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Scott Alexander, the guy who hosted the Culture War Thread on his blog slatestarcodex before that landed him in so much heat (from the woke left) that it was moved to reddit under the name /r/theMotte (and from there, subsequently, to themotte.org to preempt a reddit crackdown) comes usually across as a kind and considerate person to me. Charitable interpretations are very much his thing. While he has always engaged in CW topics on occasion, his forays deep into the trenches are rare (and in my impression have become rarer compared to the SSC days).
Apparently, there is a person called Steven Pinker. I have been vaguely aware that there was a book called The Better Angels of Our Nature which was probably authored by someone, but he was not someone I really had on my radar.
From the WP article, he seems solidly Grey Tribe. Believes in a computational theory of mind, Ashkenazi Intelligence Hypothesis, critical of both the woke left (cancellations) and the MAGA right (foreign student restrictions).
The main topic where he disagrees with Scott Alexander is AI x-risk.
Scott has now responded, and his reponse is a bit less than maximum charitable.
While Scott is diligent enough with his technical points, it is clear that he is personally hurt by Pinker's decision to ridicule AI x-risk. So his post is also a broadside fired against him. He cites Garfinkel et al 2017 who "proved" that machines will never be larger than humans using common philosophical arguments for AI being harmless.
Scott points out that while Pinker is busy berating the LW crowd for distracting from the more mundane risks of AI, x-risk advocates are willing to work hand in hand with groups with a more practical focus to combat pro-AI PACs like Leading the Future.
On model welfare (which is certainly not the core topic of the x-risk advocates):
He accuses Pinker of endorsing the "lowest quality voices", quoting Claire Lehmann:
Or
It ends with Scott seeming seriously willing to duel Pinker:
Scott has admitted in the comments that this is already the toned-down version of the post he originally wrote. I think that while he held back verbally (nobody get's called a "Vogon spy in a skin suit" this time), he uses his craft well to show his frustration.
For what it's worth, I think that Pinker is correct that Eliezer is in fact over-confident in p(doom|default-ASI). Just like Pinker is when he declares that any fear of doom is ridiculous.
The main difference is that for practical purposes, it does not matter much if your p(doom) is 0.99 or 0.05. Both would be pressing problems whose solution is the most important thing in the world.
Eliezer was bullish on AI capabilities when that was far out of the Overton window, back when the machines could beat humans at chess at most. Steven Pinker was tweeting that "deep learning has probably peaked" in 2019.
This might be giving too much credit to Pinker, but here is Clarke's first law:
Something that has always stuck with my about Scott is that he had a rough time in High School, especially with bullying, and, from time to time, this bursts forth in his posts. He's open about his bad experiences back then.
I think it's odd that any person over 35 would still have that much emotional resonance with anything short of real-deal physical / sexual abuse from childhood and adolescence. To my knowledge, Scott doesn't claim anything to that level. Charitably, it seems like he was truly a very bad fit for traditional classroom schooling. Lump extra bullying on top and that's a hard way for a Sensitive Young Man to be.
But life turned out pretty good for Scott.
Full emotional maturation is probably a rare occurrence in any given lifetime. We all have a thing that will set us off even if we can placidly endure nearly everything else. I consider my father to be perhaps the most patient man I've ever personally known. When traffic of any level is present, he turns into a howling college football coach ("ARE YOU KIDDING ME RIGHT NOW WITH THAT FUCKING LANE CHANGE!").
But Scott's "thing" puzzles me because it appears that he press his own button most of the time. This tiff with Pinker comes across like a dressed up schoolyard spat. I mean, Scott literally brings up dueling. It's like the nerdy kid finally getting his dander up with the bullying and leveling the challenge; "You and me! Basketball court at 3:30." Somewhere in the background, Aella looks at Scott in a new way, holds eye contact, and gives a shy smile while she tucks her hair behind her ear.
While my thirty-odd to forty-odd year-old self would have readily agreed with you, a funny thing happened to me as my mid-life deepened, and in the past year and change, I've been spending a lot of time and paying a lot of attention to some of the specific attitudes and behaviors I ended up adopting in Junior High and High School, simply because they still persist and no longer serve their intended purpose. It turns out that in my case, at least, my own rough time in school did still resonate with me, but not consciously, for I had internalized attitudes and behaviors that ultimately helped me to fit in at the time, and it is only in having seen them again and understood them that I can let those things go.
What does this actually mean?
This is a genuine question, however, I will admit to having a strong bias in place as well.
I think when people say "internalized" they mean that they've adopted a belief, behavior, pathology, what have you to such an extent that they aren't aware that they have it. It's "baked in" or "embedded in the subconscious." First, (again), what does that mean? Are you saying that there is a brain-within-the-brain that holds these "internalized" features?
