book’s thesis. I think this is reasonably clear on “one of the main gears for why I think it’s reasonable is that the it does actually defend it’s core claim, if you’re paying attention and not knee-jerk reacting to vibe”, with IMO is a fairly explicit “and, therefore, you should be paying attention to it’s actual claims, not just vibe.”
If you think this is actually important to spell out more in the post, seems maybe reasonable.
The book really is defending that claim, but that doesn’t make the claim itself reasonable. Maybe it makes it a reasonable title for the book. Hence my qualifier of only the “literal reading of the title of this post” being about the claim in the book title itself being reasonable, since there is another meaning of the title of the post that’s about a different thing (the choice to title the book this way being reasonable).
I don’t think it’s actually important to spell any of this out, or that IABI vs. IABIED is actually important, or even that the title of the book being reasonable is actually important. I think it’s actually important to avoid any pressure for people to not point out that the claim in the book title seems unreasonable and that the book fails to convince them that the claim’s truth holds with very high credence. And similarly it’s important that there is no pressure to avoid pointing out that ironically, the literal interpretation of the title of this post is claiming that the claim in the book title is reasonable, even if the body of the post might suggest that the title isn’t quite about that, and certainly the post itself is not about that.