More Updates!
Yet Another Update (Dec. 5): For those who still haven’t had enough of me, check me out on Curt Jaimungal’s Theories of Everything Podcast, talking about … err, computational complexity, the halting problem, the time hierarchy theorem, free will, Newcomb’s Paradox, the no-cloning theorem, interpretations of quantum mechanics, Wolfram, Penrose, AI, superdeterminism, consciousness, integrated information theory, and whatever the hell else Curt asks me about. I strongly recommend watching the video at 2x speed to smooth over my verbal infelicities.
In answer to a criticism I’ve received: I agree that it would’ve been better for me, in this podcast, to describe Wolfram’s “computational irreducibility” as simply “the phenomenon where you can’t predict a computation faster than by running it,” rather than also describing it as a “discrete analog of chaos / sensitive dependence on initial conditions.” (The two generally co-occur in the systems Wolfram talks about, but are not identical.)
On the other hand: no, I do not recognize that Wolfram deserves credit for giving a new name (“computational irreducibility”) to a thing that was already well-understood in the relevant fields. This is particularly true given that
(1) the earlier understanding of the halting problem and the time hierarchy theorem was rigorous, giving us clear criteria for proving when computations can be sped up and when they can’t be, and
(2) Wolfram replaced it with handwaving (“well, I can’t see how this process could be predicted faster than by running it, so let’s assume that it can’t be”).
In other words, the earlier understanding was not only decades before Wolfram, it was superior.
It would be as if I announced my new “Principle of Spacetime Being Like A Floppy Trampoline That’s Bent By Gravity,” and then demanded credit because even though Einstein anticipated some aspects of my principle with his complicated and confusing equations, my version was easier for the layperson to intuitively understand.
I’ll reopen the comments on this post, but only for comments on my Theories of Everything podcast.
Another Update (Dec. 1): Quanta Magazine now has a 20-minute explainer video on Boolean circuits, Turing machines, and the P versus NP problem, featuring yours truly. If you already know these topics, you’re unlikely to learn anything new, but if you don’t know them, I found this to be a beautifully produced introduction with top-notch visuals. Better yet—and unusually for this sort of production—everything I saw looked entirely accurate, except that (1) the video never explains the difference between Turing machines and circuits (i.e., between uniform and non-uniform computation), and (2) the video also never clarifies where the rough identities “polynomial = efficient” and “exponential = inefficient” hold or fail to hold.
For the many friends who’ve asked me to comment on the OpenAI drama: while there are many things I can’t say in public, I can say I feel relieved and happy that OpenAI still exists. This is simply because, when I think of what a world-leading AI effort could look like, many of the plausible alternatives strike me as much worse than OpenAI, a company full of thoughtful, earnest people who are at least asking the right questions about the ethics of their creations, and who—the real proof that they’re my kind of people—are racked with self-doubts (as the world has now spectacularly witnessed). Maybe I’ll write more about the ethics of self-doubt in a future post.
For now, the narrative that I see endlessly repeated in the press is that last week’s events represented a resounding victory for the “capitalists” and “businesspeople” and “accelerationists” over the “effective altruists” and “safetyists” and “AI doomers,” or even that the latter are now utterly discredited, raw egg dripping from their faces. I see two overwhelming problems with that narrative. The first problem is that the old board never actually said that it was firing Sam Altman for reasons of AI safety—e.g., that he was moving too quickly to release models that might endanger humanity. If the board had said anything like that, and if it had laid out a case, I feel sure the whole subsequent conversation would’ve looked different—at the very least, the conversation among OpenAI’s employees, which proved decisive to the outcome. The second problem with the capitalists vs. doomers narrative is that Sam Altman and Greg Brockman and the new board members are also big believers in AI safety, and conceivably even “doomers” by the standards of most of the world. Yes, there are differences between their views and those of Ilya Sutskever and Adam D’Angelo and Helen Toner and Tasha McCauley (as, for that matter, there are differences within each group), but you have to drill deeper to articulate those differences.
In short, it seems to me that we never actually got a clean test of the question that most AI safetyists are obsessed with: namely, whether or not OpenAI (or any other similarly constituted organization) has, or could be expected to have, a working “off switch”—whether, for example, it could actually close itself down, competition and profits be damned, if enough of its leaders or employees became convinced that the fate of humanity depended on its doing so. I don’t know the answer to that question, but what I do know is that you don’t know either! If there’s to be a decisive test, then it remains for the future. In the meantime, I find it far from obvious what will be the long-term effect of last week’s upheavals on AI safety or the development of AI more generally. For godsakes, I couldn’t even predict what was going to happen from hour to hour, let alone the aftershocks years from now.
Since I wrote a month ago about my quantum computing colleague Aharon Brodutch, whose niece, nephews, and sister-in-law were kidnapped by Hamas, I should share my joy and relief that the Brodutch family was released today as part of the hostage deal. While it played approximately zero role in the release, I feel honored to have been able to host a Shtetl-Optimized guest post by Aharon’s brother Avihai. Meanwhile, over 180 hostages remain in Gaza. Like much of the world, I fervently hope for a ceasefire—so long as it includes the release of all hostages and the end of Hamas’s ability to repeat the Oct. 7 pogrom.
Greta Thunberg is now chanting to “crush Zionism” — ie, taking time away from saving civilization to ensure that half the world’s remaining Jews will be either dead or stateless in the civilization she saves. Those of us who once admired Greta, and experience her new turn as a stab to the gut, might be tempted to drive SUVs, fly business class, and fire up wood-burning stoves just to spite her and everyone on earth who thinks as she does.
The impulse should be resisted. A much better response would be to redouble our efforts to solve the climate crisis via nuclear power, carbon capture and sequestration, geoengineering, cap-and-trade, and other effective methods that violate Greta’s scruples and for which she and her friends will receive and deserve no credit.
(On Facebook, a friend replied that an even better response would be to “refuse to let people that we don’t like influence our actions, and instead pursue the best course of action as if they didn’t exist at all.” My reply was simply that I need a response that I can actually implement!)
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Comment #1 November 27th, 2023 at 1:55 am
> I fervently hope for a ceasefire—so long as it includes the release of all hostages and the end of Hamas’s ability to repeat the Oct. 7 pogrom.
I see at least two interpretations of this affirmation :
1. Israël is a peaceful nation taking a very minimalist and surgical course of actions in the aim of release the hostages and protect itself against evil Hamas.
2. Israël has taken two millions of hostages, has already killed 10.000 of them, and is ready to continue until … hum … until … we’ll see.
(and infinitely many intermediates or orthogonal interpretations)
Unfortunately, I must be misinformed, but the situation on the battlefield doesn’t allow me to distinguish between the two possibilities.
I fear that possibility (2) has some credit on most of the international public opinion. Accusing them of antisemitism could not be sufficient … and could also be a tragic misinterpretation on why so much people express more solidarity with palestinian than with israelians.
Comment #2 November 27th, 2023 at 4:11 am
A different way of framing this would be: how would events around the famous weekend changed your prior about OpenAI having a working “off switch”?
My answer: they reduced it significantly, particularly in the light of the composition of the new board.
Comment #3 November 27th, 2023 at 4:15 am
> For now, the narrative that I see endlessly repeated in the press is that last week’s events represented a resounding victory for the “capitalists” and “businesspeople” and “accelerationists” over the “effective altruists” and “safetyists” and “AI doomers,” or even that **the latter are now utterly discredited, raw egg dripping from their faces**.
> I see two overwhelming problems with that narrative. The first problem is that the old board never actually said that it was firing Sam Altman for reasons of AI safety… The second problem with the capitalists vs. doomers narrative is that Sam Altman and Greg Brockman and the new board members are also big believers in AI safety…
Isn’t there also a third major problem? Namely, even if the reason for the events *was* safety concerns, Altman’s victory in no way discredits the “doomers”? The political balance of powers has literally no bearing on the scientific question of whether AI is an extinction risk. If anything, instead of discrediting the “doomers” it should make everyone *more* concerned.
Comment #4 November 27th, 2023 at 5:32 am
You are wrong. We do now know how “OpenAI (or any other similarly constituted organization) has, or could be expected to have, a working “off switch”—whether, for example, it could actually close itself down, competition and profits be damned, if enough of its leaders or employees became convinced that the fate of humanity depended on its doing so”. It could but it isn’t the OpenAI charity board that would make that decision.
What we found out was that – like all for profit companies (which is what the OpenAI company that employs people is) – the power rests with a combination of those who fund it and those who work for it. In extremis, those who fund it will “win” as in get their way, even if that is a pyrrhic victory because everyone quits.
Let’s look at what happened: the board of the OpenAI charity decided to fire Altman. Didn’t ask the funders or the staff (of OpenAI company) first. Both funders and staff disagreed with decision. Decision gets reversed.
If we had a case of “ooh, we’ve invented an AI that can kill everyone” then same dynamic would happen. Whether same decision would be made ; that we don’t know. But we do now know who would make the decision – same as any other company.
Comment #5 November 27th, 2023 at 5:50 am
Look at her past few tweets:
https://twitter.com/GretaThunberg/status/1727976543819911349 “Jews for Palestinian liberation”
https://twitter.com/GretaThunberg/status/1725461660511449314 “Free Palestine”
And so on. Weeks 270-275 are all of this garbage. Though, the German branch of Greta’s organization has resisted her nonsense:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/23/backlash-over-european-climate-activists-support-for-palestine
The German branch of Fridays for Future, which has previously clashed with the global organisation over its positions on Israel, said it stood in solidarity with the victims of Hamas’s violence, condemned the terror and hoped that all hostages would be brought back safely.
Luisa Neubauer, a Fridays for Future activist who encouraged people to attend a solidarity demonstration with Israel in front of Berlin’s Brandenburger Tor on Sunday, posted a statement on behalf of the German branch that said the group had “unlimited solidarity” with Jewish people, was also worried about rising anti-Muslim racism and saw the suffering of civilians in Gaza. “All of those are not contradictions. Our hearts are big enough to feel all of that at the same time.”
Comment #6 November 27th, 2023 at 7:28 am
Vanessa Kosoy #3:
Isn’t there also a third major problem? Namely, even if the reason for the events *was* safety concerns, Altman’s victory in no way discredits the “doomers”? The political balance of powers has literally no bearing on the scientific question of whether AI is an extinction risk
Of course—I considered that too obvious even to mention, but you’re right to make it explicit!
Just like we saw with the Sam Bankman-Fried affair, most media coverage never even notices the question of whether the weird nerds’ beliefs about the world are true. By “discredited,” the commentators simply mean that the weird nerds suffered a humiliating setback (and they’ll ignore if there are some pretty weird nerds on the opposing side too!).
To spell it out, the “thinking” here appears to be: “if these weird nerds couldn’t even predict the effects of their actions in the here-and-now, then why should we pay them any attention regarding the remote future? We’re hereby relieved of any obligation even to consider their truth-claims.”
To make the obvious explicit this time: I find the above argument invalid for multiple reasons. For example, sometimes it’s easier to make statements about the remote future than about next week (eg, predicting the Sun turning into a red giant vs predicting the weather). Also, there might be many weird nerds who reasoned themselves to a weird but correct belief, only a few of whom tried to act in the world right now on the basis of the belief, and failed (eg, all the scientists who know that quantum computing is ultimately possible, versus some particular QC startup that flames out).
Comment #7 November 27th, 2023 at 7:43 am
Greta Thunberg has been anti India, anti hindu, anti Modi (they are all synonymous) the minute she got global attention. Yet i want to conserve natural resources because earth is my mother, who or what Greta? She is such a nobody. That a brilliant scientist like Dr. Aaronson had once even slightly believed in her intentions towards anything as noble already means she is a success unfortunately.
Comment #8 November 27th, 2023 at 7:50 am
Marc #4:
What we found out was that – like all for profit companies (which is what the OpenAI company that employs people is) – the power rests with a combination of those who fund it and those who work for it.
Will you allow me to rephrase? We of course learned, if we didn’t already know, that “OpenAI is nothing without its people” (as the rallying cry went). After Microsoft offered simply to reconstitute OpenAI as a division of Microsoft, it all came down to what the employees wanted. What we didn’t learn — and this was my point — is what the employees would decide, if given a clear choice between releasing a dangerous product to the world or losing the value of their equity. Having seen the culture of this company up close — for example, how the conversations at the lunch table invariably circle back to AGI timelines, p(doom), etc — I’m ready to fight anyone who sees the answer as obvious.
Comment #9 November 27th, 2023 at 8:21 am
Laurent #1: “International public opinion” has mostly been against Israel since its founding, as it’s mostly been against Jews since the Babylonians. I confess that I still get surprised every time (as by the worldwide pro-Hamas rallies October 7-8), but I probably shouldn’t.
Let me take my affirmation further: I fervently hope that a ceasefire — with the return of all hostages and the destruction of Hamas’s military power — will be followed by a crushing defeat at the polls for Netanyahu and his allies, and a restart of the peace process. I hope that process will lead to a Palestinian state that exists next to Israel and gives Palestinians the rights and freedoms that Hamas (and even the Palestinian Authority) currently deny them.
Comment #10 November 27th, 2023 at 8:23 am
While we certainly can’t draw strong conclusions without knowing exactly what was going on, it seems to be evidence towards being more concerned about OpenAI’s ability to govern itself. (which might be a good thing! Trusting them a whole lot never seemed like a good idea – maybe lawmakers will take note)
At least we got to witness that Altman appears power hungry and seems willing to effectively dismantle OpenAI if he can’t be the leader. Especially so, if it turns out to be true that he tried to push Toner out.
Comment #11 November 27th, 2023 at 8:27 am
Vrushali #7: Greta does provide a beautiful illustration of the pros and cons of hitching the important global struggle for X to a single charismatic person. The PR benefits can be considerable … but what happens when the person turns out to believe that there’s no point in winning X if we don’t also get Y and Z, which are dubious or evil?
Comment #12 November 27th, 2023 at 8:33 am
What’s the issue with wood-burning stoves exactly? I know particulates can be an issue, but there are good catalyzers nowadays which ensures low particulate emissions, and it is a renewable ressource, not fossil carbon!
Comment #13 November 27th, 2023 at 9:46 am
Scott#9
I somewhat agree with this point of point of view and hopes, but particularly with
> I hope that process will lead to a Palestinian state that exists next to Israel and gives Palestinians the rights and freedoms that Hamas (and even the Palestinian Authority) currently deny them.
How can you hope that the Palestinians of Gaza, after the huge suffering and destruction that the Israeli military inflicted them in the last month, would trust this peace/statehood process, if it even will happen to start?
As I wrote on a comment here when the siege began, the sad truth is that the actions of the Israeli military are just planting the seeds for the next Hamas and the next Oct. 7, by “forcing” those who are just children now (and might have been neutral or even positive about Israel), to just hate the destroyers or their homes and families. Sure, Israel may have a reasonable motive and justification for their actions, but that won’t excuse them, at least in the minds of these victim, who today are innoncent, but in 10 years will be the new terrorist.
I now think that peace is sadly impossible, as argued at https://www.npr.org/2023/11/19/1213797712/israels-lack-of-a-strategy-is-the-strategy and https://www.npr.org/2023/11/20/1214109088/israels-plan-to-eradicate-hamas-is-an-impossible-goal-hamas-expert-says
Comment #14 November 27th, 2023 at 9:54 am
Del #13: I don’t know. At the end of WWII, Germany and Japan were much more devastated than Gaza is now, but they then became two of the world’s greatest liberal-democratic success stories. I think that, more than anything else, it depends on what’s in the heads of ordinary people (just like the OpenAI situation ultimately depended on the employees). When do Palestinians finally let go of the idea of reversing the “Naqba” and cleansing the land of the Zionist occupiers, and embrace the idea of building their own state next to Israel? And when does the Israeli right finally let go of the “Greater Israel” fantasy?
Comment #15 November 27th, 2023 at 10:20 am
I want to address the anti-zionism angle that you think means leftists are advocating for Jews to be stateless or dead. I heard Hitchens describe it once as a distinction between ‘a Jewish state’ (which is a theocracy as much as a Hindu state, or a Christian state would be), versus ‘a state for Jews’. Despite the rich history and facets of Zionism (cultural Zionism, zionists who never wanted a state, etc), the fact of the matter is that the ethno-nationalist strand of Zionism is in political power right now, and has been for a while, and the occupation in the West Bank and blockade in Gaza have been going on for years. This is why leftists are anti-Zionist — it doesn’t mean we want death of all the Jewish people or destroy Israel. We are against ‘a Jewish state’, a theocracy, the ethno-nationalist strand of Zionism which is the one with political power right now and has been slowly tending towards for years/decades.
Yes, that might be oversimplifying/redefining Zionism and ignoring everything else that it encompasses, but in terms of material/political power does it really matter considering who is in power in Israel right now? And considering the unconditional support of the US in military terms? I ask that sincerely, because that is the actual substance of the debate.
Comment #16 November 27th, 2023 at 10:24 am
I was never behind the whole Thunberg thing, so hopefully this can be taken with the right amount of neutrality, but saying something that horrible while having no idea why is a defining symptom of the socially disabling illness that made her (cruelly, circus-like in my opinion) a media darling. I wish we could let the whole fad blow over and not hold it against her personally.
Comment #17 November 27th, 2023 at 10:34 am
Israel had one bad day, because they grew lazy and careless and complacent. They are otherwise quite capable of keeping down Palestinian terrorism by force regardless of how many generations of Palestinians continue to hate Israel. “This can’t go on forever” needs evidence, because maybe it can.
Once again, I remind you that AI is software, and it will be developed as open source by many people all over the world, out of the control of would-be gatekeepers. Whether or not OpenAI has an “off switch” will be irrelevant. Like many such technologies, development will likely be driven by the needs of pornography, to allow for the creation of “deep fakes” of people and subject matter that the gatekeepers would like to stop.
Comment #18 November 27th, 2023 at 10:44 am
Venkat #15: Zionism was born of the unique historical circumstance that the Jews were stateless for nearly 2000 years (having been expelled from Israel, where they were indigenous), and that this situation was incompatible with the Jews’ physical survival, as dramatically shown by the Holocaust. So, if someone is against Zionism now that it’s actually been realized, I’d say that just takes us back to the original circumstances that gave birth to Zionism, with the anti-Zionist now having the burden of finding a different solution. Putting Israel’s Jews under the power of Islamists in the grip of an ideology directly descended from Nazism is clearly not a solution compatible with their survival, so then what: move them all to Montana?
Comment #19 November 27th, 2023 at 10:47 am
Scott #14:
I think if you’re (quite reasonably) saying things like:
> And when does the Israeli right finally let go of the “Greater Israel” fantasy?
It seems you could be a bit more charitable in your interpretation of Thunberg’s sloganeering. Isn’t it possible, even likely, that’s the thing she intends to refer to? It’s reasonable to point out the dangers of equivocating between that and “Zionism” writ large, less reasonable to imply that Thunberg is advocating for genocide. It’s a frustrating situation for idealists, who tend to hold out hope that intractable problems can be solved by good people doing the right thing. It’s unreasonable to expect any nation to show restraint in the face of this sort of casus belli, but this is also a case where it’s really hard to see how less restraint is going to improve the long-run outcome.
I find it easy to despair, but I have to remind myself that peace does sometimes eventually come after situations where peace is obviously unachievable, it’s impossible until it’s not.
Comment #20 November 27th, 2023 at 10:52 am
Venkat #15
People have a hard time believing this because sectarianism is almost unheard of in this century, but the Israeli right is predominately religious, not “ethnic nationalist.” Anyone could have a ticket to Israel if they were properly recognized by an Orthodox rabbi anywhere in the world, and their supreme court recently extended this to Conservative and Reform (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/01/world/middleeast/israel-jewish-converts-citizenship.html). White nationalists have transformed American’s ideas of ethnic conflict by continually trying to start one, but Israel is a thousand miles away and has a culture that you simply can’t project our own illnesses onto… they combat a unique set of illnesses, like every country.
Comment #21 November 27th, 2023 at 11:18 am
Since you’ve brought up Greta I’m going to comment on the nature of climate change and dispute the claim that it is either an existential crisis or a particularly pressing matter. And no this won’t be one of those “for you see carbon doesn’t heat things!” mustache twirler comments. Carbon and methane heat the atmosphere and over a long enough timeframe (probably less than a century) it’ll have significant real world impact.
But the truth is we have a simple and cheap geoengineering solution and have already tested it with a natural experiment:
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/07/sea-surface-temperature-imo-low-sulphur-fuel-shipping/
And
https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2023/07/19/are-heatwaves-evidence-that-climate-change-is-speeding-up
Just how substantial the impact of sulphur is is disputed, but no one argued for zero or anywhere close. Plausible estimates for a climate change reversing level of impact are in the millions of tons released in the upper atmosphere
I had chat work up some numbers on Air Force airlift assuming the whole fleet running one mission per week and how long it’d take to put 5 million tons on the board. Turns out the number is 148 weeks, implying a mere 3 missions a week could put an absolutely staggering tonnage of sulfur into the atmosphere in a year without even stressing the DOD’s airlift (because army, navy and marines also have their own air transport fleets).
– **US Air Force Transport Plane Fleet Composition and Tonnage by Airframe**:
– **C-5M Galaxy**: 52 aircraft, 281,001 pounds each.
– **C-17 Globemaster III**: 228 aircraft, 170,900 pounds each.
– **C-130 Hercules**: 333 aircraft (162 C-130H + 171 C-130J), 42,000 pounds each.
– **Total Lift Capacity**:
– Combined: 67,563,252 pounds or approximately 33,781.626 tons.
– **Time to Transport 5 Million Tons**:
– At the current capacity, it would take about 148 weeks to transport a total of 5 million tons.
Meanwhile global sulfur output according to chat is just shy of 80 million tons meaning an extra five million a year is well within the realm of possibility.
This isn’t an existential threat. The Berlin airlift had similar daily tonnage requirements of around 5,000 tons a day 70 years ago and they didn’t have access to AI pilots perfectly capable of flying such routine ops, nor did they have a single easy to source commodity to transport. Dumping it in the upper atmosphere would probably require some innovation on the best and most efficient way to do it but that’s purely an engineering problem.
Reality is we could end climate change tomorrow if Congress cared enough to authorize getting it done. But the impact on the US is, in real terms, negligible and there is near zero voter pressure to get it done. Sure, million of people *say* they care about climate change, but if Joe Biden got up on a stage tomorrow and said “actually we don’t really give a fig about climate change and won’t do more than lip service about it” I’d guess mere thousands would change their vote in protest. High awareness, low criticality.
Eventually the public will become sufficiently annoyed by the lack of quality snow for winter sports or the farm lobby will start screeching about the impact on yields and profits and Congress will start funding the solution and a few years after that the DHS (also known as the Department of Random Stuff) will probably have a brand new air cargo fleet and the temperature range will be back to that of the 90s.
