https://fredwynne.medium.com/an-open-letter-to-vitalik-buter...
https://sinceriously.fyi/brent-dill-confessions-full-redacte...
This entire social milieu is a goddamn horror show.
Effective Altruism’s obsession with AI safety helps bury bad behavior
41–50 of 329 posts
Re: Effective Altruism’s obsession with AI safety helps bury bad behavior
#421. “Moral computation” was coined by Francis Hutcheson (doctoral advisor of Adam Smith). 2. I like hearing rationalists describe “demon summoning is easy, Angel summoning is hard.” Genuinely curious about that.
2. "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure"; "measure twice, cut once"; "it's easier to fuck it than to unfuck it"; etc. Not exactly novel
Re: Effective Altruism’s obsession with AI safety helps bury bad behavior
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's commonly thought (and obvious) that Yud wrote the book about himself so I doubt it. It doesn't really fit the rationalist playbook either, they take themselves excessively seriously.
The character's author-insert aspects are self-parody.
He's too fragile and prone to overcompensation for that, nice try. Of course he's going to back track after getting mercilessly mocked for it and then claim it was just a joke.
Re: Effective Altruism’s obsession with AI safety helps bury bad behavior
#44Please capitalize it as Effective Altruism.
The generic terms "effective" and "altruism" are both very important terms, and this doesn't follow from combining them.
Re: Effective Altruism’s obsession with AI safety helps bury bad behavior
#45Some of that is just typical cult behavior. Scientology and Ayn Rand followers have had similar problems. Drugs usually make it worse.
AI safety is a real issue, but look at what it looks like so far.
- "Machines should think, people should work". That's Marshall Brain's "Manna". It's also working at an an Amazon fulfillment center, where the computers tell the humans what to do.
- "Paperclip maximizer". A corporation is a paperclip maximizer. If you take Milton Friedman seriously, that's what a corporation is supposed to do. As I point out occasionally, most of the ethical problems foreseen for AIs are known ethical problems with corporations.
Those are the classic problems. As the technology advances, we're discovering new ones in the large language model space. Those issues are well known here.
Re: Effective Altruism’s obsession with AI safety helps bury bad behavior
#46[flagged]
>>Every AI safety researcher knows about the paper clip maximizer. Few seem to grasp the ways this subculture is mimicking that tunnel vision. >Lol really?? You're comparing some bad PR incidents to the literal unintentional destruction of life on Earth Your reply is a perfect example of the blind spot the quote from the article is referring to. "some bad PR incidents" being sexual harassment and assault, facilitated…
>So we have real, actual harm hand-waved away by reference to a hypothetical.
Yes, because that harm is not even close to the same order of magnitude as the harm that rationalists are focused on, even if you discount it by a moderate likelihood factor. It doesn't matter if the "real world" sees AI doom as a "quaint and somewhat interesting hypothetical about a far off future" - unless you're actually agreeing with me that this is primarily a PR issue.
When rationalist sexual harassment starts threatening the survival of the human race (in a way other than raising the probability of AI doom via bad PR for rationalists), the tunnel vision critique may become more than laughable.
Re: Effective Altruism’s obsession with AI safety helps bury bad behavior
#47[flagged]
I read Hasania's article hoping for some solid material to make me feel better about the point a few years when I first discovered Less Wrong.
Instead, I just read one of worst articles I've read in at least a month, so full of not just poor (and transparently polemical) writing, but poor reasoning and blind dismissal of opposing viewpoints, regurgitation of unsubstantiated bullshit, and more.
If that truly represents the best anyone can do in defense of Less Wrong / EA, then it would appear that the complaints about both are substantive.
I hope that is not the case.
Re: Effective Altruism’s obsession with AI safety helps bury bad behavior
#481. “Moral computation” was coined by Francis Hutcheson (doctoral advisor of Adam Smith). 2. I like hearing rationalists describe “demon summoning is easy, Angel summoning is hard.” Genuinely curious about that.
2. "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure"; "measure twice, cut once"; "it's easier to fuck it than to unfuck it"; etc. Not exactly novel
To clarify— I mean the rationalist reference to angels and demons. It seems to be more than metaphorical.
Re: Effective Altruism’s obsession with AI safety helps bury bad behavior
#49[flagged]
> Does this mean that Rationalists are the only people uniquely free of status concerns and therefore able to discuss important issues in intelligent ways? To a limited extent, yes. Lol. “Only people who agree with me are capable of rational thought and discussion.” The philosophy of and for internet trolls.
>“Only people who agree with me are capable of rational thought and discussion.”
I find this paraphrasing somewhat uncharitable.
Re: Effective Altruism’s obsession with AI safety helps bury bad behavior
#50AI safety is an apocalypse cult and we should recognize that everyone who has ever been in an apocalypse cult thinks that "no, this time it's really the end of the world". Everyone who believes crazy shit thinks they're being reasonable, so just because we're super sure we're being reasonable doesn't mean what we believe isn't crazy. Do we believe that we alone, of all people who have believed in the coming end, have…
There have been people for a long time who think the world is going to end. We can use your argument to dismiss anyone who fears any existential risk like asteroids, nuclear war, climate change, AI, etc...
And since the world exists every group will be wrong except one.
I think the risk of human extermination is much lower than many in this group believe because I think AI is much more compute bound than algorithm bound. So I think a hard takeoff is very unlikely. But while the median case for climate change is probably worse than the median case for AI. The existential risks for AI seem much higher. And it's a concern worth taking seriously.