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Notes -
I just got done listening to Eliezer Yudkowski on EconTalk (https://www.econtalk.org/eliezer-yudkowsky-on-the-dangers-of-ai/).
I say this as someone who's mostly convinced of Big Yud's doomerism: Good lord, what a train wreck of a conversation. I'll save you the bother of listening to it -- Russ Roberts starts by asking a fairly softball question of (paraphrasing) "Why do you think the AIs will kill all of humanity?" And Yudkowski responds by asking Roberts "Explain why you think they won't, and I'll poke your argument until it falls apart." Russ didn't really give strong arguments, and the rest of the interview repeated this pattern a couple times. THIS IS NOT THE WAY HUMANS HAVE CONVERSATIONS! Your goal was not logically demolish Russ Roberts' faulty thinking, but to use Roberts as a sounding board to get your ideas to his huge audience, and you completely failed. Roberts wasn't convinced by the end, and I'm sure EY came off as a crank to anyone who was new to him.
I hope EY lurks here, or maybe someone close to him does. Here's my advice: if you want to convince people who are not already steeped in your philosophy you need to have a short explanation of your thesis that you can rattle off in about 5 minutes that doesn't use any jargon the median congresscritter doesn't already know. You should workshop it on people who don't know who you are, don't know any math or computer programming and who haven't read the Sequences, and when the next podcast host asks you why AIs will kill us all, you should be able to give a tight, logical-ish argument that gets the conversation going in a way that an audience can find interesting. 5 minutes can't cover everything so different people will poke and prod your argument in various ways, and that's when you fill in the gaps and poke holes in their thinking, something you did to great effect with Dwarkesh Patel (https://youtube.com/watch?v=41SUp-TRVlg&pp=ygUJeXVka293c2tp). That was a much better interview, mostly because Patel came in with much more knowledge and asked much better questions. I know you're probably tired of going over the same points ad nauseam, but every host will have audience members who've never heard of you or your jargon, and you have about 5 minutes to hold their interest or they'll press "next".
Russ is just such a nice guy, so entirely amenable to having friendly conversations about esoteric ideas, that going into a conversation with him in a combative fashion just comes off as absolutely bizarre. I've listened to almost every episode of EconTalk and this really was one of the worst episodes, and it was entirely Yud's fault. Normal episodes of the show follow tangents, educate the listener, and are often light-hearted and fun. If someone can't make their ideas seem compelling and their persona likeable when they have as friendly and curious of an interlocutor as Russ Roberts, they're simply hopeless.
Does Russ get frustrated this episode? Those are always the worst for me.
I think he did a really good job being patient. If I hadn't spent 500 hours listening to him, I don't think I would have sensed any underlying irritation. There was a spot where Yud asked him to try the thought experiment and Russ replied with something to the effect of, "you tell me what you think, my imagination isn't good enough" that was about as aggro as he got.
I agree and also think Russ gave a fantastic example of how to interview someone. He gave EY tons of opportunities to explain himself, with hints about how to sound less insane to the audience. Over the course of the interview, I think EY started doing a bit better, even though he kind of blew it at the end. I was rooting for EY and ended up profoundly disappointed in him as a communicator.
After thinking about it a bit, I think what was most off-putting is that EY seemed to have adopted a stance of "professor educating a student" with Russ, instead of a collaborator exploring an interesting topic, or even an interviewee with an amiable host. Russ is not the sports reporter for the Dubuque Tribune; he's clearly within inferential distance of EY's theories. It was frustrating watching Russ's heroic efforts to get EY to say something Russ could translate for the audience.
For anyone whose only experience with Econtalk is this interview, I beg you to listen to him talk with literally anyone else. He is a beacon of polite, sane discourse.
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