The people arguing that climate change is the single most pressing issue in the world today are in my opinion merely exposing their own ignorance and small mindedness. Even if you discard Ukraine and Israel and their wars, the ongoing genocide by the RSF in Darfur (yes, again) and other similar acts you still end up with a long list of problems that have regional or global impact and a much shorter timeframe for serious impact on human life (Turkish earthquake survivors and their cargo crate living situation, the massive crime and murder wave created by drug cartels in Central America and the Caribbean, the likelihood of another pandemic) that lack such simple solutions.
In my opinion if a threat has a simple solution it necessarily cannot be called existential for the same reason we do not consider a cut an existential threat to human life merely because it carries the risk of sepsis and death if you don’t wash it out. A few million tons of sulfur into the upper atmosphere is orders of magnitudes simpler to achieve than a general solution to ocean acidification or poverty or disease. Or teenage grifters who glom onto the latest issue and do their darndest to make it all about them…
Thank you for attending my Ted talk 🙏
Comment #22 November 27th, 2023 at 11:19 am
Scott#14
> At the end of WWII, Germany and Japan were much more devastated than Gaza is now,
I don’t think that’s accurate. AFAIK, Japan had just two small towns destroyed, with around 200,000 people killed, and let’s say 1 million displaced (probably much less). Japan total population was of 71 millions. So it was definitely not “more devastated than Gaza is now”, IMHO. It was certainly in shock, but the vast majority of people were unaffected and if anything just scared of becoming affected — hence their unconditional surrender was easy.
Regarding Germany, it was a democracy before (Hitler had been elected as a socialist). And a big difference was that it was definitely a perpetrator and my understanding was that the population knew it. Everything that Germany did had no excuse whatsoever, they just wanted “world domination” because of their alleged superiority. My understanding is that German people knew that what Germany was doing was wrong, just did not have the gut to say it out loud. So I speculate that when the war ended with a defeat the Germans must have thought something like “we’ve got what we deserved for allowing that maniac to rule”.
On the other hand, there is still a vast amount of Palestinians who resent the British breaking the promise of giving *them* control of the state which has instead become Israel. And so they see themselves as the victims, rather than the perpetrators.
Moreover, back in the day the information flowing down to people was not as free as it is now, and the narrative could have been kept in control. These days… well the genie is out of the bottle (and this goes back to OpenAI and safety discussion) and we are back to chaos: these days people just believe what they want to believe or what they have lived themselves first hand…. https://www.npr.org/2023/11/27/1214451419/civilian-deaths-are-being-dismissed-as-crisis-actors-in-gaza-and-israel
Speaking of AI safety, I think the doom is here already, as the above piece demonstrates, and it will only be downhill from now. I wish more “doomers” would work on this (I know you are Scott, and I really appreciate that) rather than on hypothetical movie-like scenarios for the future.
Comment #23 November 27th, 2023 at 11:28 am
Of the two I prefer Boomers to Doomers.
I had a couple nice graphs picked out for global food production over the last sixty years to respond to your climate crisis comment and the claimed impact on food production (in particular the warm climate staple maize) but what’s the use. Climate doom is unfalsifiable because whenever a prediction fails then just slide it forward twenty years. Oops-now it’s right.
Thank you for posting the plight and safe return of the Brodutch family.
Hyman Rosen #17
Your penetrating remark was hilarious.
Comment #24 November 27th, 2023 at 11:46 am
Del #22: Quick sanity check — about 6% of Germany’s population was killed in WWII, and about 4% of Japan’s population. About 0.5% of Gaza’s population has been killed in this war.
Apparently a significant fraction of Japanese still think Japan was justified in WWII. What’s important is that, starting in 1945, they pragmatically realized that empire was a dead end and that their future would be as a liberal democracy and cultural and technological innovator. I think peace and prosperity will come to the Palestinians whenever they have a similar realization.
While there’s been plenty of online misinformation about the Israel/Gaza war, as far as I can tell it’s almost entirely been the well-known, old-fashioned human kind. Genuine question: has AI-generated misinformation played any significant role in this war? If so, does anyone have a link?
Comment #25 November 27th, 2023 at 12:13 pm
“..sometimes it’s easier to make statements about the remote future than about next week (eg, predicting the Sun turning into a red giant vs predicting the weather).”
This caused me to wonder whether (the absence of) unexplained anomalously-low incidence of red giants in a region might suggest (the absence of) widespread advanced technology there.
Comment #26 November 27th, 2023 at 12:16 pm
Del #23
Photo of Tokyo after firebombing-
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/640/media/images/81532000/jpg/_81532949_81532948.jpg
Informative photo of Hiroshima after bomb and today (there are better photos than this if you search)-
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse1.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.h-qi03KQeu6l_NapXAR1ZwHaJx%26pid%3DApi&f=1&ipt=4a99f4d33636288e184a33b23686b7a8ca18ae2688b5d61b271df0334eb58e87&ipo=images
Three million Japanese died (mostly males of military age) and 5.7 million Germans (mostly males of military age). The entire population of Gaza is 2 million.
Comment #27 November 27th, 2023 at 12:30 pm
Scott #14
> And when does the Israeli right finally let go of the “Greater Israel” fantasy?
Such fantasies, to what little extent they exist, have nothing to do with Israeli government policies, past or present, and so are not a barrier to peace. To say nothing of the Palestinians suddenly deciding to adopt Enlightenment values.
Comment #28 November 27th, 2023 at 1:28 pm
> I hope that process will lead to a Palestinian state that exists next to Israel and gives Palestinians the rights and freedoms that Hamas (and even the Palestinian Authority) currently deny them.
Without a genocide, there probably would be no Israel today. Let’s hope the current genocide in Gaza leads to the outcome you describe (i.e. a real Palestinian state). It’d be nice if it was possible without a genocide first, alas…
Comment #29 November 27th, 2023 at 1:52 pm
L33tminion #19: The thing is, it’s trivially easy for anyone criticizing Israel to clear themselves of the charge of antisemitism or genocidal intent (at least by my lights). They just need to utter a few simple words: “yes, of course Israel should continue to exist. Of course I support a two-state solution.” Then they can go back to denouncing Israel’s government and war conduct all they want.
So then, why is it that the anti-Israel people (including Greta, unless I’m mistaken) almost never seem able to bring themselves to utter these simple words? Sometimes they explicitly deny the words (don’t believe me? check Twitter!!), which at least has the virtue of clarity. Much more often, however, they play a motte-and-bailey game: “from the river to the sea! no peace on stolen land!” etc etc — endless slogans whose only logical implication would seem to be the expulsion or extermination of Israel’s Jews, but without ever having to own up to that. Or they develop convoluted theories whose upshot is that it’s not their responsibility to answer simple questions like “what happens to Israel’s Jews after the glorious intifada succeeds?”, and that you should feel bad for asking them. I find this morally and intellectually despicable: even worse, in its way, than the explicit version.
On the other side, let me demonstrate just how easy this is: I want the Palestinians to have a peaceful, independent, prosperous state in the West Bank and Gaza. I don’t want them to have to leave those areas. That is my desired end state.
Comment #30 November 27th, 2023 at 1:54 pm
> Quick sanity check — about 6% of Germany’s population was killed in WWII, and about 4% of Japan’s population. About 0.5% of Gaza’s population has been killed in this war.
I stand corrected with those numbers.
Yet, AFAIK (and I might be wrong), most of Japan and most of Germany (people and properties) was unaffected, whereas in Gaza AFAIK (and I might be wrong) most of people and properties *are* being affected, this is the difference I see which I was trying to highlight (with obviously wrong support material)
> I think peace and prosperity will come to the Palestinians whenever they have a similar realization.
Hell yes, no question about that! The question is whether we (as American) or the Israeli would like to nudge them towards such a realization. I argue that the way Israel is fighting the current war and the American support for it is nudging the Palestinians in the opposite direction. The decision is ultimately theirs and they could very well go in the direction opposite to the nudging, but yet I’d be more supportive of choices nudging them in the “right way” rather than the “wrong way”.
> Genuine question: has AI-generated misinformation played any significant role in this war?
I try to stay away from social network and the likes as the plague, so I am not qualified to answer more than pointing you to that NPR article I linked in my previous post. That said, in my discussions with friends and acquaintances here in the USA I’ve experienced:
– in the last decade a strong tendency to demonize the “other side” (which earlier was instead respected and simply “agreed to disagree”), and
– more recently people unconditionally believing everything “their side” presents, and
– more recently people unconditionally believing everything “the other side” presents is a lie, staged or a AI generated image or video
So even if AI has not *directly* played a role, it still playing a role by instilling doubts in people, most notably in neutral third party observers. I know, even having an authoritative answers to the true-or-generated question for images and videos will still leave the “is this staged” question open, but perhaps that can be more easily answered via traditional means. So yes, AI is not a problem per se, but it’s rather its extremist use following the problem I mentioned at the first bullet above (at least in the USA)
Comment #31 November 27th, 2023 at 1:59 pm
I don’t know what’s in their minds and what strings are being pulled, but it seems like it should be a wakeup call that the large majority of OpenAI employees, CEO, and president, would easily throw away their mission to benefit humanity and join a corporate mission that aligns with profit above all else and has no credible ethical grounding.
For contrast, between the two missions, at the very beginning of its introduction to the world, OpenAI was worrying about things like what their creation will do to democracy, and Microsoft was worrying about how to most effectively blend advertising into its output, and sell its power to manipulate people. Extrapolate that 10 years into the future and what do you get?
In think, as depressing as it is, the dollar rules. Self regulation doesn’t work. And the power to make a difference in how AI transforms the country and the world, good or bad, is not really likely to be affected much by individuals leveraging their talent. Not because they can’t, but because they just probably won’t decide to in great enough numbers.
Activism and participation in politics remain irreplaceable tools for trying to make this all go well.
Comment #32 November 27th, 2023 at 2:05 pm
Tyler Cowen has just posted a link to $10mn AI Mathematical Olympiad Prize Launches.
Comment #33 November 27th, 2023 at 2:29 pm
Dell #22 I thought this was historically jewish land. No? Who cares what british promised. Thats such a joke.
Comment #34 November 27th, 2023 at 2:31 pm
Scott #29
> from the river to the sea! no peace on stolen land!
If there is one good thing that will come of this whole calamity, maybe people will start to realize that “no peace on stolen land” is crazy no matter where in the world you say it, because clearing all the landowners out of Georgia (the one north of Florida) as revenge for the Indian Removals has been a detached-from-reality rallying cry of a surprisingly large political section for at least a couple decades now. There are a lot of good things you can try to do for American Indians and Palestinians or other people you can find in the world who aren’t doing great and who also have some sort of a claim to farmland, but trying to cash in that claim on a blood-and-soil basis is the worst thing a sympathizing leftist could possibly do. Until now nobody has said anything about it because nobody wants to take “the wrong side,” but if everyone had been braver about standing on logical grounds ten years ago nobody would be suffering that slogan today.
Comment #35 November 27th, 2023 at 2:46 pm
Vrushali #33
Depends what you mean by “historically”. I live in the USA as a descendant of European settler. So I am on land which “historically” was Native American.
> Who cares what british promised.
You and I may not care, but most Palestinian still do.
> Thats such a joke.
I think this attitude (of dismissing the Palestinian’s concern and relatively-recent history) is one that contributes to the escalation of tensions. In other words, that is not a joke, that is the source of current problems. And if you are not already fully aware of it (which I speculate is the case giving your words), I nudge you that you look at what was going on in the region in between WWI and WWII
And to be clear after Scott’s nudge, of course I do support the existence of Israel, the rights of Jews (and FWIW those of any people) and a two state solution to this conflict.
Comment #36 November 27th, 2023 at 3:31 pm
Scott, I will be a bit selfish and I will ask a soft question about P v NP even though it’s not quite related (at least in a direct/obvious way :P) to the news you are discussing.
In your ~120-page survey on the problem, you mentioned the two ‘teams’ that are frontlining the quest towards solving P v NP. The ‘Yellow Books team’ and the ‘Caffeinated Alien Reductions team’. At the time you said they were evenly matched. A few years have passed since you wrote this, do you still think they are even? I like the Yellow Books team but intuitively I would bet my money on the team whose acronym is CAR to win the race.
Comment #37 November 27th, 2023 at 3:56 pm
Aspect #36: The Yellow Books approach in general, and Geometric Complexity Theory in particular, unfortunately don’t seem to have made much progress since I wrote that survey in 2016. (Or has there been stuff that I’m unaware of? Anyone should feel free to let me know!)
The Caffeinated Alien Reductions approach has made progress, including the recent proof that Σ2EXP requires maximal-sized circuits. Arguably, though, there hasn’t anything quite as big in the last decade as Ryan Williams’ NEXP vs ACC separation from 2011.
Comment #38 November 27th, 2023 at 3:56 pm
Can someone explain what’s the difference between Arab Israelis (who live in Israeli cities) and Arabs who live in Gaza or the West Bank?
The former have given up on having their own separate state and are ok to live amongst Jews with an Israeli passport while the latter insist on having their own historical state/land (e.g. their ancestors have been in Gaza and the West Bank for generations)?
Also, what does Hamas mean when they say that 75% of Gaza are refugees (therefore they’re the responsibility of the UN and not theirs)? They’re not historical “Palestinians” but come from Syria or other places?
Comment #39 November 27th, 2023 at 4:32 pm
> The first problem is that the old board never actually said that it was firing Sam Altman for reasons of AI safety
Yeah, they just accused him of not being candid and tried to “off switch” him. Instead, he refused and “off switched” the board.
If this story is not increasing your worry about AI safety (from the pragmatic perspective – misuse of its powers) then I don’t know what will.
Comment #40 November 27th, 2023 at 4:55 pm
> When do Palestinians finally let go of the idea of reversing the “Naqba” and cleansing the land of the Zionist occupiers, and embrace the idea of building their own state next to Israel? And when does the Israeli right finally let go of the “Greater Israel” fantasy?
While I agree with your point, do you notice how on the Palestinian side, your criticism seems aimed at all Palestinians, while on the Israeli side, you draw much finer distinctions and only criticise the ‘Israeli right’?
And if we’re required to make general statements of humanity, I’d be much happier saying that I believe a Jew’s life is not worth more nor less than a Palestinians or an Americans or a Muslims or a Christians or an atheists. Of course innocent families should not be kidnapped. Of course innocent people should not be dying in hospitals because there’s no fuel to power equipment. These things are obvious.
But requiring me to support the existence of a specific political entity and arrangement brings in way too much baggage to truly be a good humanity test.
Comment #41 November 27th, 2023 at 4:59 pm
Scott #37: Awesome, thank you so much. This survey is a treasure 🙂
Comment #42 November 27th, 2023 at 5:03 pm
@fred
Scott already refered to the Nakba in which about half of Palestine’s Arab population fled from across Palestine (as was) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Palestinian_expulsion_and_flight
They are not refugees from Syria, but from parts of what is now Israel.
Comment #43 November 27th, 2023 at 5:16 pm
Quick question to those that are up-to-date with the latest LLM/transformer architecture:
GPT4 uses toolformer approach to generate code that aids it in generating a response, and if it fails executing, it tries another approach at emitting and executing code. Do we have a text analogue, a form of inner-dialogue that can decide “a substring of the tokens emitted” was logically inconsistent and loop a few times before emitting the response that’s presented to the user? In a sense, a bit of anxiety and overthinking 🙂
(inspired by LeCun’s rant that reasoning cannot happen with a token limit: https://twitter.com/ylecun/status/1728633803898286468 )
Comment #44 November 27th, 2023 at 6:11 pm
Scott #24: I am not able to assess comprehensively the impact of ChatGPT towards the unreasonable intensity of the “battle of narratives” attending the war in Gaza. But it is my distinct impression that a positive proportion of the comments to your posts addressing this conflict were generated using ChatGPT (or equivalent).
Comment #45 November 27th, 2023 at 6:12 pm
Dell #30: You still seem to be thinking in terms of Japan being an island untouched by war until the Americans showed up and dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In fact, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were selected for the first atomic bombs because they were among the few militarily-significant cities in Japan that *hadn’t* been flattened by conventional bombing. The conventional bombs delivered by thousands of B-29 heavy bombers in 1944-1945, had ten to twenty times the effective destructive power of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs combined, with a side order of carrier-based light bombers and some naval gunnery. See the section on “US bombing of Japan” at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_bombing_during_World_War_II for more detail; it looks like about half the total urban area of Japan had been destroyed.
Japan had also suffered a blockade more total and indiscriminate than that Israel has imposed on Gaza; no exception for shipments of e.g. food, and the average person was subsisting on ~1400 cal/day for many months.
So, yeah, much worse than what Gaza has suffered so far.
Comment #46 November 27th, 2023 at 7:07 pm
Del #22: There are a number of inaccuracies in your rendering of Germany’s transformation from the perpetrator of atrocities to the country whose constitution opens by affirming the inviolability of Menschenwürde- human dignity.
The German people had justifiable grievances in the wake of the Treaty of Versailles. These grievances were skilfully exploited by Hitler and the Nazis (who, as you correctly point out, came to power by winning a democratic election in 1933). Hitler’s support and popularity, the lack of post-1933 elections notwithstanding, remained high throughout much of the period of Nazi’s rule. The de-Nazification campaign following Allied victory was a painfull and drawn-out process, full of compromises (e.g. Konrad Adenhauer, the first Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, is on record as a recipient of Hitler’s admiring praise).
Germany was partitioned in the wake of the war (the future Palestinian state is currently de facto partitioned between Gaza and the West Bank.) This did not prevent the Federal Republic of Germany from becoming a leading liberal democracy prior to and following reunification.
Comment #47 November 27th, 2023 at 8:01 pm
kyb #40:
While I agree with your point, do you notice how on the Palestinian side, your criticism seems aimed at all Palestinians, while on the Israeli side, you draw much finer distinctions and only criticise the ‘Israeli right’?
My criticism is aimed at anyone on either side who rejects peaceful coexistence and a two-state solution (what was originally called “partition”). On the Israeli side, that rejectionist camp was once a small minority of the population, although it’s sadly grown over the past 25 years, partly due to demographics (the religious having a higher birthrate) and partly due to the Palestinians’ rejection of the peace process in favor of suicide bombing. On the Palestinian side, the rejectionist camp has unfortunately always been a clear majority — which needs to change, starting with the way children are educated.
Comment #48 November 27th, 2023 at 8:40 pm
I think it very likely that OpenAI *would* self-destruct if there were any *real* dangerous stuff being hidden from the public; we may soon (next couple years) find out if this is true. I’d say it would begin with an uptick in the number of leaks, followed by a large exodus of employees, and people willing to break any NDA agreements they may have signed. It’s possible that dangerous work could be compartmentalized in such a way that the public never finds out; but I somehow doubt it.
….
My current (as of the evening of November 27) model for what went down at OpenAI is this:
1. As Geoffrey Irving wrote in that tweet, Altman probably is manipulative — as manipulative as Steve Jobs, say. But Altman surely isn’t any worse than a certain breed of AI denialist that some days write upwards of 50 tweets going on and on about how AI is hitting a wall, hallucinations will always be a serious problem, models have absolutely no signs of reasoning whatsoever, everyone who thinks so is anthropomorphizing, etc. etc. That’s like next-level manipulation.
2. The firing might have been initiated not due to Altman wanting to get rid of Toner for her article, per se; but rather concealing his true motivations, which *perhaps* were more about wanting to scrub the board of Effective Altruism’s influence.
3. The Q* or Q-star model that was leaked to the press might have been mostly true, but exaggerated — perhaps exaggerated by cronies of Altman to give the public the impression that, “this was all about some hysterical people on the board overreacting to, admittedly, a powerful AI technology we have developed; but still something we are equipped to handle”.
….
About Greta Thunberg: that’s sad. She is young and perhaps she doesn’t really understand what she’s saying and how it will be perceived. Supposedly, she has Asperger’s Syndrome; and maybe some of what she’s saying comes down to a lack of self-awareness — in the everyday sense, when talking about cringeworthy people who don’t see how other people see them.
I also find it baffling how people seem to have come down with a case of collective amnesia, forgetting that over 1,200 Israelis were brutally murdered in early October, and placing all the blame on Israel for what is happening in Gaza. What would any sane person expect the response to be if a similar massacre happened in any other country?
Comment #49 November 27th, 2023 at 8:46 pm
Scott #24: “Apparently a significant fraction of Japanese still think Japan was justified in WWII. What’s important is that, starting in 1945, they pragmatically realized that empire was a dead end and that their future would be as a liberal democracy and cultural and technological innovator. I think peace and prosperity will come to the Palestinians whenever they have a similar realization.”
Japan in 1945, had been a peaceful and prosperous modern industrial nation a decade earlier, had then traded “peaceful” for “we’re winning wars overseas and suffering nothing but some taxes at home for it”, and remained at least prosperous for another five years. All they needed to get back on that track was to rebuild some of the damaged industry and infrastructure, and Uncle Sam paid for a big chunk of that.
I am much less optimistic about the Palestinians, particularly the Gaza Palestinians. When was the last time Gaza was a prosperous nation, or perhaps city-state?
Gaza has very little human capital. Gaza was running a 50% unemployment rate up to the current war, and most of the ones who had jobs were menial laborers and small-scale farmers. The skilled workforce needed to build a prosperous modern nation, doesn’t exist there. The West Bank is a bit better, but still problematic.
Gaza has very little physical capital. The farmland is mediocre and scarce, nowhere near enough for the population. There’s some natural gas, but not enough and not within easy reach, and no other natural resources of note. The industrial and commercial infrastructure was never that great, and has been ravaged by both neglect and war. Again, the West Bank is a little better.
Palestine, Gaza and West Bank alike, has very little institutional capital. The political and economic institutions are hopelessly corrupt, the local culture favors nepotistic corruption at any scale larger than Dunbar’s number, and there’s little public trust. One of the big selling points of Hamas is that unity under a sacred banner made them the least-corrupt alternative.
And I’m pretty sure there are no huge offshore bank accounts waiting to pay for the reconstruction. Gaza is pretty much the poster child for failed states doomed to live in poverty for a generation or two unless someone ponies up half a trillion dollars or so to pay for basically a whole new economy. Which, realistically, no one is going to do.
If the Palestinians and Israelis decide to live in peace, the best most Gazans could realistically hope for is to get jobs as menial laborers for Israeli businesses. Which would be a step up from where they are now, but it would still be poverty. Except then it would be poverty that they are experiencing while intermingled with conspicuously rich Israeli Jews. This does not seem conducive to continued peace and eventual prosperity.
Comment #50 November 27th, 2023 at 9:38 pm
John Schilling #49: Thanks for that analysis. One of the central ironies of this conflict — all the way back to the beginning of Zionism — is that Palestinians working for Jews could thereby attain a higher standard of living than almost any other Arabs in the entire Middle East (excepting those who are rich from oil), and could count themselves lucky to have Jews as neighbors. But alas, that’s not how human nature works—or certainly not when a militant theology has anything to say about it.
