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> Or, perhaps more realistically, there isn’t a logically correct answer. It’s all just dressed up unsubstantiated opinions on both sides. I don’t agree with t

> Or, perhaps more realistically, there isn’t a logically correct answer. It’s all just dressed up unsubstantiated opinions on both sides. I don’t agree with the framing of this. It may be true that there isn’t a knowable “correct” answer, but I think it’s problematic to summarize this as “both sides are just made of opinions”. I think the pernicious issue is the form of argument present in the “this is all just moral panic” camp. On the one side, we have deep concerns about the potential problems certain technology will usher in. On the other side, dismissal of those concerns based on the claim that the present issues are directly analogous to situations of the past that turned out to be fine. Even if it’s all just opinion, we have to judge those opinions on their merits, and the “it’s just a panic” crowd is on much shakier ground rhetorically.

dcow 3y ago
Why does causing a moral panic have a lower burden of proof than dismissing a moral panic? Do you believe in God? (Also I didn't mean it to come off as both sides have made up concerns. I meant it as both the concern and lack thereof camps are based solely on individuals’ priors.)
- haswell 3y ago
  I take issue with the framing that this is purely about causing and dismissing moral panics. Panic is a secondary effect of whatever it is that people are arguing for or against. The panic is orthogonal to the underlying concern. When people started to worry about the climate, several kinds of arguments emerged. 1. People with intimate knowledge of the situation used their research, models and knowledge of climate dynamics to raise concerns 2. Some people reject those concerns based on the same kind of fallacious analogy: “people have been saying the sky is falling since…” 3. Some people reject the concerns outright and/or believe they have better models “Dismissing a moral panic” in the coffeepocalypse sense falls under #2. The dismissal is not a direct argument against the underlying claims/evidence, but an attempt to use a shaky analogy as the only form of evidence for dismissal. Whereas “causing the panic” falls under #1. The nature of the argument is fundamentally different, and appeals to the evidence and direct experience of the scientists capable of building climate models. I’m not saying that all panics are created equal, or that the burden of proof is lower for the group raising concerns. I’m saying that the “it’s just a moral panic” crowd is at an inherent disadvantage (assuming there is credible evidence that is cause for concern) because their form of argument is not evidence based and instead relies on stretching questionable analogies. Regarding god, I’m curious why you’re asking, but I consider myself agnostic.
  - dcow 3y ago
    Regarding God, it’s a rhetorical question meant to make the reader think about all the moral concerns raised by religious people and the ensuing arguments dismissing God by atheists, feminists, etc. An inversion of what is generally happening with the AI discourse, where concerns about the health of society and the existence of supreme intelligence seem to be spurring existential questions about humanity but from the technocrats instead of the clergy.
    - haswell 3y ago
      The “supreme intelligence” concerns about AI live on one end of a very wide spectrum of concerns. I don’t think we need anything approaching super intelligence for a large subset of concerns to become reality, and rest of that spectrum is filled with non-theoretical risks, many of which are based on capabilities already in production.
  - cauch 3y ago
    I don't think #2 as an argument "just relies on stretching questionable analogies". I think the point of this argument is that you have to consider the prior and correct for it. If I do a scientific experiment and reach a conclusion and that someone says that past experiment observed the same thing but it would have been wrong to conclude what I've concluded, it is not a "stretch to a questionable analogy", it is just showing that I cannot jump to that conclusion so easily. As I've said in another comment, for me, one missing thing is: for every technology, there are "incorrect worriers". The question is: where are they for AI? Even if the worry is real, you will have people who are worrying without good reason. You will have a "background noise". I see few differences between the AI dangers and the climate crisis. One of them is that the climate crisis is not coming from a new technology hype. It's not like we had a "Pollution bubble" with people explaining how the pollution will be transformative to our society and two weeks later, people raising concerns. What happened with the climate crisis was extremely slow, and therefore cannot be explained by people fantasizing on hypothetical impacts of a new technology. Another difference is that the danger of an intelligent AI are raised by a lot of people, but a big part of them appears to have similar ideological biases on how they view the world. Some people working in the field who tend to also not have the same view are raising different concerns (for example saying that AGI is still very far away and maybe not even reachable and that bad usage of current AI is more worrying) that seems less influenced by a very specific and peculiar way of seeing the world.
cauch 3y ago
I think there is a problem with the "rationalist" people. Opinions in itself is a useful and scientific tool, but they seem to consider it as an insult. The reality is that as soon as you go further than quite simple discussion, you reach places where your conclusions depends on your arbitrary values of what is more important than something else. For example, in the case of AI doom, one question is "why are you panicking about it and not panicking about children dying of hunger in remote countries or not panicking with the injustice generated by capitalism". This is not an argument to say that you should not panic, but this is to say that based on people "values", they will find things more or less scary and more or less worthy of panic. I guess some people are already used to the fact that the world is pretty messed up and that the danger of AI is just one on top of the others and therefore it does not generate any more reason to panic. Those reasons to panic are very much "opinions", and there is no rational answer that is better than all the others. It's not a bad word, it just means that different people will have different view of the world.

