why do you expect me to answer questions whichvresfing the post would show are absolutely irrelevant to the thesis in question?
Because your initial reply was “you could read the actual post and find your answers”, and he looked in the post and decided he didn’t find the answers.
sorry are you really unaware of the difference between reading a text and scanning it for keywords? I really don’t understand what are you hoping to achieve here. I can’t ban you, but I’d love for you to find a more constructive and satisfactory activity: this is just dismal. Ok? Xoxo
I agree that it’s frustrating that people don’t read, but when I complain about that, I find that it’s tactically critical to specifically point to the part where I addressed their criticism. That is, I don’t just say, “I don’t think you read the post”, I say, “I don’t think you read the post, because if you had, you’d notice that I clearly addressed that in the paragraph starting with this-and-such.” That makes it more embarrassing for the critic who didn’t read, because it makes it legible to everyone that I’m not the one who’s bluffing.
That is true, and I have tried for the first two instances. It works less well, however, in cases where the comment has simply no relation with the text, and at any rate it requires an asymmetric effort that becomes far less justified when directed towards people who clearly have no intention of engaging with the material.
Yeah, it sucks! My strategy has basically just been to … unilaterally cover the asymmetric effort myself, on the theory that, well, the world doesn’t owe me anything; if I want people to understand things that they’re not interested in understanding, the only way to get my wish is to write so well and cover all the angles so thoroughly that it becomes more embarrassing for them to pretend not to understand. It’s not entirely ineffective, but comes at the cost of the prime years of my life. Sometimes I wonder if it’s a good use of my life, but it seems like an underprovided public good that I have a comparative advantage in. (Lots of people will write commercial software for money; not many people will do what I do out of religious fanaticism for the lost dream of rationality.)
The world does not owe me anything. Still, in this case, there is an ideological clash at play too:
thus, I am happy to write the main posts; happy to be charitable when replying to those who have read it; not willing to engage with criticism from those who clearly have not. also, research and engineering is my main activity, which means I should choose my battles carefully outside that
He then asked a really pretty smart language model to confirm that indeed your post does not straightforwardly answer the questions in the post.
Yes, sometimes language models are too dumb to make obvious inferences, even today, but it’s relatively rare. But they clearly and obviously go beyond “scanning for keywords”.
the issue with the questions is that they are not about the topics covered in the essay, so of course an LLM wouldnt find the relevant answers. try instead asking whether such questions are relevant to the essay, or whether the essay explicitly denies the framing they embody; the answer might surprise you!
Doom arguments usually need the systems we actually build to achieve radical capability while preserving misaligned and, crucially, completely stupid goals.
This isn’t a random sentence, it’s a main piece of context you provide for why you are discussing the main thesis of the post. As such, it’s a useful sentence that readers use to understand what you’re saying. But since your statement seems false according to the informed understanding of the meaning of the paperclip example, it raises ambiguity; perhaps you’re simply uninformed, or perhaps you meant something nonobvious by the phrase. Hence asking you to clarify.
Because your initial reply was “you could read the actual post and find your answers”, and he looked in the post and decided he didn’t find the answers.
sorry are you really unaware of the difference between reading a text and scanning it for keywords? I really don’t understand what are you hoping to achieve here. I can’t ban you, but I’d love for you to find a more constructive and satisfactory activity: this is just dismal. Ok? Xoxo
I agree that it’s frustrating that people don’t read, but when I complain about that, I find that it’s tactically critical to specifically point to the part where I addressed their criticism. That is, I don’t just say, “I don’t think you read the post”, I say, “I don’t think you read the post, because if you had, you’d notice that I clearly addressed that in the paragraph starting with this-and-such.” That makes it more embarrassing for the critic who didn’t read, because it makes it legible to everyone that I’m not the one who’s bluffing.
That is true, and I have tried for the first two instances. It works less well, however, in cases where the comment has simply no relation with the text, and at any rate it requires an asymmetric effort that becomes far less justified when directed towards people who clearly have no intention of engaging with the material.
Yeah, it sucks! My strategy has basically just been to … unilaterally cover the asymmetric effort myself, on the theory that, well, the world doesn’t owe me anything; if I want people to understand things that they’re not interested in understanding, the only way to get my wish is to write so well and cover all the angles so thoroughly that it becomes more embarrassing for them to pretend not to understand. It’s not entirely ineffective, but comes at the cost of the prime years of my life. Sometimes I wonder if it’s a good use of my life, but it seems like an underprovided public good that I have a comparative advantage in. (Lots of people will write commercial software for money; not many people will do what I do out of religious fanaticism for the lost dream of rationality.)
The world does not owe me anything. Still, in this case, there is an ideological clash at play too:
thus, I am happy to write the main posts; happy to be charitable when replying to those who have read it; not willing to engage with criticism from those who clearly have not. also, research and engineering is my main activity, which means I should choose my battles carefully outside that
He has read the post. What are you talking about?
He then asked a really pretty smart language model to confirm that indeed your post does not straightforwardly answer the questions in the post.
Yes, sometimes language models are too dumb to make obvious inferences, even today, but it’s relatively rare. But they clearly and obviously go beyond “scanning for keywords”.
uh, he said he had not.
the issue with the questions is that they are not about the topics covered in the essay, so of course an LLM wouldnt find the relevant answers. try instead asking whether such questions are relevant to the essay, or whether the essay explicitly denies the framing they embody; the answer might surprise you!
You wrote
This isn’t a random sentence, it’s a main piece of context you provide for why you are discussing the main thesis of the post. As such, it’s a useful sentence that readers use to understand what you’re saying. But since your statement seems false according to the informed understanding of the meaning of the paperclip example, it raises ambiguity; perhaps you’re simply uninformed, or perhaps you meant something nonobvious by the phrase. Hence asking you to clarify.