Half a trillion dollars doesn’t sound to me like an exorbitant sum to solve the Israeli/Palestinian conflict once and for all — the US, for example, spent more than twice that amount failing to liberate Afghanistan! But would the money actually buy peace rather than more tunnels and bombings and rockets?
Comment #51 November 27th, 2023 at 9:51 pm
John Schilling #49: The Palestinian people (and their neighbors) deserve better than this condescending comment. Gaza is not doomed to live in poverty and the amount of reconstruction funds involved to effect a meaningful and lasting change pales in comparison with the Marshall Plan: it is well within reach of just a subset of well-intentioned and prosperous Gulf States, not to mention the combined full force of the Western liberal democracies.
The human dignity of the Palestinians must be given a chance to flourish, following the annihilation of Hamas.
Comment #52 November 27th, 2023 at 11:09 pm
starspawn0 #48: Personally, I find it conceivable that, as you suggest, Greta Thunberg lacks full self-awareness of what she is saying; or, for that matter, of what is necessarily implied by her actions, which speak louder than her words. But is not this line of reasoning potentially applicable to all of those personally involved in the perpetration of the 7 October 2023 massacre (as well as to the positive proportion of their supporters, not all of whom, I reckon, can realistically entertain the hope of invoking “the Asperger’s Syndrome” as a mitigating factor) ?
Comment #53 November 28th, 2023 at 6:07 am
First, I rejoice with the release of the Brodutch family and others and hope for their full recovery.
I totally agree with Scott: the ceasefire will only be good in the mid-term (and thus, justifiable) if the operating abilities of Hamas are destroyed. This must be a clear victory by Israel. In the same way, the two-state solution will only be good if the Palestinians learn how to live with Israel in the XXI century, and not plan to return to life at a century ago. Otherwise, I am afraid that you will see another war in the recent future.
By the way, I am from Spain and we have recently been praised by Hamas, so let me apologize to every Israeli (and any concerned jew) if they feel that we have not standed clearly with Israel in these dark days. Unfortunately, it is true that many Spaniards (particularly in the extreme left, but not only there) uncritically stand with the Palestinians and they propagate a sometimes naïve, sometimes truly horrendously antisemitic narrative.
Comment #54 November 28th, 2023 at 8:16 am
starspawn #48
She is 20 years old and a mouthpiece for the Woke assault on Western Civilization. People are free to support whatever portions of the anti-West agenda they choose and tend to choose those in which they find ideological attraction but have no immediate personal impact.
I am certainly a supporter of developing new technologies related to energy but not because Greta Thunberg forecasts impending climate doom along with her anti capitalist proclamations and anti-Israel chants.
Comment #55 November 28th, 2023 at 8:47 am
The news about the safety and return of the Brodutch family is truly, truly wonderful. My sincere best wishes to them – particularly to the kids! May they recover well from their horrific experience, and may- in very short order – the children’s biggest concern be annoying homework/not enough post-prandial icecream.
Indeed, I hope the same for all the kids in the region- a day, very soon, where they can hang out in parks with their friends, play soccer, eat icecream. Those simple things which we cannot seem to guarantee.
I’d like to think this is an uncontroversial view of the future, though adults will fight about how to get there. There appears less of a consensus around what our joint futures with AI.
Comment #56 November 28th, 2023 at 8:50 am
Looking at how Lebanon has been slowly sliding into chaos over the last decades, I’m not very optimistic about the chances of turning Gaza and the West Bank into some kind of regional success.
Jordan seems to be doing okay, but I don’t know enough to be sure.
The thing is that, in order to have economic prosperity, you need to be strong enough (military) to be able to assert your own independence and stop any foreign influence.
Otherwise you’re just a pawn, especially in a region that’s the center of a chess board for lots of big states (the Saudis, Iran, Russia, the US, Turkey,…).
Comment #57 November 28th, 2023 at 10:24 am
@AG #52: I don’t think lack of self-awareness is the main cause of what led the perpetrators of the massacre to kill. I don’t really know what motivated them, but would guess it was a toxic mix of an ideology, anger, and other things besides. I recall hearing an interview with Masha Gessen in a podcast a few months ago where she talked about the motivations behind the Boston Marathon bombers, and I recall she said that the older of the brothers was relatively intelligent and was someone who had grown up expecting to live a life of high status and affluence (I forget exactly how she described it), but that his life had basically stalled with no upward mobility, which created feelings of humiliation, and which then transformed into anger, leading to radicalization. Perhaps similar forces were at play in the recent massacre.
….
Unrelated, but I thought I would use this post to add something to my comment above, regarding “compartmentalization”: perhaps it is easier to pull off than I think. If you work in an organization that is big enough, where everyone is very busy working on the problems in their own little groups, they may not even know what someone down the hallway a few offices away is working on. In fact, they may only learn about it through Twitter!
And if the organization is as big as Google, say, then you may have no clue what people even working in your own field are doing. A good example of this is the infamous Chinchilla scaling results, where Deepmind could have saved their fellow engineers and scientists at Google Brain in California a lot of time and money if only they had communicated what they knew.
Comment #58 November 28th, 2023 at 10:50 am
I am not sure that a strong military is a prerequisite for building a prosperous liberal democratic polity. What strikes me as indispensable is responsible and courageous leadership, akin to, say, Konrad Adenauer or Lee Kuan Yew.
Comment #59 November 28th, 2023 at 11:07 am
Scott,
I wonder what do you think about these kind of AI-merchants (in this case Dr. Matt Welsh of Fixie.ai) who claim that the whole field of Computing Science is soon unnecessary, because AI will in any case program everything so much faster and better:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhCl-GeT4jw
?
I guess analogically it’s unnecessary to learn what are the cardinal directions, when we all have the navigators in our cars nowadays…
Comment #60 November 28th, 2023 at 11:45 am
Greta seems to go with whatever is currently fashionable among woke people.
Comment #61 November 28th, 2023 at 11:57 am
On OpenAI : my worry about many silicon valley folks as such, is that they are consequentialists. I.e. that they evaluate a decision based on the outcome expected. They justify the means based on the end (that they know to draw graphs to analyze likelihoods of).
What they don’t always get is that the world is very complex. Too many unknown unknowns. They might break a lot of eggs without any omelets.
Comment #62 November 28th, 2023 at 12:22 pm
DR #61
I complement you for your last sentence.
I remember a case of simply extrapolating an exponential growth curve with no apparent understanding that this growth terminates in the real world.
Comment #63 November 28th, 2023 at 12:47 pm
AG #58
For sure Singapore is an exception, but it’s not like the region is particularly unstable lately, China’s antics in the South China sea are still far away from them. But who knows how that will evolve in the next few decades. Taiwan, a self made democracy, for sure has been building up their own military for a reason.
A strong military is necessary as a deterrent, if you look at Israel vs Jordan, the current state of non aggression is probably grown out of each other’s respect for the military capabilities of the other.
Also, without a strong army, one has a tough time maintaining rule internally, against coups and various paramilitary/terrorist factions (look at Lebanon being overrun by Hezbollah, with Iran behind it).
Comment #64 November 28th, 2023 at 1:22 pm
A. Karhukainen #59: I think that AI might eventually render computer science “unnecessary,” but only because it might eventually render every intellectual and artistic field “unnecessary,” by doing pretty much everything better than we can!
In the meantime, contrary to basically everyone’s expectations for 80 years, AI currently seems to be much more competitive at visual art and creative writing than at math and CS research… 😉
Comment #65 November 28th, 2023 at 1:36 pm
Scott #64
I have tried to use AI image generators. It’s a lot like using Google Image Search, in that the number of amazing art pieces available and semi-related to your keywords is truly astounding, but the populated or reachable latent space within the space of all artworks is sparse enough that it only goes a few steps into the combinatoric jungle of detail before running out of options. The same is roughly true of transformers and their language output when we ask them for programs, but we don’t think of it in the same way because it is so obvious when using them. If they had as many proofs in their training set as they had programs, their performance would be similar, and you would see the same result as with images: variations on what they had seen are reachable, but after a while you would find you were choosing points on a crumpled ball of paper (my favorite metaphor for an internal trained embedding) within the space of outputs.
I don’t know if the models have improved, but the techniques for demonstrating their flaws were at one point “ask for a centaur, described any way you want to,” for images and “ask for the solution to a technical interview question but with the requirements subtly changed to make the answer trivial” for text. The two are pretty much the same thing, in that you discover the changes you can ask for lie along a lower dimensional sub-manifold, and I don’t think the difference in performance between images and code or proofs is fundamental to the approach.
Comment #66 November 28th, 2023 at 2:29 pm
Scott #64
“AI currently seems to be much more competitive at visual art and creative writing than at math and CS research…”
The ability to “hallucinate” (in the sense of being able to freely interpolate between concepts that are quite separate, without worrying about following rules) is actually a big asset when it comes to generating interesting art.
Creativity in math/science also requires some ability to hallucinate, to find similarities between separated concepts, and exploring them to see how deep they run, but it should all be done within stricter bounds (logic, proof building, etc).
Comment #67 November 28th, 2023 at 3:03 pm
Fred #66
There are a lot of rules for visual art. One example is the fact that a human hand has five fingers, and connects with itself a certain way. Under-powered LLMs make the same kinds of large-scale consistency mistakes as earlier diffusion models.
Comment #68 November 28th, 2023 at 3:06 pm
I am in awe of the blatant racism so many people here are espousing towards Palestinians. You are essentially supporting it Scott and I fear you have really started to slide into a comfortable reaction to these types of comments that are self-justifying by nature, using only a connection to the trauma that you and those around you suffered on Oct 7th.
I won’t diminish that emotion but you should not be so comfortable writing things like ‘Palestinians working for Jews could thereby attain a higher standard of living than almost any other Arabs in the entire Middle East’. You may think this is some kind of ‘rational perspective’ but whatever that means it is also racism, especially with the phrasing you are using. You both demean the general Arab populations, devaluing them through a capitalist perspective, and the Palestinian independence, stating that it would be better for them to depend on Israel for their livelihoods.
Couching this in ‘irony’ does not excuse your phrasing or the other stating similar and worse things. This is the kind of thinking that is leading to this conflict being cyclical for so long. You cannot treat people like that, think of them like that, and expect them to like you. I’m not ‘blaming’ you for it, but I think if you want to have a rational perspective on the difficulties that are causing the conflict this is a microcosm of that which I find interesting.
On the AI topic, I actually wrote a paper in college in 2009 or 2010 about story generation being a prime research area for near term AI. I won’t claim I foresaw Gradient Descent and Transformers as the tools that would do it but it seemed clear enough to me with a little research into early projects like ‘TALE-SPIN’ and others (if you need info, not my article to be clear lol https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0950705103000480) that the building blocks were there and that some kind of neural network with the right construction could probably generate a story that was believably ‘human’. Now I don’t know if we have really reached that point yet (that is subjective) but it is even clearer to me now that we will and probably by 2030 we will have some form of AI authorship that is both ‘human’ and ‘normal’. That will not though make all forms of human creation of stories moot, that is not a perspective I think fits with the nature of human creativity and society. We will still make memes even when the robots make super relevant and funny ones too, even if you think it is a waste of time 😉
Comment #69 November 28th, 2023 at 3:39 pm
AG #49: The people of Gaza are not doomed to a generation or more of poverty because they are beyond helping even with a (proportionately scaled) Marshall Plan. They are doomed to a generation or more of poverty because they aren’t going to *get* a Marshall Plan.
As you note, the Gulf States could afford it. They’re going to spend that money on building skyscrapers across their own lands, on good jobs and/or sinecures for their own people. The United States could afford it, but look at the trouble Biden is having getting a fraction of a Marshall Plan’s worth of money to defend Ukraine against Russian invasion, which is a much more sympathetic cause to the American people than is Palestinian reconstruction. Europe could afford it, but not any one or two European nations and the EU is too dysfunctional to come together for a program like this. China could afford it, but they don’t care.
So long as the Israelis are bombing Gaza City, or even just shooting rubber bullets at protestors in Ramallah, the Palestinians get sympathy as the plucky underdog victims of oppression and people will march in their support. Once they are at peace with Israel, they’re just a few million nonwhite people living in abject poverty. And we have many, many example to show that nobody cares enough about that to provide any extraordinary effort to help them. We’ll look for somebody who is still being oppressed for that.
Since the people of Gaza are (through no fault of their own) very poorly positioned to climb out of poverty by their own efforts plus the ordinary level of foreign assistance in such cases, they would seem to be doomed to at least a generation of poverty even if peace breaks out tomorrow. They’ll basically be following the path most Sub-Saharan African nations took in the first post-colonial generation, from about the same starting point. The West Bank at least has a chance at something better.
The tricky bit will be arranging for a bunch of very poor Gazans to live in close proximity to a bunch of very rich “Zionists” for a generation, without the peace breaking down.
Comment #70 November 28th, 2023 at 5:53 pm
Nate #68: I notice that you never once claimed my point was wrong, which would’ve been the simplest argument against it if it was.
I agree that human nature is hard. The millennia-long history of antisemitism is filled with examples of people who preferred to be poor just as long as the Jews could be even poorer (or expelled, or dead), than rich if it meant they had to live next to Jews who were even richer.
Comment #71 November 28th, 2023 at 6:14 pm
John Schilling #69: My personal sense is that in the presence of responsible and courageous leadership on the Palestinian side (which, in particular, unequivocally embraces peaceful coexistence with Israel and pledges to educate the next generation accordingly), sufficient reconstruction funds could be secured.
Comment #72 November 28th, 2023 at 6:38 pm
Hi, Scott. I have thoughts with which you may agree, and thoughts with which you may differ.
Agreement first: Since nearly all of the world’s population resides on land taken by force and violence from the previous inhabitants, anyone who wants Jews who immigrated to vacate Israel because they are “colonizers” must provide their own plans for moving from where they are now living to some place where there are no current inhabitants (Antarctica?), or where the current inhabitants have no objection. Does this mean the Nakba never happened, or that it didn’t result in wholesale displacement of people who didn’t deserve that? No, it just means that for anyone in the rest of the world to claim this means immigrant Jews must leave is either evidence of ignorance or hypocrisy.
Now disagreement: Ensuring the end of Hamas’ ability to repeat October 7th is almost certainly not possible. There are the examples not only of Afghanistan, but of the IDF invading Lebanon to try to end Hezbollah’s ability to kill Israelis, and of Israel for decades acting against the PLO, just to have them in effect replaced by Hamas. It seems to me this makes the civilian deaths in Gaza, tragic in any case, morally indefensible, because we cannot say any good will come of it. More likely the opposite, more hate.
I think the only path to peace is peace. When I was in high school, somehow our class was allowed to take a field trip to Broadway to see Hair. There were of course scenes depicting war protests. I will always remember one particular sign. It said: “Fighting for peace is like f**king for chastity.”
Is it inconceivable that Hamas or someone like them would be the partner in peace negotiations (assuming there is an Israeli government that wants to enter into them)? Remember, leading into Oslo, Arafat was the head of a terrorist organization whose charter read much like Hamas’ does now. Arafat of course walked away from the negotiations at a critical moment. But there may eventually have been success somewhere down the line if Rabin hadn’t been assassinated. We can only hope for a similar miracle in our time.
Comment #73 November 28th, 2023 at 7:31 pm
Ok, you are regurgitating racist nonsense AND you are wrong. Palestinians have a wonderful history and culture irrespective of Israel and any Jewish culture. They will prosper or suffer as any other humans prosper or suffer, with the same independence and grace that is afforded to your seeming aggrandized Jewish individuals in that statement. I am frustrated by your cynicism but I won’t bother getting upset at it, I am just a random internet citizen with criticism that you have very little reason to care about and even less motivation to really analyze, so I won’t spend any more effort on it 🙂
Comment #74 November 28th, 2023 at 10:00 pm
Concerned #67
It seems that Dall-e-3 kinda knows a human hand has 5 fingers, more or less, but it just hasn’t figured yet that the thumb is also a finger!
“hands holding fingers”
https://i.imgur.com/1jAhLpX.png
“hands holding sausages”
https://i.imgur.com/LSSydSd.png
Comment #75 November 28th, 2023 at 10:18 pm
Nate #73: I didn’t say anything bad about Palestinian culture. I say that, if I were Palestinian, I’d seek to preserve all the good parts of my culture and develop an autonomous Palestinian state while getting more wealth into my economy, including via trade with Israel, which I’d see as a huge opportunity given to me by fortune. That’s exactly how things worked out in a different branch of the wavefunction, one afflicted by less tragic horribleness than ours. In our branch, there are indeed Palestinians who think exactly that way; the problem is that they haven’t yet won.
Comment #76 November 28th, 2023 at 10:32 pm
#29
I want Israel’s Jews (and Arabs) to live in peace, independence, and prosperity within the territory of Israel. I do not want them to have to leave the area. I also want the state they live in to not discriminate by religion or ethnicity, either de jure or de facto. I also want the stateless descendants of the several ethnic cleansings of Arabs from Israel to be allowed to be given citizenship in this state.
This is the ideal end goal, though it is not a very realistic one considering the popularity of actual antisemitism among palestinians (which the IDF’s mass bombing campaign is almost certainly creating more of) and the popularity of anti-palestinian racism among israelis (more of which Hamas’s brutal crimes against humanity are obviously creating).
It is unclear to me what you think of this. Do you agree with me that it is the ideal end goal? I hope you do, and merely dismiss advocacy for it because it is an _unrealistic_ goal.
A two-state solution that preserves the foundational discrimination of the current governments but confines them to borders is still unrealistic, I think, but it’s less unrealistic, and as it is substantially better than war, I also support advocacy for a deal being made that agrees on borders (which of course is only possible if both countries have a change in leadership).
But the ideal state is still one that cannot be reasonably described as belonging to a religion or ethnicity, no matter how persecuted in the past it was.
Comment #77 November 29th, 2023 at 2:44 am
Olivier #12: This a bit peripheral to the post, but according to https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-dioxide-emissions-factor wood burning is one of the most carbon intensive ways to produce energy. I guess there is the issue of getting the gas out of the earth and those corresponding emissions, whereas presumably the wood is meant to be a byproduct of forest tidying up but I don’t know any data for that.
Note that there’s also some debate about particulars for new wood burners: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/09/eco-wood-stoves-emit-pollution-hgv-ecodesign
Comment #78 November 29th, 2023 at 5:44 am
#21 (to Hi my name is Blargh) « For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. »
H. L. Mencken
For a more precise criticism, google sulfur and climate regulation (lots of unsolved problems with ozone, for instance)
Comment #79 November 29th, 2023 at 5:47 am
Always curious to see Jewish scientits get so upset when Zionism is criticised. I mean, not surprising, given how powerful the tribal instinct is in many humans (especially insecure individuals), but still curious that decades of training in critical thinking & scientific inquiry is unable to overcome said instinct. And I say this as somebody with a Jewish grandfather.
Come one, let’s not put lipstick on the pig: in essence, Zionism = Jewish supremacism/facism. Why is this OK? Because Jews faced a genocide (like many other peoples did, eg Armenians in Turkey, Muslims in Bosnia, Slavs in WW2) and thus are entitled to eternal victimhood? Or because Jews are white and western and affluent (and thus have powerful lobby-groups operating in their interest within plutocratic polities like America, UK, etc.)? How are any such reasons consistent with a moral and just world-view that we all like to think that we should strive towards?
Honestly, I say there are only two morally consistent options here:
1) Drop the hypocrisy and just admit what you are and what you truly believe in: might makes right and the idea that your tribe (Jews) are more valuable than outsiders. Palestine belongs to “us” Jews because “we” are more powerful than the Arabs, and “we” use all this constant moralising/victimhood as simple propaganda, just like Hamas does with their current hostage releases. At least admit this to yourself, if not to others (I guess this line of reasoning wouldn’t be very endearing to people like Greta Thunberg).
2) Abandon the Zionist mentality and admit that the apartheid of the destitute and powerless Palestinian people is *morally wrong*. Work towards eliminating Netanyahu and other extremists, and dismantle the structures peddling Zionist propaganda. Work towards equal treatment of all peoples, regardless of their creed.
In my opinion, I think the latter option is more in line with long-term Jewish interests than the former, given that Jews are a minority people in the west. Not to mention Israel’s precarious position in the middle east – what do you think will happen to it if American support were to suddenly disappear?
Comment #80 November 29th, 2023 at 6:00 am
John Schilling #49:
Bit of a condescending attitude you have there towards the hapless Gazans, I think. How easy do you think it is to run an economy when you are blockaded by sea, air and land? The Zionists have essentially been running an open-air prison there for almost two decades.
Furthermore, I think most peoples would rather fight (even within extremist groups like Hamas) and suffer and be poor, than give away their independence, dignity and land just for the chance of being a “menial labourer” (ie, slave) for some “Israeli business”. Maybe not you, but certainly most people outside of the “liberal” west.
Anyway, instead of discussing whether the apartheid is justified or not, which is a topic that will go nowhere, I think a more interesting discussion is for how much longer America can afford to support Israel. Demographics trends in the US are not promising in this regard, and neither is the rapid rise of the multipolar world order.
Comment #81 November 29th, 2023 at 6:12 am
Epicenter #76: Yes, I regard that as an ideal end goal, but only in the same sense that world peace and an end to all racism and hatreds is an ideal end goal. As long as antisemitism remains a major force in the world, I expect Israel-as-Jewish-state to be necessary, and a two-state solution to be the best outcome.
Comment #82 November 29th, 2023 at 6:52 am
Niko #79: It’s hard for me to read your proposal as anything other than, “just accept you and your family being shot or burned alive, it’s not that big a deal, you think you’d be the first-ever victims of genocide, that you’re so special?”
The obvious response to this is: you first!
Beyond that, though, there’s an obvious selection effect: any European Jews in the 1930s who were amenable to your kind of appeal probably were already shot, or burned alive, or gassed. I’m part of the surviving remnant that isn’t amenable—that would rather, as Golda Meir famously put it, be alive even with the whole world having a bad opinion of me, than dead. I confess that I regard this as a close call, and if it ever changes, I’ll probably just hasten the process by killing myself (though even then, I’d of course have no right to make that decision for any other Jew). As long as I remain alive, however, I also have enough life in me to tell you to fuck yourself.
Comment #83 November 29th, 2023 at 7:28 am
Scott #82
Bravo!
Comment #84 November 29th, 2023 at 8:29 am
I’m glad someone (Olivier #12) is interested in wood stoves. Wood stoves emit more CO2 per joule of heat energy produced than gas, oil, and coal (except lignite, which is the most like wood), and *vastly* more particulates, which cause serious health problems. In principle you can grow trees, burn them, then grow more trees which suck down the CO2 emitted from the first batch of trees, etc. In practice many regions are deforested by poor people who burn wood because they have few alternatives.