dcow 3y ago

Why does causing a moral panic have a lower burden of proof than dismissing a moral panic? Do you believe in God? (Also I didn't mean it to come off as both sides have made up concerns. I meant it as both the concern and lack thereof camps are based solely on individuals’ priors.)

haswell 3y ago
I take issue with the framing that this is purely about causing and dismissing moral panics. Panic is a secondary effect of whatever it is that people are arguing for or against. The panic is orthogonal to the underlying concern. When people started to worry about the climate, several kinds of arguments emerged. 1. People with intimate knowledge of the situation used their research, models and knowledge of climate dynamics to raise concerns 2. Some people reject those concerns based on the same kind of fallacious analogy: “people have been saying the sky is falling since…” 3. Some people reject the concerns outright and/or believe they have better models “Dismissing a moral panic” in the coffeepocalypse sense falls under #2. The dismissal is not a direct argument against the underlying claims/evidence, but an attempt to use a shaky analogy as the only form of evidence for dismissal. Whereas “causing the panic” falls under #1. The nature of the argument is fundamentally different, and appeals to the evidence and direct experience of the scientists capable of building climate models. I’m not saying that all panics are created equal, or that the burden of proof is lower for the group raising concerns. I’m saying that the “it’s just a moral panic” crowd is at an inherent disadvantage (assuming there is credible evidence that is cause for concern) because their form of argument is not evidence based and instead relies on stretching questionable analogies. Regarding god, I’m curious why you’re asking, but I consider myself agnostic.
- dcow 3y ago
  Regarding God, it’s a rhetorical question meant to make the reader think about all the moral concerns raised by religious people and the ensuing arguments dismissing God by atheists, feminists, etc. An inversion of what is generally happening with the AI discourse, where concerns about the health of society and the existence of supreme intelligence seem to be spurring existential questions about humanity but from the technocrats instead of the clergy.
  - haswell 3y ago
    The “supreme intelligence” concerns about AI live on one end of a very wide spectrum of concerns. I don’t think we need anything approaching super intelligence for a large subset of concerns to become reality, and rest of that spectrum is filled with non-theoretical risks, many of which are based on capabilities already in production.
- cauch 3y ago
  I don't think #2 as an argument "just relies on stretching questionable analogies". I think the point of this argument is that you have to consider the prior and correct for it. If I do a scientific experiment and reach a conclusion and that someone says that past experiment observed the same thing but it would have been wrong to conclude what I've concluded, it is not a "stretch to a questionable analogy", it is just showing that I cannot jump to that conclusion so easily. As I've said in another comment, for me, one missing thing is: for every technology, there are "incorrect worriers". The question is: where are they for AI? Even if the worry is real, you will have people who are worrying without good reason. You will have a "background noise". I see few differences between the AI dangers and the climate crisis. One of them is that the climate crisis is not coming from a new technology hype. It's not like we had a "Pollution bubble" with people explaining how the pollution will be transformative to our society and two weeks later, people raising concerns. What happened with the climate crisis was extremely slow, and therefore cannot be explained by people fantasizing on hypothetical impacts of a new technology. Another difference is that the danger of an intelligent AI are raised by a lot of people, but a big part of them appears to have similar ideological biases on how they view the world. Some people working in the field who tend to also not have the same view are raising different concerns (for example saying that AGI is still very far away and maybe not even reachable and that bad usage of current AI is more worrying) that seems less influenced by a very specific and peculiar way of seeing the world.

cauch 3y ago

I think there is a problem with the "rationalist" people. Opinions in itself is a useful and scientific tool, but they seem to consider it as an insult. The reality is that as soon as you go further than quite simple discussion, you reach places where your conclusions depends on your arbitrary values of what is more important than something else. For example, in the case of AI doom, one question is "why are you panicking about it and not panicking about children dying of hunger in remote countries or not panicking with the injustice generated by capitalism". This is not an argument to say that you should not panic, but this is to say that based on people "values", they will find things more or less scary and more or less worthy of panic. I guess some people are already used to the fact that the world is pretty messed up and that the danger of AI is just one on top of the others and therefore it does not generate any more reason to panic. Those reasons to panic are very much "opinions", and there is no rational answer that is better than all the others. It's not a bad word, it just means that different people will have different view of the world.