Dear Sam Altman: All Coherent and Fruitful Thought Is Restricted
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Dear Sam Altman: All Coherent and Fruitful Thought Is Restricted
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Re: Dear Sam Altman: All Coherent and Fruitful Thought Is Restricted
#2[deleted]
Re: Dear Sam Altman: All Coherent and Fruitful Thought Is Restricted
#3What utter rubbish. All this says is that "sociologists out there disagree hence you are wrong". The post is one giant appeal to authority. There is no discussion of why they disagree. Or that there is a consensus, or that different fundamental values may motivate different people.
Re: Dear Sam Altman: All Coherent and Fruitful Thought Is Restricted
#4A giant fallacious argument. Hard even to read. See examples below.
> "That your post elicited outrage from a large body of people who study sociology, politics, and culture should provide you with some evidence that, perhaps, you are wrong."
Argumentum ad populum. Appeal to Authority. Slightly softballed with the perhaps, but it doesn't make it better.
If all we ever did was listen to the experts, the earth would be flat still.
> "So, maybe it’s a real problem when you share your thoughts on something you don’t understand."
Where's the line where you're "understanding" enough to talk about things?
I can't get through the fallacious logic enough to see the real argument here.
Re: Dear Sam Altman: All Coherent and Fruitful Thought Is Restricted
#5Tl;dr? This is word salad and isn’t saying anything other than “Sam Altman shouldn’t speak about this because he isn’t a sociologist”. Where is the author’s rebuttal?
Re: Dear Sam Altman: All Coherent and Fruitful Thought Is Restricted
#6A giant fallacious argument. Hard even to read. See examples below. > "That your post elicited outrage from a large body of people who study sociology, politics, and culture should provide you with some evidence that, perhaps, you are wrong." Argumentum ad populum. Appeal to Authority. Slightly softballed with the perhaps, but it doesn't make it better. If all we ever did was listen to the experts, the earth would be…
The idea that people believed the earth was flat is a myth.
Re: Dear Sam Altman: All Coherent and Fruitful Thought Is Restricted
#7>You are right on one part — culture acts as a filter upon collaboration. For some reason, you assume that the people who are harder to work with — those less capable of empathy or at least compassion — are the ones more likely to profitably explore the space of technological possibility. I’m not really sure how to address that.
Of course the people who are harder to work with are the ones on the bleeding edge! SSC had a great post on this[0]. What are the qualities that make a good scientist? Curiosity, open-mindedness, looking for errors in the dominant paradigm. Not coincidentally, these are also exactly the qualities that lead people to question the popular orthodoxies of the moment.
A good scientist would never be so absurdly naive to assume that society "drawing a line" necessarily "limits harm". Society is often wrong. Society has drawn many, many stupid lines in the past and there is no reason to believe that we have moved beyond that.
Also, someone should alert the author about the replication crisis. There are extremely good reasons not to trust sociologists.
[0] http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/23/kolmogorov-complicity-a...
Re: Dear Sam Altman: All Coherent and Fruitful Thought Is Restricted
#8The rails metaphor is especially weak here. The author's argument conflates the idea of rejecting an established field of knowledge outright with Altman's critique of the absolute way in which some ideas have become taboo in society.
Re: Dear Sam Altman: All Coherent and Fruitful Thought Is Restricted
#9I'm not sure why this post is getting such criticism.
The entire argument made here basically reduces to the concept "if everyone around you is telling you you're an asshole, the most probable conclusion is that you're an asshole" but in a more diplomatic way.
Which, having read the original post in question, seems a reasonable response.
Re: Dear Sam Altman: All Coherent and Fruitful Thought Is Restricted
#10I'm not sure why this post is getting such criticism. The entire argument made here basically reduces to the concept "if everyone around you is telling you you're an asshole, the most probable conclusion is that you're an asshole" but in a more diplomatic way. Which, having read the original post in question, seems a reasonable response.
... so basically argumentum ad populum. Galileo should’ve just shut up