For some data go here:
https://8billiontrees.com/carbon-offsets-credits/carbon-ecological-footprint-calculators/carbon-footprint-of-wood-burning-stoves/
Comment #85 November 29th, 2023 at 9:00 am
Scott #82
So you’re saying fear lies at the bottom of this business? But I don’t understand – who is looking to genocide you in America?
I mean, if you were in the middle east, then I’d see your point. I guess the Arabs aren’t too happy with the invasion that happened in 1948, and the subsequent wars (but even then AFAIK there’s still tens of thousands of Jews living peacefully in Arab countries and even Iran)…
Just know this: if you choose the path of force & power, you better not slip up… Otherwise the foreboding of Matthew 26:52 will come true.
Comment #86 November 29th, 2023 at 9:02 am
Scott #82
> I confess that I regard this as a close call…
It’s sad how the best people are often those who judge themselves the most unfairly. It really shouldn’t be anywhere close. You’re a brilliant scientist and a beautiful human being, and your moral compass is true. Don’t let the antisemites (and other haters) get to you: let them cook in their own venom. This people has outlived many, we will outlive them too. Am Israel Chai!
Comment #87 November 29th, 2023 at 9:23 am
I have little to say about the horrible events in the Middle East. But I would like to mention a remarkable book I read a couple of months ago: A Testament for Ariela, by Miriam Lipshutz Yevick. I have written a number of blog posts about Yevick and a long article at 3 Quarks Daily about the book and about her mathematics: Next year in Jerusalem: The brilliant ideas and radiant legacy of Miriam Lipschutz Yevick.
Yevick was born in Holland in 1924 and her family fled Europe in 1940 for the same reason many Jews left Europe, for America, what was then Palestine, even Shanghai. She arrived in America in August of that year. Seven years later, in 1947, she obtained her PhD in math from MIT. She was 23 and only the 5th woman to get a PhD in math from MIT. As a woman and a Jew, she had no prospect of an academic job at that time, but she nonetheless managed to do some interesting work.
Ariela is Yevick’s granddaughter. She began writing letters to her when she was an infant, and did so for about 3 years. Obviously little Ariela couldn’t read those letters when they were written (though she did so later). This was obviously a device for Yevick to reflect on her life, hence the book, A Testament for Ariela. It is astonishingly good, writing of the highest caliber. It is a memoire, not a chronologically arranged autobiography. But the story of the family’s 3 month flight across Europe from Antwerp to Portugal is told chronologically. It is a gripping story, told simply and directly. It’s not a horror-fest, but it’s clear that they narrowly escaped capture several times.
It’s also the most Jewish book I’ve ever read (note, I’m not Jewish). What do I mean? In his movies Woody Allen plays a Jewish character who’s keenly and always aware that he’s navigating his way through a world of Gentiles. There is none of that double-consciousness, that always looking over your shoulder, in this book. To quote from one of my blog posts:
I recommend A Testament for Ariela.
Comment #88 November 29th, 2023 at 9:26 am
October 7 attack, it was greatest thing for our nation, Israel. First, they kill many left-wing hippies at some stupid music festival. Young foolish idiots, probably all vote for Yesh Atid, Labor, Hadash, so good riddance. For months, I watching these left-wing traitors yell in streets, hating my leader Netanyahu, our traditions. So them being gunned down by Hamas, this is karma, if such thing exists. Second, this is wake-up call we needed to destroy so-called ‘Palestinian’ menace. Now, we will level all Gaza, turn into irradiated wasteland. All Araboosh scum will be annihilated, forever. We put all Araboosh in West Bank into camps, maybe round up Arab scum calling themselves ‘citizens’ of Israel too. Israel is one state—from river to sea.
Comment #89 November 29th, 2023 at 9:54 am
Niko #85: Of course fear lies at the bottom of this—the fear of being killed for being Jewish is one of the most rational, borne-out, justified fears in human history.
Fortunately, those in the US who would realize that fear — like the people who just this week testified before Oakland’s city council to praise the glorious freedom fighters of Hamas — don’t have much real power yet (although they have a terrifying percentage of young people on their side).
But the logic seems inescapable to me: if Israel’s Jews deserve to be killed just for being Jews in the world’s only Jewish state — in the majority of cases, the only state in the world that would accept them or their parents or grandparents — then I, too, deserve to be killed, since I would’ve been an Israeli too had my great-grandparents not had the good luck to flee the pogroms in the early 1900s, and had they then improbably survived the Holocaust. Conversely, if I deserve to live, then the Israelis deserve to live also.
Comment #90 November 29th, 2023 at 9:59 am
Somewhat off-topic: an experimentalist is enthusiastic into chatting AI alike you, and he’s recently created Turin shroud of AI impacts.
Comment #91 November 29th, 2023 at 10:07 am
Raphael #88: On the contrary, Israel deserves to continue existing because and only because most Israelis (even the more right-leaning ones) are nothing like you at all. They grieve the deaths of more than a thousand Israeli innocents on October 7, and they also grieve the deaths of the other side’s innocents, rather than rejoicing in both as you do. If all Israelis were like you, I’d join the keffiyeh-wearing protesters chanting to liberate Palestine.
Comment #92 November 29th, 2023 at 10:22 am
@John Baez #84: Trees are generally short-time storage of CO2. You can think about them as of batteries.
I agree that large-scale wood burning leads to deforestation, and that’s bad. But if you do not harvest trees at all, they’ll eventually decompose or burn, releasing their CO2 anyway.
Forests require good management, so that you don’t leave them to burn in ways that get into news. Those fires are a waste!
Comment #93 November 29th, 2023 at 10:26 am
Scott #64: What is the most compelling piece of creative writing produced by ChatGPT you came across? I would be curious to read it.
Comment #94 November 29th, 2023 at 10:36 am
AG #93: I’d have to go with the poetry—the Shakespearean sonnets about bubblesort, the poem about cryptocurrency in the style of Philip Larkin, etc. Either google for them or just ask GPT to generate some fresh ones! 🙂
Comment #95 November 29th, 2023 at 10:53 am
Scott #94: Personally I am yet to come across a piece of creative writing produced by ChatGPT which is competitive enough to be accepted for publication, say, in the New Yorker via a process of, say, double blind peer review. But it is my sense that we are getting there.
Comment #96 November 29th, 2023 at 11:13 am
AG #95: If you really want to see GPT shine as a writer compared to humans, ask it to satisfy weird constraints, like only using words that start with the letter ‘a’.
Comment #97 November 29th, 2023 at 11:17 am
Scott #89
Certainly there is no question that neither you nor any other person deserves to be killed for being jewish – I’m honestly surpised to hear it’s even a topic considering how long ago WW2/pogroms was/were. And of course hateful speech has no place in civilised society and whoever practices it, from whichever side, should be condemned without fail.
The sad thing is though, that war and suffering only fuels and justifies hate. It’s elementary human nature. I hope things calm down and reasonable, moderate, thoughtful people prevail in Palestine/Israel, and the extremists on both side are removed.
Comment #98 November 29th, 2023 at 11:38 am
And keep in mind that these Oakland-wokes you just mentioned only support Hamas to troll the establishment and because they’re angry about the horrible atrocities the IDF has pereptrated upon Gaza. I strongly doubt the wokes have any interest in starting a new holocaust, if that’s what you meant. I mean come on, man, they’re no warriors. These people are living one spilled coffee away from a mental breakdown…
Honestly, if Israel had instead of mass-murdering Palestinians indiscriminately, carried out measured, precision strikes on Hamas members over several months following Oct 7th, the world would not have turned against Israel. On the contrary, the position of Hamas would have greatly weakened, and Israel’s strengthened. Albeit the nature of Netanyahu and the other extremists did not permit this…
Comment #99 November 29th, 2023 at 11:40 am
@AG #93: Here’s a sonnet ChatGPT wrote on the theme of recursion based on a text from St. Augustine about memory:
In memory’s vast and prodigious sea,
A sanctuary where the echoes play,
Recall, my God, the depths that stretch away,
A mind too narrow, seeking to be free.
Within its bounds, the soul’s own mystery,
A dance of thoughts that never seem to stay,
Yet part of nature, in a curious way,
It questions what it holds, what cannot be.
The mind, a mirror, seeks its own embrace,
A recursive loop, a boundless quest,
To fathom depths that it cannot erase.
Does it contain itself, a paradox confessed?
Yet in this dance, where boundaries efface,
The soul finds truth, in questions unaddressed.
Comment #100 November 29th, 2023 at 11:49 am
Niko #97: Thank you for saying that! Incredibly for an Israel/Palestine conversation, I feel like we’re actually making some progress.
As you can see in this thread, I’ve never had the slightest difficulty in saying that the Palestinians should have an independent state where they can live in peace and security. The Israelis said the same at Camp David and at other crucial moments, only for their offers to be turned down. I’m waiting for more people on the Palestinian side who will clearly, unequivocally say the same thing regarding Israel.
Comment #101 November 29th, 2023 at 11:57 am
It’s funny how fast humans are moving the goal posts when it comes to AI.
If you had told me 10 years ago that an AI could generate photo-realistic images from a text description, or that it could write a random poem about any topics with any sort of weird constraint, all in a couple of seconds… I would have had a tough time believing it, and now we’re saying “yea, but the poem wouldn’t be good enough to be featured in the New Yorker!” (I’m skeptical about this claim given that Midjourney images have already won art competitions).
It wasn’t long ago when Go was considered beyond reach, and it was considered a breakthrough when MSFT put out an AI that could barely win against human noobs on a limited 8 by 8 grid… and then AlphaGo jumped a thousand light years ahead.
Yet, a couple days ago, I heard Sean Carroll say “Sure, AI can beat humans at Go, but it does so by trying billions and billions of combinations”. What a poor understanding of both Go and neural nets.
Comment #102 November 29th, 2023 at 12:12 pm
Niko #97 –
“Certainly there is no question that neither you nor any other person deserves to be killed for being jewish – I’m honestly surprised to hear it’s even a topic considering how long ago WW2/pogroms was/were.”
I was raised Jewish, though I’m not religious any more. But I do track things like anti-Semitic assaults and killings in the US, which have been increasing rapidly since 2016. (The Anti-Defamation League and FBI are among the most prominent organizations that put out statistics on this.) Thus it’s not only still a topic, but sadly seems to be coming back rather than going away.
“The sad thing is though, that war and suffering only fuels and justifies hate. It’s elementary human nature.”
On this we profoundly agree.
“I hope things calm down and reasonable, moderate, thoughtful people prevail in Palestine/Israel, and the extremists on both side are removed.”
This is my hope as well – I think the only way it happens is to reverse the cycle of war and suffering and realize the only way to security is to seek peace.
Comment #103 November 29th, 2023 at 12:15 pm
Many people miss the point that a human genius like John VonNeumann didn’t exist in a vacuum, he didn’t recreate math from scratch and certainly wasn’t able to build a computer from scratch on his own (reinventing chemistry, metallurgy, and thousands of tools necessary to do so).
Same with AIs, already ChatGPT can delegate to various tools better suited at solving specialized tasks, or start training its own set of specialized sub-AIs for a given task at hand, etc.
Before we know it, AI systems will all be a giant maelstrom of dynamical processes and data spanning the entire planet, all happening in the blink of an eye.
Comment #104 November 29th, 2023 at 12:52 pm
nikitn #98:
Honestly, if Israel had instead of mass-murdering Palestinians indiscriminately, carried out measured, precision strikes on Hamas members over several months following Oct 7th, the world would not have turned against Israel.
The practical problem is that Hamas, having learned from previous bouts with Israel, now operates almost entirely from tunnels beneath residential areas, where they can’t be reached without leveling civilian buildings and/or a ground invasion. I’m sure the number of dead Gazan civilians could’ve been lowered somewhat at the cost of more dead Israeli soldiers (who, remember, are drafted 18- and 19-year-old kids). But I’m not privy to any of the intel that would tell me what this tradeoff looks like quantitatively, and I feel grateful that I’m not the one making the decision.
As for “the world turning against Israel” — incredibly, unbelievably, a lot of that already happened on October 7-8 (recall the massive pro-Hamas rallies in London, Sydney, etc, and the statements by the Harvard students and BLM chapters), while the bodies were still strewn across the ground in southern Israel, and before Israel had even struck back at all! I think understanding that fact is absolutely crucial to understanding most Jews’ fear for their lives in the aftermath.
Comment #105 November 29th, 2023 at 1:30 pm
fred #101: As a mathematician, I would definitely view ChatGPT-x as competitive when it is able to generate a competitive Ph.D. dissertation (or, equivalently, a paper which is competitive for submission to one of the (top) peer-reviewed journals). I suspect that humans who make a living by practicing creative writing have a similar test of competitiveness (and The New Yorker might not have been the most felicitous choice from this point of view).
Comment #106 November 29th, 2023 at 1:50 pm
nikitn #98:
Honestly, if Israel had instead of mass-murdering Palestinians indiscriminately, carried out
measured, precision strikes on Hamas members over several months following Oct 7th,
the world would not have turned against Israel.
You are overlooking that Israel did perfrom those precision strikes on Hamas strongholds – these strongholds cleverly buried by those psychopaths below hospitals, shelters and homes where children live, as there ‘faith’ apparently allows them to do that. Especially to get the world turn against Israel in case of, even effective, retaliation.
Comment #107 November 29th, 2023 at 2:13 pm
First things first, I hope my post is published after what I have to say, mostly controversial and probably most people would think it is a mere conspiracy, maybe without thinking deeply through things because as Noam Chomsky would say, it is outside the spectrum of debate.
How naïve you have to be o maybe just “acting naïve” to believe that even you, with my most respect about your research work and persona, could think that all those mayor US tech companies are a product of the free market enterprise. How naïve you have to be, to believe that Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple and even Tesla (and the Elon Musk enterprises persona) are just organic products of a “free enterprise capitalist system” (OpenAI is in the same box, of course my dear).
I will not enter into the debate of what a capitalist free market economy is, because I will enter into a religious discourse without any clear rationale. And I feel sorry for the other side of the coin. That includes Marxist and all those 19 century dialectics economics nonsense that for the better or worse floods social media platforms without any clear solution from both ends.
Taking into account what I just have said, pause for a second, breathe deeply and think (maybe among all this turmoil I am the only LLM with more than 3 neurons, sorry may be 7). Jokes apart.
“In FY 2023, the Department of Defense (DOD) had $1.52 Trillion distributed among its 6 sub-components”. AI is probably, (sorry, I am just joking with the probability), the most f**ing important thing in human history, and you are telling me that some 20 something and 30 something years old with ambitions and the best hope for humanity are managing without any real time surveillance, that already exists within the general public at some extent, a technology that can change the current Geopolitics structure and society and its actual values forever in a glimpse.
Ha, you may say it is possible and I would say hell yeah America.
How naïve people are getting by the days. How….
It is amazing and disturbing at the same time how people are getting on those areas of comfort and satisfaction, just consuming gossip about something that it has the most spiritual repercussions probably since the creation of religion.
The system has absorbed any kind of discourse to the point that everything is commodified and consumed as a McDonald´s Cheeseburger and a Coke. You have to get famous to know that it’s not the answer. And nobody who is not famous will ever truly believe that.
How stupid you have to be no to rebel and request AGI for all. Probably I am and probably you are. We are all in this nonsense gossip while a new entity with greater intellectual capacities than the brightest human beings ever existed, is being created. This is the sad part of it. Probably intentionally like most everything this days.
Important reference: Helen Toner No Wikipedia page Tasha McCauley No Wikipedia page
Shit happens but not so often…. No Comment
I love you all
Comment #108 November 29th, 2023 at 2:16 pm
AG #105
I’m definitely still unsure that LLMs are the path to AGIs.
When it comes to doing creative math and science, it’s about exploring a vast solution space while bounded by very tight rules (logic and proof), where most instances are very hard: either a complex math theorem is correct or it isn’t, there’s no space for a proof to be almost right. So, it could be that math and science aren’t actually involving “intelligence” as much as we think they are, they do involve some serious abstract “skills” that takes years for a standard human to master (the rules of math), but then it’s not like every mathematician/physicist out there gets to prove really challenging stuff – breakthroughs relying on giant leaps (like proving Fermat’s) tend to be somewhat rare, and the vast majority of math/science seems to be about incremental improvements. I’m sure that AIs will eventually help with all this, but the improvements may not be as spectacular, because AGIs will be just as limited by NP-hardness as we are.
I tend to think that the path to AGI is more in problem spaces where lots of good approximate solutions can exist, like in gaming. In that area AIs have been making amazing progress – games like Go (full information), Poker (partial information) are now totally solved by AIs, and the next focus I believe is to get the AIs to understand more open world environments and rules (closer to the real world), like in video games, with real time strategy, shooters, etc.
Comment #109 November 29th, 2023 at 3:41 pm
@Scott
You wish for Netanyahu to be replaced in an election.
Well by whom?
I think sometimes we forget Israel is more than just liberal areas in Tel Aviv. A lot of parties re on the right or extreme right. None which want a two state solution. Unless demographics or public opinion in Israel changes dramatically I don’t see Israel accepting a two state solution. It hasn’t done so since Rabin.
Comment #110 November 29th, 2023 at 4:12 pm
Paula #107: It’s very hard to figure out what you’re trying to say in your comment, except that everyone here is a sheeplike idiot. Even if true, it’s difficult to act on that information.
Comment #111 November 29th, 2023 at 4:19 pm
Bill Benzon at #87: thanks for the recommendation. I have clicked the link, but haven’t persuaded myself to buy it. I read non-technical literature mostly for escape, to immerse myself in better worlds than this one. I took paperbacks with me on field trips so that after a long day of travel and bureaucracy and field work I could spend a half hour reading before falling asleep and feel that life had been at least a little worth living that day. I see unfairness in the world continually (e.g., this thread) and suspect the book would present a lot more of it, albeit well-written. Perhaps I should feel some obligation to read it, though.
Comment #112 November 29th, 2023 at 4:19 pm
Souciance #109: While it’s true that Israel no longer seems to have any leaders of the caliber of Rabin (let alone Ben-Gurion), Gantz and Lapid would both be very obvious improvements over Netanyahu.
It’s simply not true that no Israeli leaders were open to a two-state solution after Rabin: Barak and Olmert both were (possibly others too).
Comment #113 November 29th, 2023 at 4:34 pm
P.S. Okay, I bought it. So somebody on this thread has influenced somebody else at least once. (I hope there are more.)
Comment #114 November 29th, 2023 at 4:38 pm
@ JimV #111: I think you’ve gotten a mistaken impression about the book. It’s uplifting without being treacly, or preachy. Read the article I published in 3QD and then decide. It quotes extensively from the book.
https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2023/10/next-year-in-jerusalem-the-brilliant-ideas-and-radiant-legacy-of-miriam-lipschutz-yevick-in-relation-to-current-ai-debates.html
Comment #115 November 29th, 2023 at 5:10 pm
nikitn #98,
Your counterfactual is hard to evaluate. While it is true, had Israel not responded with violence to October 7th, it might very well have succeeded in turning world opinion in its favor as compared to now, but consider the countervailing points:
* Even without the IDF incursion into Gaza or the large scale bombing many in the world were *celebrating* October 7th.
* Many thought – and continue to think – that October 7th was an inevitable (if not justified) event given the mere *state* of Israel existing.
* Many thought – and continue to think – that Israel needs to be dismantled as a Jewish state.
* Importantly, the leaders of Hamas and the soldiers who carried out the atrocities on October 7th continue to insist they will do it again, and again, and again.
* Had Israel not responded with violence it is likely that not a single one of the current hostages would have been released by now.
* Had Israel not responded with violence the perpetrators would likely have repeated October 7th by now. What would have prevented this?
Other than the nebulous promise of world “good will” staying with Israel it is hard to see how the above counterfactual can be justified. The citizenry of Israel just are not into playing the role of martyrs for the sake of the world’s opinion.
Comment #116 November 29th, 2023 at 8:21 pm
“I love and respect Ilya, I think he’s a guiding light of the field and a gem of a human being. I harbor zero ill will towards him. While Ilya will no longer serve on the board, we hope to continue our working relationship and are discussing how he can continue his work at OpenAI.”
This paragraph appears to leave it unclear whether Ilya’s continued work at OpenAI is a foregone conclusion:
https://openai.com/blog/sam-altman-returns-as-ceo-openai-has-a-new-initial-board
Comment #117 November 29th, 2023 at 10:04 pm
@ JimV #113: Let us know what you think.
Comment #118 November 30th, 2023 at 3:06 am
For the ones who responded to my post #97,
Please let us not use the tired excuse of “Hamas are hiding in tunnels so the IDF has to raze entire blocks”. Come on — it’s clear that in the majority of cases the IDF is purposefully targeting civilians. Just look at the hosptial bombing, and the refugee camp they hit, as two of many examples. It is just so beyond obvious that the Israelis are carrying out a terro-campaign on Gaza that it shocks me to hear somebody claim the IDF is “just trying to get Hamas”. In the eyes of the world, the IDF is no better than Hamas’ military wing.
There is no excuse, even if you’re Jewish and the IDF is “yours”.
I believe there are two main goals of the IDF and the Zionists on the Israeli right:
1. Pure, bloody, revenge.
2. Clear North Gaza in preperation for occupation.
3. Attempt to force the ones left in South Gazans into Egypt and take the entirety of Gaza.
Just basic ethnic cleansing. So far, the IDF has murdered 20,000 out of 2mn — 1% in less than two months. Not even the Nazis were this efficient during the holocaust.
The only solution is the two-state solution per 1967 borders and removal of all Zionist colonisers from that little Palestinian land which remains. There are reasons to believe even Hezbollah and Hamas will be willing to accept that, eg Prof John Mearsheimer (see his recent interview on Lex Friedman).
Comment #119 November 30th, 2023 at 6:32 am
You know, Scott, I’d be very impressed by your tolerance for posts like #118 and your willingness to engage in good-faith discussions with their troll and/or antisemitic authors, were it not for your tolerance being remarkably, almost maximally, left-right asymmetric. Hell, you’re more tolerant of blood libels than you are of quantum computing critique.
Comment #120 November 30th, 2023 at 6:36 am
nikitn #118: The fact that your only argument is “c’mon, it’s just so beyond obvious in the eyes of the world” is a tip-off. In the specific case of Israel, the whole world has been wrong over and over and over — just like the whole world was wrong in consigning Europe’s Jews to the Holocaust. The awkward question for the anti-Zionist side remains: if the IDF was trying to commit ethnic cleansing, rather than root out Hamas, then why is the number of casualties more like 15,000 than 150,000 or 1.5 million, when the latter was clearly within the IDF’s power?
There’s no similar mystery on the other side: Hamas murdered 1400 Jews because that was how many it could. If it could’ve murdered 5 million, it would have.
