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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   14412 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 6, 2026

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Yudkowsky, MIRI, and related orgs sure, but why would Scott, a psychiatrist who happens to be interested in ratsphere ideas, be responsible? That's like saying a random Trump voter should already have solved the Iran crisis.

But at least on the former, I would agree with post by RandomRanger above that it's not clear what value creating a benchmark 10 years ago would even have in the current environment. I'm pretty sure that MIRI were working on solving alignment itself, rather than working on hypothetical benchmarks for potential future AI technologies. Unless there is a demonstratable link, why would you ask them to do that?

but why would Scott, a psychiatrist who happens to be interested in ratsphere ideas, be responsible?

Why does Scott, a psychiatrist who happens to be interested in ratsphere ideas, coauthor these websites that purport to be about serious policy proposals?

You want someone who can write, write well, write persuasively, and has people skills. The maths stats and rats people can come up with the theory, now you need to present it to the normies (and you hope, people in power).

(I'm hoping they learned some lessons re: "politicians and people in power" because I'm still laughing about the massive misjudgement of the Carrick Flynn campaign. "It's a bunch of rubes in redneck country, how hard can it be for Smart Intelligent EA-aligned people to win that election?" God bless their good intentions, it took me two minutes looking the race up online to figure out "his opponent has union backing while he's been away in the Big City for years by this point? yeah I know who I'd bet on as winner").

In fact he did not coauthor "plan a".

I did a lot of writing for AI 2027 and was listed as a co-author. Some of my writing made it into Plan A too, but it was a bit less. The difference is of degree rather than kind, but because of this—and to give me more latitude to discuss it the way I like with less PR blowback—we decided not to put me as a co-author this time. I continue to be proud of having a part in this, small as it may be.

Even if he's not an official coauthor, he did make substantial contributions.

Because that is within his potential remit, while the hard maths of alignment is well outside his potential remit

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