True. It is not logically implied from him being right that he had good reason to believe he was right. However, I think it is very strong evidence. Fair warning: I am very new to using Bayes’ Theorem, so please make sure to be highly critical of my math, and tell me what, if anything, I’m doing wrong.
First, we must assess the prior probability of Einstein having sufficient evidence, given that he thought he was correct. How often do modern scientists come up with theories that are quickly falsified? Let’s be pessimistic and assign 0.001 prior probability for Einstein making his claim with sufficient evidence. That is, only 1 in 1000 credible scientists who publish theories come up with theories that aren’t easily falsified.
What is the probability of him being correct if he had sufficient evidence? Well, if we say that having sufficient evidence means having evidence such that your prediction has P>0.95, then, if someone has sufficient evidence, their prediction must have P>0.95. Let’s assign a probability of 0.95.
What is the probability of him being correct if he had insufficient evidence? To be strictly logical about this, we would need to take this probability as 0.95 as well, to avoid a false dichotomy. It is not true that either Einstein had p=0.95 worth of evidence or he had no evidence at all. If we say that he necessarily has p > 0.95 given that he has sufficient evidence, we’d have to say that anything under p=0.95 is insufficient evidence; in which case, to be pessimistic, we’d have to assign the probability of him being correct given insufficient evidence to be infinitesimally less than 0.95. This would result in a likelihood ratio of approximately 1. However, this is only the case if we view “insufficient evidence” and “sufficient evidence” to be distinguished by a sharp point on the real number line. This would contradict common sense; we don’t say that p=95 is sufficient but p=94999999 is insufficient. It’s a gradient. So we should choose a number that is definitely insufficient evidence. What you claimed was that “He could have been a lucky draw from the same process”, so let’s go with sufficient evidence being p>0.95 and insufficient being no evidence at all: a guess. With no evidence the probability would be 1/n, n being the number of competing hypotheses. Let’s go with Eliezer’s number of 1⁄100,000,000.
Plugging these numbers into Bayes’ Theorem, we get a posterior probability of roughly 0.999 that Einstein had sufficient evidence to support his belief. Note that this number is larger than 0.95, our previously assumed standard for sufficient evidence. If we instead use 0.99 as our standard, Bayes’ Theorem spits out a posterior probability of roughly 0.999 regardless.
In either case, Einstein being correct about his theory gives us more than enough evidence to conclude that he had sufficient evidence to make the claim.
When you get down to it, all politics is about conflict resolution. That’s not particular to democracy.
Democracy can be viewed as a government in which policy decisions are intended to reflect the will of the people, as opposed to, for example, the will of the nobility, or a single ruler. When people say that a set of decisions should be made democratically, they mean that the conflict resolution mechanism should be such that the decisions made are reflective of the will of the people.
I think the speaker advocating for a democratic, multinational push for AGI was saying A. that we need to push for AGI and B. that if we do so, our decisions about it should reflect the will of the people. This leaves the particular conflict resolution mechanism an open question but constrains it to the set of mechanisms that are intended to reflect the will of the people.
It’s not particularly surprising that this speaker wouldn’t have an opinion on which democratic conflict resolution mechanism to use. I imagine that sort of thing is usually left to political scientists.
The speaker’s statement is also non-obvious. It may be clear that such a push should be democratic, but it’s not at all clear that it would be. The speaker is advocating for making sure that the push happens, and that it’s democratic, as opposed to pushing for the AGI movement whilst leaving the conflict resolution entirely up to others who may not have the interests of the people at heart.
There are many different implementations of democracy, but they are all very different from oligarchies. It is meaningful to say that a set of decisions should be made democratically. Your criticism of this speaker is analogous to someone saying, “We should believe true things, not things that make us feel good,” and you responding, “You’d better know how to find true beliefs or you’re just virtue signaling.” It is both poor manners and invalid criticism.
That is not to say that I disagree with your overall point; I just don’t think this person’s statement was an example of it. Perhaps, if I’d been there, there would have been some noncommunicable social cues that would lead me to your conclusion, but the text alone does not.