John Mearsheimer is a classical antisemite and the definition of an unreliable source. How about I’ll consider believing that Hamas would be willing to accept an Israel in the 1967 borders, the day it renounces what it did on October 7th?
Comment #121 November 30th, 2023 at 6:36 am
AG #116,
> This paragraph appears to leave it unclear whether Ilya’s continued work at OpenAI
Staying there for Ilya would be a suicide. “You come at the king, you best not miss”. He will be bullied and psychologically pressed after this power change. Hell, hearing “zero ill will” from someone who you accused of lying is already intimidation. I wrote a blog post about those methods https://dandanua.github.io/posts/counterfactual-communication-and-intimidation/
This a “scientist vs predator” situation. You have no chance in the wild.
Comment #122 November 30th, 2023 at 6:57 am
Vladimir #119:
Hell, you’re more tolerant of blood libels than you are of quantum computing critique.
LOL! See, it’s like this. If all the educated arts and humanities types on the planet reach a consensus that (to oversimplify slightly) Hamas should be cheered in its war of annihilation against Israel’s Jews, and also I personally am a neoliberal capitalist Zionist incel who deserves to die, it puts me into a dilemma: I can either accept their consensus and kill myself, or I can stay alive and articulate a case for how all the educated arts and humanities types on the planet could nevertheless be wrong. You can see what choice I’ve made by the fact that I’m still alive!
If, on the other hand, someone claims that the COVID vaccine implanted microchips into people’s blood, or that quantum computing can’t work because its proponents never considered the uncertainty principle, there’s no similar dilemma: the person is just an idiot.
Comment #123 November 30th, 2023 at 7:11 am
Scott #122
> See, it’s like this. If all the educated arts and humanities types on the planet reach a consensus that (to oversimplify slightly) Hamas should be cheered in its war of annihilation against Israel’s Jews, and also I personally am a neoliberal capitalist Zionist who deserves to die, it puts me into a dilemma: I can either accept their consensus and kill myself, or I can stay alive and articulate a case for how all the educated arts and humanities on the planet could nevertheless be wrong. You can see what choice I’ve made by the fact that I’m still alive.
Or you could ignore them like the idiots they are, if not out in the real world, then certainly in your own blog, which you’ve likened to your living room.
> If, on the other hand, someone claims that the COVID vaccine implanted microchips into people’s blood, or that quantum computing can’t work because its proponents never considered the uncertainty principle, there’s no similar dilemma: the person is just an idiot.
I had in mind a post from a while back, about an IBM paper. I tried to respond with some specific, scientific criticism of the paper; my comments were left in moderation. Just an anecdote.
Comment #124 November 30th, 2023 at 8:46 am
Niko #97
“ The sad thing is though, that war and suffering only fuels and justifies hate. It’s elementary human nature.”
Too many counter examples to enumerate that demonstrate this is in not true. War can result in a positive outcome by any reasonable measure. This applies to the population of the vanquished as much as to the victors.
Comment #125 November 30th, 2023 at 9:38 am
@AG #93: ChatGPT has just teamed up with Herbert Melville and Biff Roddenberry to write The OpenWHALE Rounds the Horn and Vanishes, An Allegory about the Age of Intelligent Machines, which features not one but two guys named “Scotty.” The opening:
Comment #126 November 30th, 2023 at 9:39 am
nitkin #118
“1. Pure, bloody, revenge.”
I don’t think it’s the case, but it must have crossed the minds of many IDF tacticians that:
1) Gaza’s population is 50% children/teenagers, i.e. an very high birth rate.
2) a dead little boy is likely one less Hamas fighter/commander to worry about 10 years from now.
3) a dead little girl is likely a couple fewer Hamas fighters/commanders to worry about 30 years from now.
So why make too much of a deal about civilian casualties when it can all be reframed in terms of a preemptive solution to wiping out Hamas, now and in the future?
Of course it’s shocking because children are innocent until they’ve been fully ‘corrupted’ by their environment, but, statistically, it’s a fact that many of those kids will end up with Hamas, so one could imagine it’s all just like “killing baby Hitler” (which as been brought up as a valid action, on this blog) by killing an entire nursery, because it’s worth it, on “average”.
Again, all I’m saying is that it must have crossed their mind… in such extreme situations, it’s hard to stay rational or keep one’s moral compass aligned.
Another case in point is the fact that both sides have lost hundreds and thousands… yet now there’s celebration on each side for saving a few dozens during a truce. It seems every day the value of life fluctuates wildly, or at the very least, that the value of the life of a hostage/prisoner is way higher than the value of the life of a free citizen.
I hope that all those lives lost will at least lead to a durable peace solution in the near future, so it wouldn’t have been all for nothing… but I’m skeptical – when we see what’s going on in the West Bank it seems that the worse is just going to spread more and more and the future is bleak.
Comment #127 November 30th, 2023 at 9:51 am
Comment #122
IMO the problem here is a fallacious use of the commonly defended principle “trust the experts”. Who are “experts”? The loose colloquial interpretation is that experts are whoever are widely acknowledged to be experts. Meaning, roughly speaking, anyone with high social status of the right flavor. And history proved again and again that high status people can be egregiously wrong, both factually and ethically (and why wouldn’t they be?)
Another interpretation is, experts are people who proved their competence by some more-or-less objective criterion. Under the latter interpretation, people in e.g. physics or computer science academia are often experts, because they repeatedly test their claims either empirically or at least in terms of parsimony and mathematical consistency. On the other hand “the educated arts and humanities” face few such tests of their alleged expertise. No further explanation is required.
Comment #128 November 30th, 2023 at 9:58 am
Bill Benzon #125
I like it
Comment #129 November 30th, 2023 at 10:26 am
Vladimir #123:
I had in mind a post from a while back, about an IBM paper. I tried to respond with some specific, scientific criticism of the paper; my comments were left in moderation. Just an anecdote.
I searched my queue and found many, many needlessly sharply-worded comments by you that I had allowed to appear, and one short comment mistakenly left in moderation that’s now up … but I could not find the comment in question about an IBM paper.
Comment #130 November 30th, 2023 at 10:47 am
Danylo Yakymenko #121: Sam Altman sounds genuine to me when he says: “I love and respect Ilya, I think he’s a guiding light of the field and a gem of a human being.” Let us hope Michael Lewis has embedded himself with Sam (or Ilya) so we can learn what actually happened from his next book in due course.
Comment #131 November 30th, 2023 at 11:24 am
[…] Scott Aaronson is relieved that OpenAI continues to exist because he thinks everyone involved understands the dangers and cares and worries about them, which is far superior to many alternatives. […]
Comment #132 November 30th, 2023 at 11:28 am
Scott #130
I will freely admit that I’m often offensive; it’s the fact that I’m apparently more offensive to you than people like #118 (a regular occurrence in your Israel-related posts) that I found noteworthy.
This is the post about the IBM paper:
https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=7409
I originally submitted a needlessly sharp (but still scientific) comment; when it was left in moderation, I toned it down and resubmitted it. The second version was also left in moderation, or so I thought at the time. It’s up now, but since the post and comment are explicitly about an IBM paper, it seems that’s not the comment you found just now. Not sure what happened then/now. Either way, you didn’t respond to it at the time. Obviously you’re under no obligation to do anything of the sort, but it’s still confusing to me that you’d rather spend your time trying to convince antisemites of your right to live than on discussing quantum computing with an asshole condensed matter physicist.
Comment #133 November 30th, 2023 at 11:43 am
@OhMyGoodness #128
Thanks.
Comment #134 November 30th, 2023 at 12:03 pm
Scott #112
> The awkward question for the anti-Zionist side remains: if the IDF was trying to commit ethnic cleansing, rather than root out Hamas, then why is the number of casualties more like 15,000 than 150,000 or 1.5 million, when the latter was clearly within the IDF’s power?
Maybe it would help ground the discussion if we put some truth to what the accusation of “cleansing” actually amounts to. Several rightwingers close to the PM have said things to the effect of, “Gazans should leave.” The government would likely prefer that they all went to Egypt – it’s difficult to imagine how any of the “greater Israel” supporters could achieve that pipe dream without a mass migration, and there are some supporters of the territorial ambition placed highly in the ministry.
Contemporaneously with that, the IDF is carrying out military operations in the area. It is obvious that whatever the dark intentions of the rightwingers, the actual events are being restrained by the common humanity of the ground-level decisionmakers and possibly by international pressure. I’d love to read a book about it when it is all over, to find out who all the heroes of the calamity were. Maybe Bibi is among them if you score him relative to the extremist ministers he has to tolerate to keep his position as head of the coalition.
If the air bombardment had been carried out indefinitely, and the Arab nations had not approached it with a stone-cold policy against refugees, and Israel had continued to ask civilians to leave certain zones, it could have amounted to “ethnic cleansing” at some point well after it became a refugee crisis. The criticism was primarily targeted at the period before the ground forces arrived, as they are able to distinguish between targets at great personal risk in a way bombs do not.
Comment #135 November 30th, 2023 at 12:05 pm
Scott #122, Vanessa Kosoy #127:
As a particular example, consider that the overwhelming majority of educated arts and humanities types spent much of the 20th century being utterly wrong about communism. The far-left pro-Hamas demonstrators of today are the intellectual descendants of the pro-Stalin, pro-Mao, etc. demonstrators of decades past. I think Scott might have written about these movements’ intellectually bankrupt foundations before: https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=2494.
Maybe it is just enough for these threatening movements to be large and popular? If this blog existed in the 1930s (maybe as a magazine with letters to the editor), would you take long breaks from discussing Schrodinger’s/Bohr’s/Dirac’s/etc.’s amazing new theory to publish rebuttals of eugenics and Aryan race theory? Today’s version would likely leave neo-Nazi comments in moderation.
Comment #136 November 30th, 2023 at 12:26 pm
Concerned #???
I should add that the IDF troops putting themselves within the crosshairs of Hamas soldiers, to fight them on a dangerously equal footing, so that Palestinian children will not be bombed, are heroes for Palestine as well as Israel. Hopefully anyone who can recognize how bad the bombardment was, can also recognize that many Israelis should be honored for personally paying the price for the alternative.
Comment #137 November 30th, 2023 at 12:55 pm
AF #135: If I’m going to sacrifice a large portion of my life to arguing with crackpots and assholes, then of course I’d rather argue with the ones who have hundreds of millions of fervent supporters all over the world, than the ones nursing some idiosyncratic grievance in bitterness and solitude. At least that way I (1) have some chance of making a difference, and (2) can’t be accused of cowardice!
Comment #138 November 30th, 2023 at 1:24 pm
Scott #137 (the fine structure comment)
Arguing is so far from persuasion, and persuasion so far from exhausting the ranks of the millions lined up one behind the other with duplicated misconceptions, that sometimes I despair at the impossibility of having an effect by talking to people. Perhaps it is best to focus on your point (2), that you are discharging some kind of duty by not allowing really bad perspectives to go unchallenged.
Comment #139 November 30th, 2023 at 2:22 pm
AF #135
Case in point, the May 68 Student revolutions in France and Germany
https://c7.alamy.com/comp/2ARW29R/strikes-in-france-ultra-left-students-in-courtyard-sorbonne-shop-decorated-with-portraits-mao-lenin-marxdate-21-may-1968-location-france-keywords-portraits-strikes-students-institution-name-sorbonne-2ARW29R.jpg
(“serve the people”, heh)
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/sites/default/files/styles/article785xauto/public/revolution.jpg
https://cdn.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/images/methode/2018/04/19/186b2cc6-4217-11e8-ab09-36e8e67fb996_1320x770_182151.jpg
https://images-cdn.bridgemanimages.com/api/1.0/image/600wm.OUC.09486340.7055475/4365311.jpg
There’s also the 1967 Godard movie “La Chinoise” about this:
https://diagonalthoughts.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/chinoise2.jpg
In the meantime, Mao’s policies have caused an estimated 40-80 millions deaths in China.
Comment #140 November 30th, 2023 at 3:33 pm
AG #130
So much love and respect for a brilliant human that he removed him from leadership? No cognitive dissonance here?
Comment #141 November 30th, 2023 at 4:02 pm
Scott 122: Who here has called you an “incel?” It sounds like you’re arguing with a strawman, or else you’re projecting your own insecurities onto the issue. Incels have nothing to do with Palestinian rights.
Comment #142 November 30th, 2023 at 4:23 pm
Adam #141: Hoo boy, you have not seen my inbox since Oct. 7. 😀
Comment #143 November 30th, 2023 at 4:24 pm
Danylo Yakymenko #140: The only information I have is the public one (and I am only following this sporadically). At the level of purely textual analysis, the second sentence in the paragraph quoted in #116 might perhaps appear superfluous but does not strike me as “intimidation” (your comment #121). “While Ilya will no longer serve on the board”, his future as a “guiding light” of the company appears to be the subject of negotiations currently taking place, so I think it might be premature to speak of “removal from leadership” at this juncture.
Comment #144 November 30th, 2023 at 4:52 pm
Scott #96: I agree these are really impressive feats no human writer is capable of. I think somebody practicing, say, “very high dimensional linear algebra” (e.g. Frigyes Riesz of “Functional Analysis” fame) might be similarly impressed by the technical prowess of a bright undergraduate armed with Matlab.
Comment #145 November 30th, 2023 at 5:04 pm
What’s in your inbox? Some choice examples?
Comment #146 November 30th, 2023 at 5:32 pm
Adam #145: I don’t like posting private email exchanges on my blog. But there was one particular exchange that stressed me for days, with a leftist humanities student who condemned me both for being a fascist Nazi Zionist and for being an incel misogynist.
And I had to concede to her that the two things are not at all unconnected in my moral cosmology. That Israel still exists, despite so much of the world’s hatred and bloodthirst for the Jews, really is a huge part of what gave me the courage to live my life, pursue happiness, speak my mind, ask women out on dates, and so on, despite all the people who hate and sneer at me. (If you google, you can find literally thousands of such people, mostly around the “comment 171” affair 9 years ago.)
It’s like: if Israel was justified in defending itself from annihilation, then it followed that virtually all the educated, “wise,” progressive arts-and-humanities types on the planet could believe the same thing and nevertheless all be wrong. And if they could all be wrong, then maybe they were also wrong that the socially-inept male STEM nerds like me were fundamentally deficient, gross, and unattractive, and deserved to be celibate for life.
Comment #147 November 30th, 2023 at 5:49 pm
I see. I think your logic connecting the two falls apart, though, once you realize that many self-described incels are themselves antisemites. I just checked the largest incel forum, and it’s full of guys celebrating the October 7 attacks. They were even saying one of the female victims kidnapped by Hamas deserved it for being a “stacey.” Many of them blame Jewish conspiracies for their inability to get sex, find girlfriends etc. How do you grapple with that tension?
Comment #148 November 30th, 2023 at 7:03 pm
Adam that is the dumbest comment I have ever read.
Comment #149 November 30th, 2023 at 7:04 pm
Adam #147: I mean, I spelled out how the argument worked for me personally:
Israel has a right to defend itself
→ the people who consider themselves the world’s authorities on what’s moral and progressive and decent and human and “on the right side of history” can all be systematically wrong about something
→ I have an existence proof that they could also be systematically wrong about STEM nerds like me deserving to be celibate forever, due to lacking the progressives’ emotional depth.
What’s it to me if some loser hates Jews and also hates “Stacies”?
Comment #150 November 30th, 2023 at 7:19 pm
What’s it to you? There are two answers that come to mind:
1. You have often advocated for these “losers,” expressed that they are deserving of compassion and empathy, etc.
2. How come, when a young humanities student celebrates the killing of Jews, it’s so scary to you—indicative of a broader antisemitism—yet, when an incel online celebrates the killing of Jews, they’re just “some loser” that doesn’t bother you that much? It seems like you’re giving preferential treatment to the incel.
More concretely, you’ve posted about Harvard students, academics etc. making anti-semitic statements, but you haven’t said anything about the (much more openly violent) antisemitism originating from incel forums.
Comment #151 November 30th, 2023 at 7:40 pm
Adam #149: No one who I’d ever respect could possibly care what some angry loser on 4chan thinks. Or rather: they’d agree that the loser might need to be stopped, but only in the same sense that a wild bear or a virus or a killer asteroid might need to be stopped. These are not things to be listened to or reasoned with.
But the woke arts-and-humanities people who sneer at me? Everyone cares what they think. Their worldview is blared from the front page of The New York Times and The Washington Post and The New York Review of Books and Slate and Salon and even The Onion. You can’t walk across campus without seeing their worldview on signs and posters.
So, that’s the difference. I apologize for not spelling out what I’d considered obvious.
Comment #152 November 30th, 2023 at 7:58 pm
The thing is, though, that you’ve said the exact opposite before—that these guys and their grievances *should* be listened to, and it’s a mistake for us to ignore them. So, what gives? You seem much harsher towards them now than you were before.
Comment #153 November 30th, 2023 at 8:39 pm
Adam #152: No, you’ve simply conflated
(1) those who self-identify as “incels,” and whose rage sometimes takes the form of crude misogyny, racism, antisemitism, and advocacy of violence, and
(2) those who refrain from all of those things, but who are identified by others as “incels” because they’re sad that our culture hasn’t given them any realistic way to date.
I’ve often felt a moral obligation to help those in group (2). By contrast, I feel like helping those in group (1) is supererogatory—I’m glad if people do it (just like I’m glad if people help to rehabilitate violent criminals), but I feel like anyone who’s expressed those attitudes has forfeited any expectation of anyone like me helping them or listening to them.
Comment #154 November 30th, 2023 at 9:07 pm
That makes sense. You’ve definitely said at some point, though—and I can’t find the precise comment so please correct me if I’m wrong—that society should pay attention to the grievances of lonely men *precisely because* some percentage of them will become the angry misogynists you describe in 1.
In particular, while condemning Elliot Rodger, you also said that we should seek to understand his grievances and try to fix the social problems that created him, or something like that.
So, could you help me inderstand why saying B is worse than A here?
A. While I condemn the incel mass shooter who massacred a sorority house, at the same time, we should try to understand what he was going through and take his grievances seriously, lest more young men are driven to violence. He did have a miserable life and was treated badly by people.
B. While I condemn the Hamas massacres of innocent Israelis, at the same time, we should try to understand what drove these young men to violence. Many of them had miserable, wretched lives and were suffering because of Israeli policies. If Israel doesn’t end its blockade/bombings etc., young men in Gaza will continue to be driven to violence.
Comment #155 November 30th, 2023 at 9:28 pm
Adam #154: I’m always for more deeply understanding what motivates people—as long as we don’t conflate understanding with excusing their evil acts. That’s true in both of the cases you mention.
In case A, I’d like to stop incel mass shooters, take away their access to weapons, etc and also address the root causes through (for example) anti-bullying programs, new social norms of empathy and “it’s ok to express romantic interest,” and anything else consistent with a liberal society. I’d like to see politicians campaign on increasing the rate of young people dating and getting married as much as they campaign on decreasing unemployment.
In case B, I’d like to destroy Hamas, end its power to carry out another October 7th massacre, and also address the Palestinian suffering that contributed to Hamas’s popularity by working towards a Palestinian state—one that prioritizes economic development and the welfare of the Palestinian people rather than religious fundamentalism and the dark fantasy of destroying Israel.
Comment #156 December 1st, 2023 at 3:36 am
Paula #107
You’re talking about important things but
1) Do you think the deep state actually knows what it’s doing, or has any coherent agenda, when it comes to the creation of superhuman AI? If you could see the discussions of AI that occur in the forums of the intelligence community, I would expect that it’s the same muddle of divergent agendas, clashing experts, and blue-sky futurism that you see in public social media. Just as we have e.g. the well-known differences of opinion among Hinton, Bengio, and LeCun, or the clash between EA and e/acc, there are undoubtedly hidden factions of opinion among the secret and the powerful.
Even if superhuman AI is created under the aegis of a branch of the US state, that doesn’t mean that it will turn out the way that they expect, or that everyone involved will have a unified intention.
2) Demanding AGI “for all” is not enough (and arguably even counterproductive) with respect to the specific problem of superhuman AI. A human assisted by a human-level AI will still either be steamrolled by a superhuman AI, or will themselves become superhuman. The only way to prevent the emergence of a superhuman-vs-human difference of intelligence (along with corresponding power asymmetry) is to prevent superhuman intelligence from ever emerging in any form – the luddite policy.
If superhuman AI is going to exist, then you have to work for, or at least hope for, some form of “superalignment”. That is, a value system or an orientation on the part of a superhuman intelligence, which allows it to coexist in a friendly way with mere human beings.
Comment #157 December 1st, 2023 at 6:35 am
Fred #126:
> I don’t think it’s the case, but it must have crossed the minds of many IDF tacticians that:
> 1) Gaza’s population is 50% children/teenagers, i.e. an very high birth rate.
>
> 2) a dead little boy is likely one less Hamas fighter/commander to worry about 10 years from now.
>
> 3) a dead little girl is likely a couple fewer Hamas fighters/commanders to worry about 30 years from now.
>
> So why make too much of a deal about civilian casualties when it can all be reframed in terms of a preemptive solution to wiping out Hamas, now and in the future?
Shameful as it is, this reasoning isn’t something that “maybe has occurred to a few tacticians”. This is something that many Israelis talk about all the time, sometimes as an explicit reason to not care about civilian casualties.
This is similar to how some Americans might talk about invading Afghanistan and civilian casualties there being acceptable cause they’re all future potential terrorists, though I think that kind of talk was and is less common in the States than in Israel.
(Though in the case of Palestine, the Israelis have more of a point; it really is true that Palestinian children are taught to hate Jews from a very young age, that there is vast support for violence against Israel, and that many children *have* been part of terrorism. Still, not a morally defensible reason to kill innocent children.)
Comment #158 December 1st, 2023 at 10:07 am
>>The awkward question for the anti-Zionist side remains: if the IDF was trying to commit ethnic cleansing, rather than root out Hamas, then why is the number of casualties more like 15,000 than 150,000 or 1.5 million, when the latter was clearly within the IDF’s power?
It’s not clear to me that 150,000 or 1.5 million Gazan deaths *is* within the IDF’s power. Can you be concrete here? How would the IDF kill that many civilians—what would it look like? If they set out to kill as many Gazans as possible, how would it look different than it does right now?
The obvious answer is nuclear weapons, but let’s imagine that they’re off the table for a number of reasons—radioactive fallout would drift into Israel proper, Israel wants the land to be habitable, Israel would be invaded by every Arab country if it used nukes, Israel would lose its allies and be cut off by the international community etc. Without using nuclear weapons, how could the IDF kill 150,000 or 1.5 million?
Comment #159 December 1st, 2023 at 12:24 pm
Scott looking sharp on the new Quanta Magazine P vs NP video!
Comment #160 December 1st, 2023 at 12:37 pm
Gwern has a post about why Altman was fired based on reporting he had quoted from a piece in the New Yorker:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KXHMCH7wCxrvKsJyn/openai-facts-from-a-weekend?commentId=AHnrKdCRKmtkynBiG
It wasn’t about Q-star or anything of the sort.
