There's a pretty good response here: http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/09/in-favor-of-futurism-be...
Heh. SSC ranges from very thoughtful to cringefully unaware knee jerk reactions, and this response definitely falls in the latter category for me. Of course, one can argue all one wants with the author’s quadrants, but that’s just goofing around with semantics. The real core of the article is here: ”from personality tests that filter out qualified job applicants to crime risk algorithms that convince judges to issue…
And Scott Alexander ... fails to address this core issue at all
Did we read the same article? While it's true that Scott's writing tends toward burying the lede, instead of not addressing this issue, I considered his criticism of the "We are already here" line to be the primary target of his response. Right or wrong, Scott's assertion is that it's laughable to the point of malfeasance that anyone using a standard definition of "the singularity" would suggest that it might come without a noticeable impact on the lives of those who are currently struggling. Quoting his Fifth entry in the top 5 (like Letterman's top 10 lists, he tends to save his best for last):
Fifth, another quote from the article:
In the end my taxonomy (as amusing as I find it) doesn’t really matter to the average person. For the average person there is no difference between the singularity as imagined by futurists in Q1 or Q2 and a world in which they are already consistently and secretly shunted to the “loser” side of each automated decision. I already posited that the author doesn’t understand
“Singularity”, but this is something beyond that. This is
horrifying. There will be no difference for the average
person between a (positive or negative) post-singularity
world and the world now? What?
Listen up, average person. If there’s a negative
singularity you will notice. Because you will be very,
very dead. So will all the rest of us, rich and poor, old
and young, black and white.
And if there’s a positive singularity, you will also
notice. I would promise you infinite wealth, but that
sort of thing kind of loses its meaning in a
post-scarcity society. I would promise you immortality,
but who knows if we’ll even have individual
consciousnesses at that point? I would promise you bread
and roses, but they would be made of hyperintelligent
super-wheat and fractal eleven-dimensional time blossoms.
I don’t care if you think this vision is stupid. We’re
not arguing about whether this vision is stupid. We’re
arguing about whether, if this vision were 100% true, it
would make a difference in the life of the average
person. The Boston Review is saying it wouldn’t. I’m
sitting here with my mouth gaping open so hard I’m
worried about permanent jaw damage.
A Singularity that doesn’t make a difference in the life
of the average person isn’t a Singularity worth the bits
it’s programmed on.
I found Scott's response to be entirely on point to the horrendous flaws in the original article. While it's fair to argue that Scott's response is wrong and the Boston Review article is right (please do so), I don't think it's reasonable to say that his response ignores the issue.