James Brobin

• James Brobin 26 Mar 2026 16:18 UTC

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  in reply to: cousin_it’s comment on: Re­solv­ing the Sur­prise Test Paradox

  Yeah, that’s fair. I like my solution to the paradox over the logical school one since it focuses on the absurdity of a causal link between what the student expects and what occurs in reality as opposed to merely “surprising” being under-defined, but they’re both quite interesting.

Re­solv­ing the Sur­prise Test Paradox

A Dialec­tic on Clas­si­cal Utilitarianism

• James Brobin 20 Feb 2026 21:26 UTC

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  in reply to: exmateriae’s comment on: Re­view of If Any­one Builds It, Every­one Dies

  Thanks for the thoughtful reply!

  I think I’m much less hopeful about resistance to AI than you are. It seems like there’s just a general trend of new technologies being developed and deployed so quickly that society doesn’t have to ability to develop coherent thoughts about them and to produce meaningful regulation for them before they’ve already produced great harm. For instance, social media seems to be quite harmful to teens and yet society still hasn’t really mobilized to reduce social media use among teenagers, despite social media having been around for more than a decade.

  It seems to me like AI x-risk is just a bit too far out of the Overton window for people to really take it seriously right now, and it seems like people aren’t organizing quickly enough to respond to other concerns about AI. I’m probably underestimating how seriously people take IABIED since I live in a highly educated area, where people really expect you to defend your beliefs if they’re controversial.

• James Brobin 19 Feb 2026 20:17 UTC

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  in reply to: exmateriae’s comment on: Re­view of If Any­one Builds It, Every­one Dies

  Hi exmateriae,

  I think that people are only going to support a movement if they feel they understand it enough.

  It seems like nuclear is pretty simple, and people seem to think they know enough to have had movements around it.

  Additionally, it seems like people often do understand enough about nuclear. If you asked a random person on the street about how nuclear is created and how it could go wrong, they can give you a pretty clear and reasonable answer. People understand that nuclear relies on radioactive materials to produce chain reactions. It can go wrong if these chain reactions go out of control on accident or if they are intentionally used in war. Their explanations are even good enough to convince others to join their movement.

  On the other hand, AI is kind of complex, and I think people might feel like they need to know more to feel motivated enough to participate in a movement about it.

  If you walked up to a random person on the street who had read IABIED, I think they probably couldn’t answer these questions in a way that is satisfactory enough to them to participate in a movement or to convince others to join their cause.

Re­view of If Any­one Builds It, Every­one Dies