Quote: “Some members of the OpenAI board had found Altman an unnervingly slippery operator. For example, earlier this fall he’d confronted one member, Helen Toner, a director at the Center for Security and Emerging Technology, at Georgetown University, for co-writing a paper that seemingly criticized OpenAI for “stoking the flames of AI hype.” Toner had defended herself (though she later apologized to the board for not anticipating how the paper might be perceived). Altman began approaching other board members, individually, about replacing her. When these members compared notes about the conversations, some felt that Altman had misrepresented them as supporting Toner’s removal. “He’d play them off against each other by lying about what other people thought”, the person familiar with the board’s discussions told me. “Things like that had been happening for years.” (A person familiar with Altman’s perspective said that he acknowledges having been “ham-fisted in the way he tried to get a board member removed”, but that he hadn’t attempted to manipulate the board.)”
This reminds me of a colleague of mine, including the part about people comparing notes afterwards at which point they learn how they had been manipulated. It seems it really only works because not everyone knows everything everyone has said, and some people are good at exploiting these dark corners in people’s collective knowledge. I have lots of stories about that…
Comment #161 December 1st, 2023 at 1:01 pm
Maor #157
That comment chain does not exactly say it, but I would like to speak against the impression it creates.
“Israelis are a bunch of genocidal maniacs” is a conclusion you could arrive at by cherry-picking quotes, but its obvious that something is restraining the ones who are saying insane things on TV and discrediting their entire nation in the eyes of the world. Otherwise the air force would be pattern bombing every building at no risk to themselves except takeoff and landing accidents and people pinching their fingers in machinery, all funded by American military-industrial appropriations that are partly routed to domestic manufacturers and therefore benefit their economy.
Isn’t the most likely candidate for this restraint the psychologically normal rest of the voting public i.e. the actual majority of Israelis? If they (collectively) wanted to create the Greater Israel that the United States *already recognizes as their borders* (the US does not recognize Palestine!!! By declaring war on Hamas Israel is counting it as an enemy state and not a criminal racket on their own land, putting themselves ahead of our state department in that regard.) they would be able to do it, financially, militarily, and diplomatically. The most powerful maniacs are US policy makers, who cover for the worst of Israel, and act as enablers for peace’s opponents.
Comment #162 December 1st, 2023 at 1:28 pm
starspawn0 #160: Yes, that aspect of it has been reported in many places.
Comment #163 December 1st, 2023 at 1:38 pm
Adam #154: There is a fundamental difference between (a) a single aggrieved individual who decides to kill as many innocent civilians as he can before shooting himself and (b) 40K-strong, heavily armed, SS-like force, exercising tyrannical power over 2 million people held hostage, hiding in the bunker/tunnel system the size of NYC underground; whose Einsatzgruppen just massacred a thousand innocent civilians, took several hundred of them hostage, and repeatedly vowed to do it “again and again and again and again until no single Jew is left from the river to the sea”. Notwithstanding frequent mass shootings and steadily increasing levels of (mostly) rhetorical violence, many of us in the US and other prosperous Western democracies take survival (of ourselves and of our country) for granted. Israel is bereft of this luxury. Its very survival as a sovereign state depends on annihilation of Hamas.
This is an existential war with Hamas, not with the Palestinian people. To the best of my knowledge, the defence forces of no other country in the world have a better record of protecting civilians in an armed conflict. I mourn every single death of a Palestinian civilian. I fervently hope the IDF will do their utmost to minimize civilian casualties. But it is Hamas that bears responsibility for this war.
Having said that, there is no doubt in my mind that Israel’s dignity and long term security depends on and demands the establishment of a viable, peaceful and prosperous Palestinian state. And it is to the establishment of such a state that I hope Israel will recommit itself with increased vigor, following the annihilation of Hamas. The truth of the matter is that neither Israelis, nor the Palestinians have anywhere else to go, and they have to learn to live next to each other, with mutual respect for their common human dignity. I trust that in due course this *radical* idea will be embraced by the leaders of Palestinian people who will pledge to educate the next generation accordingly.
Comment #164 December 1st, 2023 at 2:40 pm
starspawn0 #160
You don’t understand, it’s just a quantum multiverse, their worldlines was simply disentangled, that’s why their notes were different.
/s
Comment #165 December 1st, 2023 at 3:45 pm
Adam #158: The IDF conventional capabilities doubtless exceed those of Syrian Arab Forces and Defense Companies, which during 1982 Hama massacre adopted a strategy of annihilating Muslim Brotherhood very different from the one currently pursued by IDF in its war with Hamas (in particular, there was no effort at all at relocating civilians to safe havens, and no humanitarian corridors):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_Hama_massacre
Comment #166 December 1st, 2023 at 4:22 pm
Comment #127:
Useful distinction.
Comment #167 December 1st, 2023 at 4:43 pm
Vanessa #127 and Raoul Ohio #166: It occurs to me that, in the old days, there was a more-or-less objective test of expertise in the humanities, and that test was simply erudition. How much of your field’s literature have you read, how much can you recall, how much can you marshal to support a point? But for whatever reasons, this test isn’t nearly as important or respected as it once was. Is that because of the influence of wokeness and critical studies, or simply because Google made a lot of erudition irrelevant, or for some other reason entirely?
Comment #168 December 1st, 2023 at 5:27 pm
@Scott #167: Back in the olden times, 2006 or so, there was some discussion of erudition making a come-back in literary studies on a now defunct group blog called The Valve. I’ve been searching through the WayBackMachine to find it but, alas, to no avail. But I did find a special edition of Representations from 1996 devoted to “The New Erudition.” I’ve not read any of the articles, but I can guess why that journal would have a special issue with a title like that. It was and I suppose still is the home journal of a movement in literary criticism known as New Historicism, which emphasized meticulous readings of texts that were based on extensive contextual knowledge, the sort of thing you gained by digging through the archives. The use of contextual knowledge was tossed out by a mid-century movement known as New Criticism, which held that texts contained their meanings within themselves and so were independent of historical context. I believe that something called New Formalism emerged around a decade ago. I’m waiting for the New Newness.
Comment #169 December 1st, 2023 at 5:43 pm
Scott #167
If the purpose of recognizing an expert is ultimately related to how right they are, then it makes sense that “not racist” would emerge as an alternative to erudition as a prerequisite for respect in an environment where highly educated and intelligent people were justifying Jim Crow laws, to eventually evolve into the social system governing humanities now.
Just because one of the divorced couple died of old age doesn’t mean the scars, emotional baggage and tendency to see everything in terms of how it would have related to the person they divorced are lifted from the surviving person – and likewise just because there are no sons of planters in high up positions anymore doesn’t mean the remaining system is no longer shaped around wining arguments with them despite their wealth of erudition.
Comment #170 December 1st, 2023 at 6:07 pm
Concerned #169: My first reaction is, why not completely divorce erudition from morality in our minds? If, for example, there happened to be slave owners who were really good at engineering, that shouldn’t call their engineering expertise into question: instead it should just motivate us to recruit or cultivate even better engineers on the abolitionist side (especially military ones 🙂 ).
But OK: suppose someone says, plausibly, that they regard “the humanities” (unlike STEM) as completely inextricable from how we should live our lives—in other words, from morality. Even in that case, there’s a “fighting the last war” aspect to how humanists take away lessons like “always be on the side that seems more left-wing and revolutionary,” and then apply those lessons even to, e.g., Pol Pot versus his detractors, or Hamas versus Israel. It would be as if, after Newton, physicists took away the lesson “always be on the side that believes in absolute simultaneity and action-at-a-distance,” and then continued to apply that lesson after Einstein.
Comment #171 December 1st, 2023 at 8:46 pm
Scott #170
The strength of “the box” in combination with the ability to check answers can take morality out of AI safety. If I am asking graph isomorphism questions to a machine in a box, it doesn’t matter how evil the AI is, because I know when it is doing the job right. Building codes, empirical rigor, unit and integration testing, twelve centuries of liability law and property rights are like that for evil engineers. There’s not a huge basis for trying to cast them out, aside from the systematized routes someone could lose their license through. If those are the examples we are working from, it would appear that the only thing that mattered was erudition.
Erudition is like “strength.” Just as with AI, when we stop asking about problems that can have their answers checked in polynomial time, we start worrying about whether we’re going to be intellectually overpowered by an agent harboring evil goals. It’s not practical for a mathematician to write an evil proof that convinces while failing to be true, but it’s very practical for a historian to say that the greatest and most refined ancient societies shared the institution of slavery, when most classical literature was written by slave owners, for slave owners. That is even true when using history as the example, a field of the humanities concerned with absolute, evidence-based truth. Imagine how much worse psychologists had it during the (ongoing) era of psychoanalysis!
The less checkable the answers are the more the motivations and alignment of the oracle matters. You would be surprised how fast checkability falls off outside of pure mathematics; given the replication crisis ongoing today. That is why reputation is held separate from “strength.”
As for your point about leftism supposedly always finding the littlest underdog, that just illustrates how baffling and non-rules-based people can be sometimes. The least powerful party in the Israel-Hamas war are obviously the Palestinian dissidents who hate Hamas – I read about at least one protest – but for some reason, radicals have sided with their government against them. The same goes for Pol Pot, where the least powerful party were obviously the intellectuals and educated middle class individuals whose skulls he piled up; it is not a close contest.
I can’t account for insanity, nor do I exactly support that principle in every imaginable case, but those two aren’t counterexamples to that law: they’re counterexamples to the idea those crazy professors are in any way, even for model-theoretic imaginary laws, lawful.
Comment #172 December 1st, 2023 at 9:18 pm
Concerned #171: Thanks for that insight!
No matter what interpretation we put on it or what explanation we give, I’d say the entire theory that we need the humanities to inject moral values into the otherwise amoral academic landscape of STEM and professional fields stands utterly discredited in a world where the humanities professors cheer Pol Pot and Hamas.
Comment #173 December 1st, 2023 at 9:32 pm
Was a good video, but is it really true that a solution to P vs NP might give progress in fighting the common cold other than in the most indirect way or in the sense that finding out P == NP will give progress to just about anything that lends itself to computation??
Comment #174 December 1st, 2023 at 10:40 pm
Scott #172
If the majority of humanities scholars agreeing on an awful view discredited the idea of paying people to study history and literature to come up with the most broadly informed views, the whole enterprise would have been discredited a very long time ago. Unquestionably so by the time they had invented thousands of reasons that slavery was moral – at which time there were also abolitionists, only some of whom as erudite as the mainstream scholars were, shouting the truth from the wings.
The difficulty comes with trying to imagine a better system. A morality prediction market? It’s tough to say but I think it would have worked for the slavery failure, as the founding fathers wrote extensively to each other about how they thought it was an evil that could only be tolerated for a certain length of time. They’d have bought abolition shares for 1840.
What would not be a better system is to have all history and social psychology be done by people with enough free time and spare income to pursue their personal interest alone. That’s how it worked in the eighteenth century, and the results had all the same problems that we’re suffering today, minus publish-or-perish, plus a lot of class bias (the most skilled archeologists are spread through the population, not concentrated among landed gentry, and the Victorian era was a tremendously site-destructive period in the field).
Anyway, the last time a computer scientist decided the humanities establishment was failing its duty we got the essays of Noam Chomsky, so perhaps you have a bright and impactful second career ahead. 😉
Comment #175 December 1st, 2023 at 11:50 pm
The other Scott A. recently wrote a blog post about a new method to look inside AI (https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/god-help-us-lets-try-to-understand). What do you think about it? Are there complexity theory limits on how large the internal, hidden, monosemantic AI can get?
Comment #176 December 2nd, 2023 at 12:44 am
Scott #172: Humanities professors who are cheering for Hamas should not be conflated with the Humanities (just as the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) should not be conflated with Islam).
Comment #177 December 2nd, 2023 at 12:58 am
“A subtle difference exists in Latin between scientia and eruditio, and in English between knowledge and learning. Scientia and knowledge, denoting a mental possession rather than a mental process, can be identified with the natural sciences; eruditio and learning, denoting a process rather than a possession, with the humanities. The ideal aim of science would seem to be something like mastery, that of the humanities something like wisdom”.
Erwin Panofsky, “History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline”, 1938
Comment #178 December 2nd, 2023 at 1:07 am
“If the anthropocratic civilization of the Renaissance is headed, as it seems to be, for a *Middle Ages in reverse –a satanocracy* as opposed to the mediaeval theocracy — not only the humanities but also natural sciences, as we know them, will disappear, and nothing will be left but what serves the dictates of the *sub-human*”.
PS. This was written in 1938. I guess AGI will be trans-human.
Comment #179 December 2nd, 2023 at 3:27 am
The Mongols are an interesting study with respect to war and governance. This follows from the famous quote attributed to Genghis Khan-Easier to conquer from the back of a horse than dismount and govern.
Mongol governance probably peaked with Kublai Khan (grandson of Ghengis). He united China for the fist time and established a meritocracy that in no way discriminated on the basis of religion nor national origin. He eliminated the endemic corruption of the Chinese bureaucracies and established a postal service and a national currency. He supported scholarship and the Arts and welcomed Arab mathematicians and engineers and artists from any location to China.
The Mongols were tactical geniuses for their time and merciless in war. Their ethics in the prosecution of war reflective of the worst of the 12th/13th centuries, but their post conquest governance instructive even today. The trick is one of good governance after military objective have been completely achieved.
Comment #180 December 2nd, 2023 at 5:44 am
Douglas MacArthur made horrible mistakes as a general both in the Philippines and Korea. He refused to believe the Japanese would invade even as they were approaching and that led directly to the Bataan death march. In Korea he refused to believe the Chinese would cross the Yalu and that directly led to the largest encirclement of US troops in history. But, as governor in effect of Japan he did an unquestionably admirable job. He imposed equal rights for women and guided Japan to liberal democracy. Again, after military objectives were accomplished he understood the importance of governance.
A US diplomat once said-I thought Arthur MacArthur (Douglas’ father) was the most vain self centered man alive until I met Douglas. Douglas had historically good scores at West Point but was prone to lapses in judgement but in any event he apparently was just what was required to guide Japan to the path of becoming what it is today.
Comment #181 December 2nd, 2023 at 6:01 am
Scott wrote: “Greta Thunberg is now chanting to “crush Zionism” — ie, taking time away from saving civilization to ensure that half the world’s remaining Jews will be either dead or stateless in the civilization she saves. Those of us who once admired Greta, and experience her new turn as a stab to the gut”
you are rather naive. onyone weho has been following the so-called progressive left could have anticipated that Thunberg would be anti-Israel as is AOC and of course, the ultimate self-loathing jew, Bernie Sanders. when it comes to identity politics, lefties are anti-Israel “(whether that makes them anti-semitic as well is a different matter, though i think iit does.
btw – we should stop saying antisemite when we really mean anti-jew.
Comment #182 December 2nd, 2023 at 7:45 am
Scott #172
> No matter what interpretation we put on it or what explanation we give, I’d say the entire theory that we need the humanities to inject moral values into the otherwise amoral academic landscape of STEM and professional fields stands utterly discredited in a world where the humanities professors cheer Pol Pot and Hamas.
Btw, I also think that STEM should stop trying to be an “amoral landscape”. Instead, science and morality should be acknowledged to be strongly (or at least moderately) coupled: it’s impossible to do science responsibly without examining the moral consequences of the technologies we create, and it’s impossible to reason clearly about morals without using science as a bedrock or empiricism and mathematical models as parts of your toolbox. What we need is societal institutions in which this fact is explicitly acknowledged and taken into account. With them should come a new discourse on morality growing from analytic philosophy, decision theory, cognitive science etc. Effective altruism might be viewed as a proof-of-concept example for how such a discourse might look like, even though I don’t agree with it on all the details.
Comment #183 December 2nd, 2023 at 9:22 am
Adam Treat #173: Yeah, if the algorithm for 3SAT were O(n1000), I doubt that would yield a cure for the common cold. If, on the other hand, the algorithm were O(n polylog n)… 😉
Comment #184 December 2nd, 2023 at 9:33 am
Concerned #174, AG #176: To be clear, I’m well aware that there are many humanists with sane views on totalitarianism, indeed who are eloquent and essential in showing the world its costs. I’m privileged to know some of them. If only for their sake, I want humanities departments to continue to thrive. And even if there were no such humanists, I’d simply say that meant the humanities were too important to leave to the humanists, just like philosophy might be too important to leave to the philosophers. 🙂
Comment #185 December 2nd, 2023 at 9:44 am
Richard Gaylord #181: Actually, if you’ve been paying attention, you’ll know that Bernie Sanders is being floridly denounced by his fellow leftists for refusing to call for an unconditional Israeli ceasefire that would leave Hamas free to continue exterminating the Jews. Due to the usual outgroup vs fargroup phenomenon, the anti-Israel left probably hates Bernie right now more than it hates Bibi! Maybe having lived on a kibbutz gave Bernie more perspective on this conflict, or maybe he really is an old-school democratic socialist, the kind that still believes in the Enlightenment. In any case, his decision reminds us of the power of individual agency, that we’re not just condemned to be pieces of driftwood in our respective ideological streams. Bernie is personally responsible for his choice, just like Greta is personally responsible for hers.
Comment #186 December 2nd, 2023 at 9:47 am
Vanessa Kosoy #182: Hear hear! Ethics is indeed too important to be left to the ethicists.
Comment #187 December 2nd, 2023 at 11:03 am
scott #185: Sanders seeks to make the giving of funds to Israel conditional. Regardless of the specific constraints, telling Israel how it can deal with Hamas cannot be viewed as a pro-Israel position.
Comment #188 December 2nd, 2023 at 11:34 am
In response to Bill Benzon’s request for feedback and what it’s worth, if anything, the first few chapters so far are exactly what I expected: beautifully expressed, evoking some sadness, imparting some insights, but not as entertaining as what I had been rereading: “The Flight of the Phoenix” by Elleston Trevor. I would have liked to have had a course in college involving “A Testament for Ariela” and think it would have been good for me, but at the age when there’s a new physical problem every year or so, and the news is often terrible, I mostly crave well-done escapism in my reading.
Still, the book is in my Kindle library, where my relatives may find it.
Comment #189 December 2nd, 2023 at 12:19 pm
Scott #120: In the podcast with Lex Fridman, John Mearsheimer had the following retort to the charge of being an antisemite: “I have two grandsons whom Hitler would have thrown into a death chamber”. Mearsheimer is indeed an example of a decorated humanities professor embracing both pro-Putin and pro-Hamas views.
As examples of humanistic responses par excellence I would invoke the following essay by Andrew Roberts:
https://freebeacon.com/culture/what-makes-hamas-worse-than-the-nazis/
as well as this essay by Michael Walzer
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/11/oppression-palestine-israel-hamas/675907/
Comment #190 December 2nd, 2023 at 12:40 pm
JimV #188: I was hesitating because I prefer to read a “physical book”, but I just made an exception and purchased “A Testament for Ariela” on Kindle.
Comment #191 December 2nd, 2023 at 1:04 pm
AG #189: There’s a line I like, about how Jewish intellectual achievement is so staggering that the Jews have been leaders even in the field of antisemitism. If not even being Jewish is enough to save one from antisemitism (as we see from Karl Marx, Bobby Fischer, Norman Finkelstein, and countless other examples), then certainly having Jewish or part-Jewish grandchildren isn’t either.
Comment #192 December 2nd, 2023 at 1:07 pm
Richard Gaylord #187: I didn’t say Bernie’s views on Israel are great, or identical to mine. But given who his (former?) allies are, they’re the best that could possibly be hoped for.
Comment #193 December 2nd, 2023 at 6:19 pm
@JimV #188: Good enough. Since you didn’t make it through to the end, and this is not the kind of book where the ending is some kind of surprise, I give you the very ending. Further, I note that I certainly didn’t read the book straight through from beginning to end. I did read it all, but not in order. There’s no harm in seeing the end.
* * * * *
On the day on which the U.S began its bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam War, large student protests occurred on major campuses. I witnessed the huge rally in the Princeton University chapel, which reverberated with cries of “shut it down.” I found myself addressing a group of students who were raising the same cry in front of the Firestone library. I urged them to respect and learn from the accumulated knowledge to be found there, as follows:
DO NOT CLOSE THE LIBRARY!
The knowledge needed to understand and create a better world is of panoramic dimensions. It includes the details of the functioning of society as well as its larger structures; it includes the thought map of your fellow men both in the large and in the small, by profession and life style, by age and ancestry, by character type and physical make-up; it includes your own thought map, its sensitivities, its prejudices, its strong and weak points, its personal genesis. It includes the resources of your country and the planet, the limitations of life, the workings of technology, the frontiers of scientific research. It includes an imaginatively arrived at, precise, almost personal acquaintance with today’s wielders of power, individually and collectively, so as to know their faces and to be able to look them in the eyes. It includes an awareness of humanities’ total heritage: our history, past myths, struggles and sufferings.
You will have to know in depth the nature of a dozen disciplines: medicine, education, architecture, city planning, transportation, food production, the generation of power, pricing mechanisms, local administration, government organization. You will have to read the world both in fictional and mathematical terms: with empathy, the imaginative projection of one’s own consciousness into another human being, and with logic and rational analysis and lucidity and precision. You may come to stand above your society and epoch as one who views an immense doll house, a miniature city: in every room, in every street, in every mind the activities proceed, locally purposeful but not consciously connected to the larger scheme and often collectively random and destructive.
Such a global knowledge can evoke that “holographic awareness” which transcends its interpretation in the mechanical language of recurrent programs. It “holds compact in one” that global vision which continuously reinterprets reality in terms of lived experience. Thus you will assert your superior humanity and do better than the computer.
The world is there for you to rethink and redo. The problems are as numerous as the number of your brains. Your brains are young and vigorous; they will rise to the occasion! For “There is nothing as powerful,” as Victor Hugo said, “as an idea whose time has come.”
Comment #194 December 2nd, 2023 at 8:30 pm
Just to follow up on our exchange, I came across a video of Andrew Tate justifying the Hamas attack yesterday (something something, Hamas is against pronouns and vaccines and promiscuous women). Andrew Tate, unlike the hypothetical incel loser on 4chan, is a massively influential public figure with millions of followers, including a handful of national GOP politicians. So why doesn’t his rhetoric scare you as much as the campus protests? Why haven’t you condemned his statements as you condemned the Harvard students? Your argument about the angry incel loser on 4chan doesn’t work here, because Andrew Tate really is enormously influential and he’s been praised by powerful people.
Comment #195 December 2nd, 2023 at 9:02 pm
Adam #194: The simplest reason why I didn’t condemn that is that I hadn’t heard about it. Now that I have, I condemn it strongly!
Having said that, you’ve forced me to pay the Harvard students the following backhanded compliment: many people whose opinion I care about care what they think, whereas not a single person whose opinion I care about cares what Andrew Tate thinks.
