Scott Alexander at ACX has a new post, challenging Steven Pinker to a debate about AI. Alexander thinks the AI dangers are real - and I don't mean the water and the electricity - while Pinker thinks they are oversold. Alexander points out that Pinker has consistently underestimated how intelligent AI is going to be, so he should just admit he is wrong, wrong, wrong about all of it. There is something about the tone which makes me uncomfortable. His reasoning is all in a row, though it is his usual obsessive self. (Note, Alexander always faults himself for the length of such posts, as if that were the extent of the problem. To me that is a clue of how he is missing the point.)
Alexander was arguing with Tyler Cowen last year about USAID in much the same tone. I am at a bit of a loss, approving of his general approach in both discussions, yet finding the final product somewhat beside the point. It is fair to hold someone accountable about what they previously wrote, but this somehow has an air of the childish "But you said...but you said...but you SAID..." I quoted GK Chesterton about arguing with a madman, as Alexander has that autistic style I am so familiar with.
If you argue with a madman, it is extremely probable that you will get the worst of it; for in many ways his mind moves all the quicker for not being delayed by things that go with good judgment. He is not hampered by a sense of humour or by clarity*, or by the dumb certainties of experience. He is the more logical for losing certain sane affections. Indeed, the common phrase for insanity is in this respect a misleading one. The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.
But my strongest impression was how much I glimpsed my own reflection in his posts. A few specific topics I have covered in detail (ahem) and at length (ahem) sprang immediately to mind.
* I remembered this as "charity," which is interesting. I may like that better, and if I ever get to speak with Gilbert I will mention it.
1 comment:
One can be wrong many times, about virtually everything, and still, frustratingly, be right about the one thing you were so sure of. Humility is a good thing, as is the awareness that one might not, in fact, have a full view of a problem, but rather, have an extrapolation of the problem from the pieces one has seen.
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