Regardless, however, it surfaces a logical problem -- if something is "internalized" how does it every surface to the level where introspection can occur again? Your comment states that that you "[saw] them again" (meaning the internalized attitudes and behaviors) and were able to deal with them. How did this happen? Is something internalized until a new, different external stimuli bubbles it back up to the aware-brain?
My bias; I think this is all self-serving bullshit and that when people say "internalized" anything what they really mean is "I decided to just believe x for many years and now I'm kind of laundering my past behavior based on that very conscious decision." Think about it. If a guy says "I really internalized a lot of toxic behaviors" in reference to cheating on his wife / girlfriend (or hitting her), what is he actually saying? "It wasn't my fault because it was my double-secret-brain doing the thing .... but now I totally found a way to delete that firmware. I swear I'm totally fixed." How can such an assertion be taken seriously, let alone demonstrated?
There's nothing wrong with improving as a person. There's nothing wrong with changing a belief and maturing. I actively encourage this in all people regardless of life stage (something...something...catholic...love...the...sinner...something). But you have to start from a place of honesty where you admit "yeah .... I used to be a piece of shit" first and not side-step that responsibility with .... "internalization."
I don't think we're in fundamental disagreement here. It sounds like you've developed some antibodies for folks using therapeutic speak to justify their own bad behavior, and I'm going to encourage you to hang onto those antibodies. If that means the word internalized makes you suspicious, no worries, you're aware of the reason why it makes you skeptical and that's the important part. The narcissists can and will weaponize anything and everything convenient to them to cast themselves in only sympathetic roles while demonizing anyone and everyone else necessary to do so. I totally killed that dragon and everyone was super stoked on me before I came here and gave you that joke, Jimmy, but I'm going to be the better person and stop making it an issue! We see this all the time not just with words like internalized, but also trauma, abuse, entitlement, etc. etc. etc.
I'm of the personal opinion that our culture has adopted therapy language in incredibly destructive ways, and that the whole field of psychology hasn't covered itself in glory, either, but that doesn't mean that the concepts are all invalid and that they're selling snake oil. I'm IT, but I actually work in the mental health field, so that means I talk therapeutic speak all the time, and all 'internalized' really parses out to is a strong, often ingrained habit. I don't think it's a coincidence that the Buddhists are big on mindfulness and warn about the danger of habits. How much conscious attention do you pay to the myriad daily habits that are necessary for life and hygiene such as the brushing of the teeth, bathing, eating, etc.? And neuroplasticity is the explanation for how, over time, repeated activity forms and strengthens a neural pathway in the brain, and a habit is simply a neural pathway that becomes so strong that it takes barely any effort to achieve the desired result, in the same way that someone experienced with a manual transmission will have no problem starting on a hill, while someone just learning the clutch would struggle. Neuroplasticity explains the other side of the coin, too. Just like I've forgotten how to play many of the songs that I used to play on guitar because I stopped playing a decade ago, so too can habits be neglected for long enough that their associated neural pathways atrophy to the point where they are no longer functional, and another good example in this case is that my brother reminded me of a particular chord in a song that I couldn't remember, but that I had taught him decades ago, and that he still remembered because he got way better than I ever did and never got as far away from it as I did, either.
I was actually making my comment in the vein of that whole maybe the purpose of my life is solely to serve as a warning to others, and I have made a
badhabit of talking about how the stereotypical midlife crisis can be intensely real and heartbreakingly spectacular. One of the overwhelmingly common themes is, strategies that people use to try and deal with their shit that don't really work in the long run and actually break completely over time, and that started for me in earnest in my early forties and picked up speed until I hit the wall in my late forties. I've spent just about five years now trying to dig out and get my shit together in earnest. That, in turn, brings me to the answer to how one becomes aware of habitual/internalized attitudes and behaviors which is technically surprisal, but for the purposes of this discussion, pain. Lots and lots of pain. I love quoting Feynman when it comes to this shit, specifically that the first principle of science is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. I thought I had dealt with my feelings, but I was fooling myself, and it took my marriage unraveling and having to put my dad into a home in the same time frame to overwhelm me enough to break me of that belief.Your final paragraph shows that you know the answer to your question of how that assertion that someone has changed their ways can be taken seriously: the person in question doesn't simply take responsibility for their behavior with word, they back up that ownership by acting with obvious openness and integrity. That's simple to say, much harder to live by, but I'm tryin', Ringo.
I appreciate the common ground effortpost. And I sincerely wish you good fortune and sustained perseverance in your life.
But your sentence structure makes me quite certain we would not like each other. You aren't cool enough to use that many independent clauses.
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