Comment #196 December 2nd, 2023 at 9:43 pm
Don’t you, yourself, agree with ~50% or so of what Andrew Tate says? Shouldn’t it be a wake-up call, when the guy who’s the biggest loudest advocate of your beliefs (on anti-feminism and dating doesn’t work for men today, etc.) ALSO advocates for the mass killing of people like you? Shouldn’t that make you reevaluate your beliefs?
To answer your question, Joe Rogan cares about what Andrew Tate says (he had a big interview with him), and Elon Musk supports Tate enough to reinstate him on Twitter so he can support Hamas on that platform. And don’t you care what Joe Rogan and Elon Musk think? Piers Morgan also had a very sympathetic interview with him.
I also encourage you to post your condemnation as an update on the Hamas post, so people can see that you’re equal-opportunity on left and right wing figures.
Comment #197 December 2nd, 2023 at 10:33 pm
Adam #196: I’ve never read or listened to Andrew Tate, so I have no idea what percentage of what he says I’d agree with, or whether that’s even a reasonable metric at all. There might be all sorts of mass-murderers and terrorists who spend 99% of their lives saying and doing reasonable things that I agree with, but the other 1% really, really matters! 🙂
And you, unfortunately, are headed for a ban from this blog, as I more and more get the impression that you’re not genuinely seeking understanding but just trying to trap me into appearing to agree with some far-right ghoul in a way that you can then rip from context and trumpet to the world. If this isn’t the case, then I apologize for confusing you with a hundred previous people for whom it very much was the case.
Comment #198 December 3rd, 2023 at 12:12 am
Scott #183,
If you ever publish research on the complexity bounds of the class of “common cold”-like complexity, please remember to give me a shout 😉
BTW, I think you should ban the other Adam already if for no other reason than he’s giving us a bad name.
Comment #199 December 3rd, 2023 at 12:48 am
Concerned #161:
You write:
> “Israelis are a bunch of genocidal maniacs” is a conclusion you could arrive at by cherry-picking quotes, but its obvious that something is restraining the ones who are saying insane things on TV and discrediting their entire nation in the eyes of the world.
Of course. To state something I think obvious, there’s a big difference between the kinds of things average people say to one another on the street, as opposed to how the country/army itself act in real situations.
I imagine lots of people in the US would say things like “we should bomb the Arabs back to the stoneage” or similar. That doesn’t mean that’s what the US army does, nor does it even mean those very same people would *actually* do that given the power to do that.
Comment #200 December 3rd, 2023 at 6:16 am
Scott #197
This is a downside of the Internet. Couple poor educations and media creatures from the black lagoon that have a whacky message and voila an immense following for the likes of Greta and Andrew et al. It used to be, when media communications were relatively costly, that some minimal competence was usually required to reach a wide audience but no longer. Education has sensitized many to certain themes and no matter how ill supported the message you can reach a sizable adoring audience through essentially cost free mass communication.
Does any rational person believe Greta has any special competence in regards to the climate or Gaza, or that Andrew can provide the secrets to acquiring wealth and finding satisfaction in relationships. They are just creatures of mass media who are able to reach a critical thinking impoverished audience. The only preventative is better education but that is growing ever less likely as an ever increasing number of educators and administrators are products of this same system.
I never could understand why males having problems forming relationships with females is considered a new problem. The Victorian Era is notorious for sexual frustration as were the Puritans and some cultures have addressed this very issue with arranged/forced marriages. All that has changed is that these males are now able to coalesce through the Internet and form a group that in many cases just echo chamber negative messages from media ghouls (to use your apt term).
Comment #201 December 3rd, 2023 at 9:18 am
“Like much of the world, I fervently hope for a ceasefire—so long as it includes the release of all hostages and the end of Hamas’s ability to repeat the Oct. 7 pogrom.”
Hi Scott, appreciate the sentiment, but curious whether you also count as hostages the at least 150 Palestinian children being held in Israeli prisons, mostly without being charged, and who are tried in military courts? The average number each year seems to be 500-700.
Comment #202 December 3rd, 2023 at 9:21 am
>> If this isn’t the case, then I apologize for confusing you with a hundred previous people for whom it very much was the case.
I’m genuinely sorry that people treated you this way. Misrepresentation is wrong, and I’m sorry this happened to you. This was not my intention at all. I’ve been trying to get you to **condemn** the antisemitism of right-wingers, and not the other way around!
>> I’ve never read or listened to Andrew Tate, so I have no idea what percentage of what he says I’d agree with, or whether that’s even a reasonable metric at all.
Could you please watch this video in its entirety (it’s just 10 minutes long): https://youtu.be/Yp3rOzTHjSw?si=hAhKVlsxGQeRA03t. Just from my general awareness of your personality and politics, I have the sense that you agree with everything he says here. Please let me know if I’m wrong, or I’m miscalibrated here. I am genuinely curious if you agree with what he says there, or if that aligns with your views on anti-feminism.
My perspective is: I’m a left-wing Jew, I condemn Hamas, and I also have reservations about the Israeli response that has killed many civilians. I think you are overly harsh when you condemn pro-Palestine protesters, cherrypicking instances where some people have said pro-Hamas things. At the same time, you are ignoring the most more virulent threat of right-wing antisemitism, not condemning it on your blog, and it seems unfair to me.
Comment #203 December 3rd, 2023 at 10:10 am
Adam #202: I watched the first minute of that video, and the idea that I could identify with anything in it is so utterly farcical as to remove any possibility that you’re acting in good faith. You’re permanently banned from this blog.
Comment #204 December 3rd, 2023 at 10:19 am
Universal Phase #201: Again and again, the “children held in Israeli prisons without trial” turn out to be teenage boys who committed acts of terrorism—so, not morally comparable in any way to Israeli children who were minding their own business when Hamas murdered or kidnapped them, despite the impression created by the three-prisoners-for-one-hostage exchange. Yes, these teenage boys should face trial, and yes, some minority would surely turn out to be innocent, but unlike with the kidnapped children of Be’eri and Kfar Aza, we’d have to go through and discuss each one individually.
Comment #205 December 3rd, 2023 at 11:04 am
“ Again and again, the “children held in Israeli prisons without trial” turn out to be teenage boys who committed acts of terrorism”
Again, curious on what basis you make this claim? They are ‘tried’ in military courts with almost 100% conviction rate and barely allowed any legal representation. There are kids as young as 12, including girls, by the way. One would have to suspend one’s critical thinking almost entirely in order to believe the verdicts coming out of such a system. And then again, is a teenager throwing rocks at a tank invading his neighborhood a ‘terrorist’? In that sense, these Palestinian kids are also ‘minding their own business’, except they are not afforded the innocence all kids should have.
Comment #206 December 3rd, 2023 at 11:30 am
Scott #197. Now that I think about it, it strikes me as indeed likely that Adam’s comment #158 was intended to solicit a “disproportionate response” which can then be “ripped from context and trumpeted to the world”.
I had not heard about Andrew Tate until this morning (and about “incels” until a few days ago) so I learned something from this exchange (the variety of perspectives heard on this blog is quite impressive). I wonder whether we should expect Greta Thunberg to challenge Andrew Tate to a sword fight, or, alternatively, to join forces with him against the common Zionist enemy.
Comment #207 December 3rd, 2023 at 11:46 am
Scott #191: Norman Finkelstein is indeed an epitome of a Jewish antisemite, but I am uncertain whether Karl Marx really belongs in this category. Notwithstanding, I found his essay “On the Jewish Question” helpful in trying to understand the deep roots of current wide-spread support of Hamas on the Left:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/jewish-question
Comment #208 December 3rd, 2023 at 12:24 pm
Universal Phase #205: See, it’s like this. My social media shows me an endless litany of terrorists who try and fail to kill Israelis with pipe bombs or whatever, spend a bit of time in Israeli prison, and are then released in exchange for left-wing peace activists and 4-year-olds kidnapped by Hamas — which terrorists then return home to a hero’s welcome, chanting “death to all Jews” and vowing to commit more terrorism. Meanwhile, a cruel and hateful world insists on seeing moral equivalence.
Your social media undoubtedly shows you an endless litany of Palestinian children whose lives were ruined because they threw a pebble at an Israeli tank rumbling through their village.
It’s impossible to decide, by this methodology, which situation is more common. Given any specific case, we could see if our moral intuitions differed about it, and thus whether there’s any actual moral disagreement between us over and above the factual and statistical question.
Comment #209 December 3rd, 2023 at 12:27 pm
Everyone: This thread, alas, is right now passing the by-now painfully familiar “Troll Point,” beyond which the aggravation caused to me outweighs any possible benefit to the world. So I’m shutting it down soon—last call.
Comment #210 December 3rd, 2023 at 12:33 pm
Scott,
I just watched this miniseries about Christopher Dunsch, and I’m struck by the similarities between you and Dr. Dunsch. Both of you were very strong in research and theory, but switched later in life to practical applications they were not trained for, to disastrous results in Dunsch’s case. You aren’t an AI expert, so please don’t be over-confident in your predictions or imagine that you discovered the secret to AI safety. Read the story of Christipher Dunsch as a cautionary tale that could happen to you if you’re not careful. Your attitude and personality seems really similar.
Comment #211 December 3rd, 2023 at 12:43 pm
Just harmless childhood pranks throwing rocks at the IDF. It happens in the US that rock throwers targeting police also do not make it to court.
Comment #212 December 3rd, 2023 at 12:45 pm
Since Panofsky’s essay is not easily available (and since I have a feeling you might be too harsh on the humanities) please forgive me for taking the liberty of quoting this paragraph which I personally found singularly illuminating:
To grasp reality we have to detach ourselves from the present. (There is nothing less real than the present. An hour ago, this lecture belonged to the future. In four minutes, it will belong to the past). Philosophy and mathematics do this by building systems in a medium which is by definition not subject to time. Natural science and the humanities do it by creating those spatio-temporal structures which I have called the “cosmos of nature” and the “cosmos of culture.” And here we touch upon what is perhaps the most fundamental difference between the humanities and the natural sciences. Natural science observes the time-bound processes of nature and tries to apprehend the timeless laws according to which they unfold. Physical observation is only possible where something “happens,” that is, where a change occurs or is made to occur by way of experiment. And it is these changes which are finally symbolized by mathematical formulae. The humanities, on the other hand, are not faced by the task of arresting what otherwise would slip away, but of enlivening what otherwise would remain dead. Instead of dealing with temporal phenomena, and causing time to stop, they penetrate into a region where time has stopped of its own accord, and try to reactivate it. Gazing as they do at those frozen, stationary records of which I have said that they “emerge from the stream of time” the humanities endeavor to capture the processes in the course of which those records were produced and became what they are.
Comment #213 December 3rd, 2023 at 1:24 pm
This thread seems to have devolved into discussions about the conflict in Israel and what Israel should or should not have done, even though the original post wasn’t entirely about that. So, I think I am not the only one here who would love to have a summary of Scott’s views on the matter. Scott, I don’t think it’s my place to tell you what to write about, but from everything I’ve been reading I think I entirely agree with your views about Israel and although I’m less optimistic than you, it was eye opening for me when you pointed out that Japan and Germany were in a very bad state of affairs after WWII and yet they are now peace success stories, which leads you to have some hope for Palestine. I would love if you would write some kind of summary of how you see the origins of the Israel/palestine problem and what you hope for in the future, because I’d like to be able to send it to my friends and parents, almost all of whom are quite anti-Israel. I don’t have the time to write such a summary and anyways I think you’re a much better communicator than me, so maybe it would be useful in changing some minds or at least opening a conversation with westerners who inexplicably (to me) detest Israel.
Comment #214 December 3rd, 2023 at 1:41 pm
Sam Fisher #210: If you actually read me, rather than some other person I’ve never heard of who reminded you of me, I think you’d find that I’m on the extreme end of refusing to make confident predictions (eg, that AI doom is either near-inevitable or near-impossible), and not claiming to know any “secret to AI safety”—I’ve just shared incremental progress here and there on things like watermarking and OOD generalization. Criticism of specific things I said or did is always welcome. Vague attempts to “stand above me” and judge me as a human being, without pointing to anything concrete, will on the other hand quickly earn blog bans.
ADDENDUM: On googling just now … holy crap, you compared me to a neurosurgeon who killed or maimed a bunch of people, claiming that our personalities are “really similar,” despite the fact that anyone who knows me knows that I’ve avoided anything even remotely similar to medicine throughout my life, in part because of an enormous fear of ever inadvertently causing harm to anyone? Permanent ban from this blog. Fuck you.
Comment #215 December 3rd, 2023 at 1:44 pm
Scott #208 #209
I am sorry you have to talk to crazy people who disagree with you because something is wrong with their heads instead of reasonable people who disagree with you because life is full of difficult questions that nobody comes to the same answers on. I can give you a sane version of the equivalency to think about as a consolation prize for reading a billion short essays making false equivalencies.
The reasonable critics of Israel would point to the “collateral damage” of airstrikes as the equivalents of the innocent victims of Hamas. There is a clear difference in intention, but intention does not matter so much when you are a mother who has lost her son or daughter. Intention *does* matter in most conceptions of justice, except for consequentialism. I would propose that Israel is doing a lot better deontologically than consequentially, given the near impossibility of fighting a consequentialist war.
To everyone talking about Andrew Tate and Hamas #*:
The parallels between frustrated young adults being radicalized online by incels and religious or political terrorists are obvious, they both have fourm websites and mass shootings. They both pose the same challenges to society, which are how to contain them without taking rights away from ordinary people, and also how to change the overall conditions of life so that nobody wants to pay the ultimate price for something so horrible. If you read about suicide bombers, you’ll find they fit the description for incels – no relationships, bad mental health, miserable life.
I know that most of the ideas for improving this are really bad, but nobody will have a chance to think of a good one if we can’t ascend past the altitude of wondering whether *bullying* young terrorists will make them give up and become normal people again… sometimes I am astounded at the things I write because I find myself describing a truth I cannot countenance.
Scott #(the ones about trolls)
I don’t think anyone is trying to trap you, you are just talking to a lot of people with limited conceptual inventories. I think people think using something like a singular value decomposition of all their experiences with the small terms dropped. Some people have more terms because of broader experiences, and other people have more terms because they are more naturally inclined to recognizing subtle distinctions. In any case talking to someone who is working with fewer terms than you can be very frustrating, because they’re incapable of perceiving what you are saying on a basic, cognitive level. When you say something, their brains convert it into a vector with much fewer components than you had, and when they say something you decode it into a vector with many more components than they put into it. That’s my explanation for why some people approach everything from the good-bad axis and appear to lie like rugs about stuff they don’t like without the slightest sign of shame. To someone with a bad case of singular valueism, everything they don’t like really is linguistically synonymous.
Anyway I don’t actually know what they are thinking, but again this is something to consider. Even if it or the point about conesquentialism is wrong, hopefully they are interesting enough to read. 😉
Comment #216 December 3rd, 2023 at 2:10 pm
Concerned #215: I do agree that a large number of young adults in the US are frustrated (for a variety of reasons, many of which are legitimate and merit urgent attention), and this, in part, accounts for the terrifying 48% of Hamas supporters among them.
Comment #217 December 3rd, 2023 at 5:49 pm
Scott #203, #214: Good decision to ban those detractors.
Concerned #215: In the end if doesn’t matter whether those trolls try to “trap Scott”, or just have “limited conceptual inventories”. They steal his time and energy, and abuse his trust and goodwill.
Comment #218 December 3rd, 2023 at 6:29 pm
AG #216:
There are, thankfully, reasons to suspect the accuracy of that poll. (https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2023/vivek-ramaswamy-says-50-of-gen-z-americans-support-hamas-politifact-says-thats-mostly-false/) Nonetheless I have seen for myself that politicization of American support for Israel has occurred, so there is something to discuss.
There is a *reason* why young adults are suddenly believing in the genocide thing. It is because not everyone is as level-headed as Edan Maor #199:
> To state something I think obvious, there’s a big difference between the kinds of things average people say to one another on the street, as opposed to how the country/army itself act in real situations. I imagine lots of people in the US would say things like “we should bomb the Arabs back to the stoneage” or similar.
That is not obvious!!! (although you nailed the analogy.) If it was obvious, the handful of truly awful televised quotes, compounded by biased translation from Hebrew, would not be getting so much mileage among teenagers and young adults; many of whom were insulated from and therefore aren’t interpreting in the context of the war hate leading up to Iraq and Afghanistan. Their system of values didn’t change, they just went from knowing zero things about Israeli politics to falsely believing ultranationalists were in charge of the peace process – a transition made all too easy by the rhetoric used by the usual suspects: wacky right-wingers in the United States.
I am hoping that I can get the message out about Israel being the mutally-miserable compromise between liberals and conservatives, a.k.a. the “little America” that it actually is. If anyone is wondering why I think the middle of an awful war is time to talk about reasonable criticism for things that happened 20 years ago, that’s my thinking on the dilemma.
Comment #219 December 6th, 2023 at 1:55 pm
Scott,
You were wrong in the “Theories of Everything” podcast. You described P=NP incorrectly. You described P=NP as saying “every problem has a shortcut.” This is wrong for a number of reasons, okay? First of all, brute force solves 3SAT in 2^n time. If there was an algorithm that solved it in (4/3)^n time, that would constitute a “shortcut” while not offering a polynomial-time algorithm. Second of all, if there was an n^1,000,000,000,000 time algorithm for 3SAT it would show P=NP while certainly not being a “shortcut” for all practical purposes.
It’s important to maintain accuracy while communicating with the public. Please do not make such mistakes again, thanks.
Comment #220 December 6th, 2023 at 5:01 pm
Since you’ve opened up comments for your podcast I can say this: you repeat near the beginning of the podcast something you’ve said in many other places namely that maybe one of the reasons that you got involved in computational complexity is because you feel like you’re a lousy programmer. Well, I’m here to tell you that according to the Curry-Howard correspondence (I know, I know, enough about that…) you’re actually a very very good programmer and that is in fact your job. You’re job is essentially to write proofs about programs, but we know that proofs *are* in some deep sense programs themselves!
So it turns out you’re actually a world renowned programmer, but you prefer to write meta-programs about other programs and to do so in a less rigorous form (pseudo-code haha) than any computer programming language shackles you to 😉
Comment #221 December 6th, 2023 at 6:59 pm
Poise Master #219: No, actually, I gave precise definitions of P and NP rather than just talking informally about “shortcuts,” and I repeatedly mentioned the difficulties in equating “polynomial” with “efficient.” The idea that I wouldn’t know about, eg, the (4/3)n 3SAT algorithm is so ludicrous as to suggest you aren’t posting here in good faith. Banned from the blog.
Comment #222 December 6th, 2023 at 8:11 pm
Scott: Great interview with Kurt Jaimungal. It’s always intellectually stimulating hearing you talk about those subjects and expressing their cruxes so elegantly.
I’m conflicted about whether the pretty hard problem of consciousness is really any easier than the hard problem.
On P=NP, imagine there is this Turing machine, and it is set up to learn and grow, like like a living thing, aspiring to one day contain a polynomial time algorithm that collapses NP to P. It proceeds to catalogue every interesting pattern, property, relation, theorem, conjecture, heuristic or whatever abstract information that might be helpful, that it comes across, in its memory. It is set up so that its memory access patterns and so forth, are always polynomial time (maybe with some large fixed exponent), but they are plastic, like in a neural network, so that it can learn over time to adapt how it accesses, integrates, and synthesizes information, that it then uses to form predictions to instances of an NP complete decision problem. One day, we notice that it hasn’t failed in practice in a really long time. So we wonder, has it done it? Does it contain an algorithm that solves every problem in NP in polynomial time? I am wondering how would we go about figuring that out?
Comment #223 December 6th, 2023 at 8:15 pm
The idea of requirement that listening to your podcast should be a prerequisite for posting a comment strikes me as possibly an inadvertently felicitous way of elevating the level of discussion moving forward.
Comment #224 December 6th, 2023 at 11:37 pm
John Archibald Wheeler is credited for the statement “Space(time) tells matter how to move; matter tells space(time) how to curve.“
Comment #225 December 7th, 2023 at 1:04 am
Scott, I would love to hear any thoughts you have on Babbush et al “Exponential Quantum Speedup in Simulating Coupled Classical Oscillators”, arXiv:2303.13012 .
It’s in the news because it just got published.
I can’t tell how big a deal this is (without a lot of further study); some news coverage sounds a little breathless. So, is this is major new class of quantum speedup? Does it seem likely to be useful in practice? Does it significantly constrain possible future quantum algorithms?
Apologies if you’ve blogged/commented about it already; I didn’t find it on a quick search.
Comment #226 December 7th, 2023 at 5:53 am
scott wrote:
‘it would’ve been better for me, in this podcast, to describe Wolfram’s “computational irreducibility” as simply “the phenomenon where you can’t predict a computation faster than by running it,”
i thought Wolfram’s ‘computational irreducibility’ was related not just to the ‘speed’ of computation but to the ‘possibility’ of computation.
note: what does speed have to do with the use (setting up and/or solving) of equations?
at any rate, theoreticasl physicists are interested in the use of equations (rather than simulation) which means, i think, that we are focused on ‘computationally reducible’ phenomena.
or am i wrong?
Comment #227 December 7th, 2023 at 8:52 am
@ Adam Treat #220
“…but we know that proofs *are* in some deep sense programs themselves!”
I would be very curious how you *know* such a thing other than through indoctrination with respect to a paradigm.
The word “proof” is generally thought to bear some relation to “truth.” Proof theory specifically originates with the introduction of a dichotomy between syntax and semantics. Semantics, here, refers to denotation in a correspondence theory of truth. That you can formulate a philosophy of formal systems and, with artificial (dead) languages, study syntactic representation and syntactic transformation ought not be confused with the common use of words like “proof” and “truth.”
If one wishes to choose platonism, Goedel’s incompleteness theorems are interpreted as differentiating truth from provability. The philosophy of formal systems bears relation to recursive methods specifically to solve the problem of speaking meaningfully about infinities. The structural recursion of a formal language still presupposes infinty. The class of its expressions is not unified without that presupposition. What the philosophy of formal systems provides is verifiability of syntax.
Of course, proof theorists are still trying to describe a semantics which does not involve a correspondence theory. Base extension semantics is such an idea. So, some ground formulas are stipulated to be “true.”
Well, the anti-science community, which is often ridiculed here, can stipulate its “truths” just as arbitrarily.
So, your claim — what you seem to know — simply admits a tu quoque argument for anything at all — be it Tegmark’s mathematical universe or creationism.
What is spoken of so much on this blog — the problem of consciousness — is better cited as the symbol grounding problem,
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbol_grounding_problem
and while a Wikipedia page will not address the tu quoque problem created by the situation, Karl Popper’s student does so in detail,
https://archive.org/details/retreattocommitm00bart
So, please explain to me how you know what you claim to know.
