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Eliezer versus Jaron: smackdown
Apr. 18th, 2009 10:14 pmI agree with everything Eliezer says here, and as usual he does an excellent job of stating it. But occasionally, I think Jaron also makes some good points. At other times, he makes pretty bad points:
I think the worst moment on Jaron's side is when he doesn't dispute Eliezer's characterization of what he's saying as removing an airplane and leaving the quarks that make up the airplane in tact. If he does really believe this, it's got to be about the most radical rejection of reductionism I've ever heard. I think his strongest point is when he brings up IQ... I hadn't really thought of it that way before, but it does seem pretty crazy that people are assigned a number that has 3 significant figures that is supposed to represent their intelligence. I agree with him that it's an example of researchers either exaggerating the confidence in their models, or of beurocrats wanting a rigid system to enforce even if it's kind of arbitrary and only works very approximately. He also brings up a potentially good point that we shouldn't have extreme probability distributions on beliefs that concern things that weren't directly demonstrated by science (for example, beliefs about metaphysics, consciousness, god, etc.)... unfortunately, I don't quite believe what he's saying there enough to give up my extreme probability distributions with respect to such things (distributions which I assume agree well with Eliezer's... for instance, the odds that it's not possible to build a computer that is as smart or smarter than a human is very small). His argument makes some sense to me, yet I can't pretend that I don't have strong beliefs on those issues... I'll have to think about that one more. I dislike the way he says he believes humans are special because he believes it's an "undecidable" question whether they really are so he figures he might as well believe it (presumably because it makes him feel special? what a crappy reason to believe something). His frequent referral to Daniel Dennett as a "religious extremist" is hilarious, but obviously wrong.
Actually there is one line that Eliezer says which I kind of disagree with, although I suspect he didn't mean to say it, it was perhaps a slip of the tongue. After Jaron's repeated accusations that AI research is a "religion", he responds by saying "in order to call something a religion, you need to make the case that people believe certain things that aren't true." =) I would not define religion as belief in something false... I would say that you need to make the case that the reasons why people believe in something are faith based, which in general tends to lead to false beliefs... but could coincidentally lead to true beliefs once in a great while (if you waited a long, long time and came up with lots and lots of religions). So far I don't think anything like this has happened, but I think it is linguistically pointless to define religion in such a way that it's tautologically false. At any rate, it's an interesting sociological point that in some circles, the word religion has become somewhat synonymous with false beliefs. I personally see it as more synonymous with dogmatic faith-based beliefs. I also still cringe when I hear him (and Jaron) say he's a "rationalist" because I associate that with the philosophers who have epistemological beliefs which I so passionately disagree with. But I'm sure when Eliezer says it he means something more positive. Speaking of epistemology, Jaron says a couple times that Dennett "throws it out the window"... um, yeah, dream on Jaron... as if you have any clue compared to Dennett on the subject. Ironically, I agree with Jaron's statement that you can't call yourself a rationalist and be a Dan Dennett fan... although for very different reasons than he's implying. I'm an avid Dennett fan but I'm strictly an empiricist, not a rationalist... and I'd be really disappointed in Dennett if he started spouting rationalist crap.
All in all, an entertaining debate, and not without at least some good points on both sides. If you do end up watching it, go ahead and fill out the poll because I'm curious how similar or different other impressions are from mine on this subject:
[Poll #1386054]
I threw in a question about personality too, because I find the conflict in their personalities to be quite striking... it seems to parallel a very familiar personality type difference that I see arise in different contexts from time to time. I identify much more with Eliezer's personality, and something about Jaron's kind of bugs me, independently of what he's actually saying. Actually, I think the main thing that bugs me is that Jared is so vague and just refuses to nail down what he's saying a lot of the time, while Eliezer is so careful and clear in what he's saying all the time... maybe that's the difference? I'm not saying that means one personality type is more prone to error than the other... it's just an observation.
I think the worst moment on Jaron's side is when he doesn't dispute Eliezer's characterization of what he's saying as removing an airplane and leaving the quarks that make up the airplane in tact. If he does really believe this, it's got to be about the most radical rejection of reductionism I've ever heard. I think his strongest point is when he brings up IQ... I hadn't really thought of it that way before, but it does seem pretty crazy that people are assigned a number that has 3 significant figures that is supposed to represent their intelligence. I agree with him that it's an example of researchers either exaggerating the confidence in their models, or of beurocrats wanting a rigid system to enforce even if it's kind of arbitrary and only works very approximately. He also brings up a potentially good point that we shouldn't have extreme probability distributions on beliefs that concern things that weren't directly demonstrated by science (for example, beliefs about metaphysics, consciousness, god, etc.)... unfortunately, I don't quite believe what he's saying there enough to give up my extreme probability distributions with respect to such things (distributions which I assume agree well with Eliezer's... for instance, the odds that it's not possible to build a computer that is as smart or smarter than a human is very small). His argument makes some sense to me, yet I can't pretend that I don't have strong beliefs on those issues... I'll have to think about that one more. I dislike the way he says he believes humans are special because he believes it's an "undecidable" question whether they really are so he figures he might as well believe it (presumably because it makes him feel special? what a crappy reason to believe something). His frequent referral to Daniel Dennett as a "religious extremist" is hilarious, but obviously wrong.
Actually there is one line that Eliezer says which I kind of disagree with, although I suspect he didn't mean to say it, it was perhaps a slip of the tongue. After Jaron's repeated accusations that AI research is a "religion", he responds by saying "in order to call something a religion, you need to make the case that people believe certain things that aren't true." =) I would not define religion as belief in something false... I would say that you need to make the case that the reasons why people believe in something are faith based, which in general tends to lead to false beliefs... but could coincidentally lead to true beliefs once in a great while (if you waited a long, long time and came up with lots and lots of religions). So far I don't think anything like this has happened, but I think it is linguistically pointless to define religion in such a way that it's tautologically false. At any rate, it's an interesting sociological point that in some circles, the word religion has become somewhat synonymous with false beliefs. I personally see it as more synonymous with dogmatic faith-based beliefs. I also still cringe when I hear him (and Jaron) say he's a "rationalist" because I associate that with the philosophers who have epistemological beliefs which I so passionately disagree with. But I'm sure when Eliezer says it he means something more positive. Speaking of epistemology, Jaron says a couple times that Dennett "throws it out the window"... um, yeah, dream on Jaron... as if you have any clue compared to Dennett on the subject. Ironically, I agree with Jaron's statement that you can't call yourself a rationalist and be a Dan Dennett fan... although for very different reasons than he's implying. I'm an avid Dennett fan but I'm strictly an empiricist, not a rationalist... and I'd be really disappointed in Dennett if he started spouting rationalist crap.
All in all, an entertaining debate, and not without at least some good points on both sides. If you do end up watching it, go ahead and fill out the poll because I'm curious how similar or different other impressions are from mine on this subject:
[Poll #1386054]
I threw in a question about personality too, because I find the conflict in their personalities to be quite striking... it seems to parallel a very familiar personality type difference that I see arise in different contexts from time to time. I identify much more with Eliezer's personality, and something about Jaron's kind of bugs me, independently of what he's actually saying. Actually, I think the main thing that bugs me is that Jared is so vague and just refuses to nail down what he's saying a lot of the time, while Eliezer is so careful and clear in what he's saying all the time... maybe that's the difference? I'm not saying that means one personality type is more prone to error than the other... it's just an observation.
