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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 argu

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.

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.