He is a bit like Paul Ehrlich, the population doomster of the 1970’s. Ehrlich is very smart and a good arguer but not someone who can accept criticism easily. Ehrlich, like Yudkowsky, reached his conclusions based on simply extrapolating trends. Ehrlich refused to acknowledge that his simple extrapolation was made invalid by green revolution and improved technology, the possibility of this had been pointed out to him, notably by Julian Simon, but Ehrlich dismissed this as hopium. I really hope that we can ridicule Yudkowsky in the future for the same reasons, not because I don’t like him but because that would mean the AI alignment problem was solved.
tomorrow_today_yes t1_j9j0w44 wrote
Reply to What are your thoughts on Eliezer Yudkowsky? by DonOfTheDarkNight
He is a bit like Paul Ehrlich, the population doomster of the 1970’s. Ehrlich is very smart and a good arguer but not someone who can accept criticism easily. Ehrlich, like Yudkowsky, reached his conclusions based on simply extrapolating trends. Ehrlich refused to acknowledge that his simple extrapolation was made invalid by green revolution and improved technology, the possibility of this had been pointed out to him, notably by Julian Simon, but Ehrlich dismissed this as hopium. I really hope that we can ridicule Yudkowsky in the future for the same reasons, not because I don’t like him but because that would mean the AI alignment problem was solved.