Comment #228 December 7th, 2023 at 9:27 am
AF #175 I would truly like to have an answer to this question.
Mr Benzon #87 I have bought the book.
Thanks for your blog.
Comment #229 December 7th, 2023 at 1:52 pm
mls #227: There’s no need to ask all these philosophical questions; it’s straightforward mathematical logic. The Curry-Howard correspondence is an isomorphism between programs and proofs (and between types and formulas). A correct proof is isomorphic to a program that uses types correctly. Now that you know the name you can read all about it. It’s pretty amazing!
There is a section of computer science dedicated to exploiting this equivalence by creating programming language compilers that are also proof checkers.
Comment #230 December 7th, 2023 at 2:01 pm
mls #227
All that philosophical stuff could be important, but it isn’t necessary. “Truths” in the sense of things we believe in are stored in our brain. To communicate we have a concept of an external-to-our-brains representation. The criteria for an external representation are:
1) We can translate from our own understanding to something written down and back in a practical amount of time.
2) The rules of the representation are expressive enough that we can encode our intuitive rules for truth into it, so that we can tell whether a given article of writing is “valid” or “invalid” (think grammatically correct and non-self-contradictory) in a reasonable amount of time.
To the extent that we accept that formal logic fulfills these two conditions we must accept that anything that it can be translated to such that valid proofs are translated into other-things with property A and invalid proofs are translated into other-things without property A, is an equally valid and potentially useful way of writing down the same ideas, so long as the translation can be performed in a practical amount of time and space and that property can be decided in an equally practical way.
Comment #231 December 8th, 2023 at 5:57 am
After watching the interview, I decided to read Feynman’s Simulating Physics with Computers from June 1982. Wow, I didn’t expect that he would spend so much time talkling about negative probabilities (and even less that this predates his longer exposition from 1987). Looks like when it comes to interpretations of quantum mechanics, Feynman is on the “let’s try to better understand quantum mechanics” (and especially how its “probabilities” differ from probabilities) side
and not so much on the many-worlds side
And that is basically what I wanted to learn from reading it, namely whether this close connection between MWI and QC was there already before David Deutsch.
Comment #232 December 8th, 2023 at 10:30 pm
I think that one of the deepest philosophical differences between people who like the many-worlds interpretation and people who don’t is simply how conceptually satisfying they find the process of elimination to be. Many-worlders are great at showing why any probability formula other than the Born rule wouldn’t work, so the Born rule is the only one that survives the process of elimination. But they aren’t so good at directly showing why the Born rule does work. I think that people who think that the former result is sufficient tend to like the MWI, but people who prefer more direct causal explanations don’t like it.
Most derivations of the Born rule show that it’s the only possible rule that’s consistent with certain reasonable-seeming postulates, but some people take the philosophical position that that doesn’t quite count as a causal explanation for the rule.
Comment #233 December 9th, 2023 at 5:50 am
Scott
The interview with K. Jaimungal was really interesting. I have some comments regarding your point of view about the infamous Newcomb’s Paradox:
A Predictor, as a physical entity ( that, according to the basic assumption of the paradox, gives always correct predictions), necessarily requires strictly deterministic and fully predictable physics to exist.
Indeed, in all the other conceivable alternatives, Predictors are impossible !:
Fundamental stochasticity / Objective irreducible Probabilities, or laws with some kind of fundamental non-computability {a la Penrose}, or Everettian QM which, even if it is deterministically evolving (Ψ), it is fundamentally stochastic at the “emergent level” of each individual branching “world” …
… even Classical GR spacetimes that do not allow full predictability due to restrictions from the Causal structure.
Even if we assume unknown Strongly emergent physics!
Perhaps that’s possible, but not in a deterministic universe, because in that case the History is fixed!
By definition, in a strictly deterministic and fully predictable world ( like in Newton/ Laplace), not the slightest change is possible, both the past and the future are rigidly fixed!
Is there anything else left?
So, in the case of Newcomb’s Paradox, the only consistent answer is the “boring” one, that physical “Predictors” are impossible to exist in the first place in all conceivable cases…
That’s not surprising:
The answer to that Paradox is indeed mundane and boring, because the underlying assumption
(deterministic/ predictable physics plus conscious beings that make decisions) is self- inconsistent.
People arguing about that paradox, or finding ” solutions” ( sometimes “sophisticated” !) are simply wasting their precious time.
Like all these ” inventors ” that for several centuries are trying to design or even built Perpetual motion machines.
Comment #234 December 9th, 2023 at 6:20 am
Dimitris #233: No, Newcomb’s paradox is not dissolved by probabilistic decisions, because if the predictor knows you’re going to choose to take the first box only with probability p, it can put the $1M into the first box with that same probability p. And then the paradox returns in full force: the people who end up richest (in expectation) are those who set p=1, but conditioned on the box contents (which are presumably already there at the time of decision), you maximize your winnings by setting p=0. Intermediate values of p are also possible but aren’t relevant to this argument. Think about it.
Comment #235 December 9th, 2023 at 6:32 am
Just to clarify the point of my previous comment:
Newcomb’s Paradox is based on the following assumptions:
A: That a ( faultless ) Predictor exists as a physical entity ( if its not a Physical entity, all discussions end!). That implies determinism and full predictability! Determinism is a necessary assumption, otherwise full predictability is impossible…
B: That entities that make decisions also exist.
Determinism / predictability alone, as an assumption, doesn’t seem problematic.
The Predictor also is similar to Laplace’s Demon.
Entities that make decisions also seem to exist ( us!).
But, both the above are incompatible!
Newcomb’s Paradox ( and other “thought experiments” that have to do with Laplace’s demon, predictions and conscious entities, I have posted a couple of comments about this in the recent past…) show, quite clearly, that strict determinism ( plus full predictability) is incompatible with any conceivable kind of Free Will, or self
awareness.
Determinism/ predictability are good only for simple Toy models ( with test particles etc), but they aren’t part of any fundamental theory that adequately describes our real physical universe.
Comment #236 December 9th, 2023 at 7:02 am
Dimitris #235: I answered you, proving that even in a probabilistic universe, a probabilistic predictor would give rise to the same Newcomb’s Paradox as before. In response, you just repeated your original assertion that “Newcomb’s Paradox assumes determinism.”
Please make it easy for me to be polite.
Comment #237 December 9th, 2023 at 9:47 am
Scott #236
I’m really sorry, I send my second comment just to clarify my first comment, it wasn’t an answer to your first response!
That little misunderstanding was my fault, of course!🙂
I could agree with you, but still I don’t see how a faultless Predictor ( that is the assumption of the Newcomb’s Paradox that I’m aware of) could exist in a universe that isn’t strictly deterministic and fully predictable.
The “faultless Predictor” is essentially a version of Laplace’s demon, it cannot exist anyway in other worlds (fundamentally probabilistic, or non computable or …) and that’s a matter of principle.
For example, in the “classical cloning” version (an example from the podcast), if there’s fundamental noise or any kind of irreducible stochasticity, the cloned version of the person that has to make a decision will have a different history from the “original”:
Even slight deviations will give , generically, entirely different predictions, unavoidably ( in principle, not just in practice).
So the answer that you’re referred to as “the boring
one” , i.e. that Newcomb’s Paradox has to do with a thought experiment that cannot be done, in principle, is the only one that is consistent. There’s literally no probabilistic version of that paradox, in principle,as O see it…
Very similar is the case with Laplace’s demon, in other simple “thought experiments”:
In a deterministic, fully predictable universe, the demon cannot change anything, not even it’s thoughts (so this complete knowledge is entirely useless!)
If the demon gives coarse grained predictions of the future to other entities (“people”) that inhabit this world
, these entities cannot alter even the slightest detail, it’s essentially the same situation as in grandfather’s Paradox. They don’t have any kind of memory or self awareness.
As Gisin says, even if fundamental probability isn’t sufficient for free Will etc, it is probably necessary!
Comment #238 December 10th, 2023 at 1:00 am
kinda obvious that wolfram now has the killer app, chatgpt, for his is program MMA or his language.
Hope ChatGPT stays free from Wolfram as much as possible.
I fear this man because of how he influences the rising, naive teenage
population on X, vimeo, twitch.
His marketing publicity make it appear that he single-handedly
co founded computational complexity and is the sole authority on computation.
I’m trying to stay polite here otherwise i would have used labels that exist for
this type of behavior. But having advertised him on your blog, i must fear the worst.
Comment #239 December 10th, 2023 at 6:08 pm
Doing nothing about global warming is very likely to leave future generations worse off. That’s the basic proposition. If we’re serious about some responsibility to the future, we should be promoting the most effective means of mitigating the likely damage. Of the things you list, cap-and-trade is fine and probably even necessary. Carbon capture and probably nuclear don’t appear to have much chance of being competitive with renewables, so promoting them is less than optimal. Relying on geo-engineering alone would be very risky, both for the climate and for international relations, but maybe there could be a reasonable role for modest geo-engineering in combination with de-carbonization.
The one thing that’s for sure is that these are serious questions, and letting Greta influence your choices isn’t the most responsible course.
Comment #240 December 11th, 2023 at 8:38 pm
[…] Scott Aaronson is relieved that OpenAI continues to exist because he thinks everyone involved understands the dangers and cares and worries about them, which is far superior to many alternatives. […]
Comment #241 December 13th, 2023 at 6:39 pm
Scott,
Regarding “The Israelis said the same at Camp David and at other crucial moments, only for their offers to be turned down.”
It appears that at least since the Oslo accords, Israel’s peace proposals have either not been made in good faith, or there was no sustained effort to bring them to completion. Barak’s original proposal was an insulting and highly discontiguous Palestinian state with no real autonomy. Israel’s FM Shlomo-ben Ami said that if he were a Palestinian he would have rejected the proposal as well. At Taba, there was a better proposal. But Barak withdrew from negotiations because as Ben Ami puts it “Now, with regard to Taba, you see, we were a government committing suicide, practically. Two weeks before general elections, the chief of staff, General Mofaz, who is now the Minister of Defense, comes and in a — I say that in the book — in something that is tantamount to a coup d’etat, comes and says publicly that we are putting at risk the future of the state of Israel ”
This is documented here:
https://www.democracynow.org/2006/2/14/fmr_israeli_foreign_minister_shlomo_ben
Olmert made a better proposal and a deal was within reach, but then Olmert lost power. Through both Barak’s and Olmert’s peace plans, more than 50% of Israel felt that they were conceding too much.
Arafat’s PLO did acknowledge the right of Israel to exist. Through the entire time, settlements have always been expanding. This makes one question the sincerity of Israeli proposals for a two-state solution. As Robert Pape describes in his recent article in the Foreign Affairs
—
“The growth of the Jewish population in Palestinian territories is a central factor in fomenting conflict. In the years immediately after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, the total number of Jews living in the West Bank and Gaza numbered only a few thousand. Israeli-Palestinian relations were mostly harmonious. No Palestinian suicide attacks and few attacks of any kind occurred during this period.
But things changed after the right-wing government led by the Likud Party came to power in 1977, promising a major expansion of settlements. The number of settlers increased—from about 4,000 in 1977 to 24,000 in 1983 and to 116,000 in 1993. By 2022, about 500,000 Jewish Israeli settlers lived in the Palestinian territories, excluding East Jerusalem, where an additional 230,000 Jews resided. As the settlements grew, the relative harmony between the Israelis and the Palestinians dissipated. First came the creation of Hamas in 1987, and then the first intifada of 1987–93, the second intifada of 2000–2005, and continuing rounds of conflict between Palestinians and Israelis ever since.
The near-continuous growth of the Jewish settlements is a core reason why the idea of a two-state solution has lost credibility since the 1990s. If there is to be a serious pathway to a Palestinian state in the future, that growth must come to an end. After all, why should Palestinians reject Hamas and support a supposed peace process if doing so means only more loss of their land?”
—
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/israel/israels-failed-bombing-campaign-gaza
Comment #242 December 13th, 2023 at 8:20 pm
RB #241: That wasn’t President Clinton’s understanding of what happened—he was enraged that Arafat turned down the offer at Camp David, apparently because Arafat couldn’t let go of the idea of a right of return. In any case, Ben-Gurion accepted a partition plan in 1947 that was much less than the Jews thought they should get; I wish Arafat or Abbas had been farsighted enough to do the same. Ironically, they almost certainly would’ve done better that way even if they wanted to renege and attack Israel later!
Comment #243 December 13th, 2023 at 9:19 pm
Scott,
Clinton certainly wanted this as a legacy. But Shlomo Ben-Ami himself concedes that the proposal made by Barak initially was something he would have rejected. In between that first meeting and Taba, Ariel Sharon visited the Temple Mount and provoked hostilities. This is described in the PBS “Netanyahu at war”. The US was never an impartial broker in this process, as everything was based on run by Israel first. And Clinton proposal came closer to the basis for serious negotiation just before his time was up, as detailed by his own team.
—
“The mistakes were numerous. We needed a comprehensive package of answers to all the issues to have any chance of making headway. But given our unwillingness to adopt independent bridging proposals, particularly those that departed from Barak’s, we were stuck. Our no-surprise policy with Israel, which in essence meant showing everything first to Israel, and Clinton’s unwillingness, in his words, to “jam” Barak, stripped away any hope of being an effective mediator. By day four—when we gave Barak a paper he forced us to amend—for all practical purposes the summit came to an end.”
—
https://carnegieendowment.org/2020/07/13/lost-in-woods-camp-david-retrospective-pub-82287
For the meeting in Taba as Finkelstein notes in the DemocracyNow exchange, linked previously
—
“Both the Israelis and the Palestinians agreed to the Clinton parameters with some reservations.
Wait, one last point. One last point. Dr. Ben-Ami left out another crucial point in his account. He doesn’t tell us why Taba ended. It ended officially when Barak withdrew his negotiators. It wasn’t the Palestinians who walked out of Taba. It ended with the Israelis walking out of Taba, a matter of historical record, not even controversial.”
—
Abbas meanwhile came to a reasonable concession on the “right to return” with Olmert. Olmert wanted to accept 40K max while Abbas wanted 150K, compared to the original 750K. “Right of return” at least as a symbolism, is politically essential for the Palestinians.
Regarding Ben-Gurion, Adam Shatz presents evidence that his aim was always maximalist and he was willing to accept any land as a starting point.
—
“In his diary he kept a list of Arab villages with the numbers of their inhabitants. ‘Our movement is maximalist,’ he wrote. ‘Even all of Palestine is not our final goal.’”
—
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v41/n20/adam-shatz/we-are-conquerors
Comment #244 December 14th, 2023 at 9:00 am
BTW, the map below shows the original Camp David proposal by Barak. Besides many other things, it carved up the West Bank into multiple discontinuous regions divided by highways and surrounded by settlements and military barracks.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/map-of-the-israeli-offer-for-west-bank-final-status
By Taba, this did get better, but here Barak’s was a last-gasp effort as he was failing in the polls and Ariel Sharon was leading on a platform of breaking with the Oslo Accords peace process.
Comment #245 December 14th, 2023 at 4:48 pm
RB: I’m reminded of my many arguments with JFK conspiracy buffs—they, too, have an answer for everything, but then I can never quite fit their facts together with everything else I know.
At every crucial juncture—most notably, in 1947 and 2000—it was the Israelis who said “yes” to a peace deal and it was the Arabs who said “no.” Yet somehow, through your kaleidoscope, every such moment turns into the opposite of what it seems. The deal in 2000 didn’t count because it wasn’t good enough. Yet, when the Israelis accepted a not-good-enough partition plan in 1947, that didn’t count either, because you claim that Ben-Gurion privately saw it as just a starting point to take more. In that case, though, why didn’t the Arab nations take the damn deal, and let Ben-Gurion be the one to initiate hostilities (if indeed he would have)? Do you at least agree that, had they accepted partition in 1947, the Palestinians would’ve been in an incomparably better situation than they are now?
Also: if it’s relevant that Ben-Gurion wanted more than the UN offered in the partition plan, is it relevant too that, during the Oslo and Taba negotiations, the Palestinians were still teaching their kids about the glory of martyrdom against the Jews, as they continue to do today? You don’t make peace with people who are already your friends.
Comment #246 December 14th, 2023 at 6:05 pm
Scott,
Ben-Gurion is in the distant past and a distraction from the recent past. I pointed you to a quote from his diary. No doubt if the Arabs had accepted the 1948 deal they would have been in a better place than what was offered to them in the 1967 UN resolutions. Apparently they felt that the land offered them was disproportional to their population. Anyway, there is little point rehashing that at this point. There is a lot of mythology however about what has taken place since Oslo accords pinning the blame on Palestinians for the failure of peace deals. This is by admission of Shlomo Ben-Ami who was involved on the Israeli side and also Aaron Miller who was involved on the U.S. side (with links previously). I also posted the link above of the proposed map by Barak at Camp David, which is far from a just settlement. It appears that it was Dennis Ross who wanted to pin the blame on the Palestinians. And as described by Robert Pape, the settlement construction never stopped through the entirety of the peace plan discussions. However, as I also said, the proposals just before Barak and Olmert stepped down were very close to a peace plan that both sides could have accepted. Their successors put an end to the negotiations.
ps the last part – I’m against violence by both sides.
Comment #247 December 14th, 2023 at 7:57 pm
Also, here is Aaron Miller in a recent discussion with Ezra Klein once again stating that there was no way any Palestinian leader could have accepted what was offered at Camp David.
Comment #248 December 16th, 2023 at 11:01 pm
To cap it all, for all things outside of Camp David, Netanyahu today made clear what has been well-known to all who saw through Israeli hasbara, settling endless tedious debates.
Comment #249 December 17th, 2023 at 7:22 am
RB #248: It’s not exactly a secret that Netanyahu has spent 30 years trying to block the creation of a Palestinian state. That’s why liberal Jews like me have bitterly opposed him that whole time. Of course, he would never have come to power, or returned to power, or stayed in power this long without multiple waves of Palestinian terrorism, cheered by most of the Palestinian population, that convinced the Israeli center that the idea of a Palestinian state existing peacefully next to Israel was a lie, and that Palestinians would reward Israel for the establishment of such a state only by using it to launch yet another war of annihilation.
Comment #250 December 17th, 2023 at 9:17 am
Scott,
That’s a valid consideration. Abbas apparently has declared that he will accept demilitarization as part of a deal.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/abbas-backs-demilitarized-palestinian-state-says-funds-better-spent-on-schools/
To my knowledge, security considerations have always been part of the negotiations
Comment #251 December 18th, 2023 at 12:19 am
OpenAI drama I think showed that most employees at OpenAI actually care more about the money, and investors have a large influence over the company.
The new board needs to be reputable and really tough and influence people in the society so Microsoft and VCs cannot overrun them with a PR campaign. The problem of the current board was that from societal perspective, they were no bodies. We need people who have the skills to understand what is going on and at the same time strong social backing to resist the VCs and Microsoft and employees if need be.
The board so far seems somewhat better, but the risk of Sam packing the board to avoid supervision is very real.
If they really want to represent all humanity’s interests, they should also create a secondary elected board of observers to build confidence.
Comment #252 December 18th, 2023 at 6:53 am
Scott,
Elsewhere in the blog you have written that Oct 7th had dramatically changed you (I am quoting from memory).
What exactly are those changes?
Comment #253 December 18th, 2023 at 8:11 am
Faibsz #252: Before Oct 7, the idea that a large fraction of the world might want to kill me and my family for being Jews was certainly part of my subconscious, but it felt sort of like fear of snakes and lions—a holdover from the distant past that I could safely neglect in day-to-day rational decision-making. Now, not so much. Crucially, the attack itself, barbaric though it was, would not have produced this change. It took witnessing the gigantic crowds in cities all over the world (and on campuses, and on Twitter) cheering the attack, or blaming Israel for it, or denying that it had happened at all, or claiming it was a false flag, or simply ignoring it entirely to focus on condemning Israel’s response. That made it obvious and undeniable that the gas chambers and crematoria could literally be reopened, a second six million sent to their deaths, and the same crowds would be asking what the Jews had done to deserve it, and whether it was really happening at all, and whether the Jews’ attempts to defend themselves were even worse.
Comment #254 December 18th, 2023 at 3:01 pm
Scott #253
I understand the emotional place this comes from. But it not obvious to me given that Israel is a nuclear power with full political and military backing of the United States.
Having said that it might be useful to highlight two perspectives from social media. The truths from an Israeli activist’s perspective.
And a truth from an Arab political analyst’s perspective
Not sure how this gets resolved, but Nimrod Novik says to Ezra Klein
Comment #255 December 18th, 2023 at 3:13 pm
RB #254: I didn’t say that Israel would allow its population to be exterminated by the millions (what do you think the nuclear weapons are for? 🙂 ). I said only that, if it were to happen, the events of Oct. 7 made it obvious that much of the world would shrug and say the Jews must’ve brought it on themselves, exactly like they said 80 years ago.
And yet for all that, I remain in what would be considered the left-wing, pro-peace camp in Israel. I continue to believe that a two-state solution is the only way.
Comment #256 December 18th, 2023 at 3:42 pm
Scott #255
If so, you will be aligned with a vanishing group in Israel. I personally see the situation forward as being bleak for Palestinian statehood. The path of least resistance seems to be to more of the same i.e. establish facts on the ground in line with the vision made explicit by Smotrich. Thus, separate Arab municipalities without equal rights for their residents.
Comment #257 December 18th, 2023 at 3:54 pm
RB #256: One of the few silver linings right now is that, as soon as this war is over and elections can be held, it looks exceedingly likely that Netanyahu is out, along with Smotrich and Ben-Gvir and the other hoodlums, 1000x deservedly so, to be replaced by a more moderate government.
Comment #258 December 18th, 2023 at 4:15 pm
Scott,
I think back to 9/11 and how that fear was exploited for years with well-timed color-coded alerts. It has probably taken until post-ISIS for the 9/11 era to play out. From what I’m reading, the youth in Israel are right-wing and pro-annexation. The opposite of post 9/11 USA. And the religious right today are 30% of the population compared to 10% in 1948. Hope to be proven wrong.
Comment #259 January 4th, 2024 at 2:58 pm
As an addendum to #243, regarding the willingness of the Jewish side to accept any deal in 1947 in the knowledge of it not being a final resolution, references 14-19 offer more evidence that Ben-Gurion viewed any partition plan as a base from which to expand Israel’s borders to all of Palestine. This was also documented by Israeli historian Tom Segev . So, while in 1947, the Jewish side with 1/3 the population and ownership of less than 7% of the land, was offered 56% of the land for a state, which was unfair in itself, in principle this was still a better deal for the Arabs compared to the 1967 UN resolution. But subsequent events arguably demonstrate that a takeover of Judea/Samaria was always the plan and given Israel’s complete disregard for UN resolutions, the outcome for Arabs wouldn’t have been much different from what it is today.