[ExI] Eliezer S. Yudkowsky, Singularitarian Principles. Update?

[Richard Loosemore]

Damien Broderick wrote:
> On 11/12/2010 9:00 PM, Richard Loosemore wrote:
> 
>> You have no idea how entertaining it is to hear professionally qualified
>> cognitive psychologists, complex systems theorists or philosophers of
>> science commenting on Eliezer's level of competence in these areas.  Not
>> many of them do, of course, because they can't be bothered.  But among
>> the few who have actually taken the trouble, I am afraid the poor guy is
>> generally scorned as a narcissistic, juvenile amateur.
> 
> The problem with this widely-used yardstick, Richard, is that it would 
> apply equally well to you and me (for example) in regard to our 
> convictions about psi--except for the "juvenile" part, alas. The 
> question is how telling such an appeal to expert jeering is. Usually, 
> very. Sometimes, not much, or even not at all.
> 
> Granted, in this case you are also drawing on your own direct experience 
> of combative encounters with Eliezer and his writings, but that's a 
> rather different point.

Damien,

To be specific, I am ONLY drawing on my encounter with Eliezer.  I am 
only referring to their opinion of his level of competence in that 
encounter.  On that occasion he made some very definite statements about 
(a) cognitive science, (b) complex systems and (c) philosophy of 
science, and they were embarrassingly wrong.

Now, as you point out, there are professional cognitive psychologists 
who pour scorn on the kind of statements that you or I make about psi.

But that kind of scorn is wholly unrelated to the kind of scorn that I 
am talking about in Eliezer's case.

What Eliezer did was make statements that, when compared with the 
contents of an elementary textbook of cognitive psychology, made him a 
laughing stock.  (Example:   in the context of human reasoning research, 
he claimed comprehensive knowledge of the area but then had to look in 
Wikipedia, in the middle of our argument, to find out about one of the 
central figures in that field (Johnson-Laird)).   By itself his lapses 
of understanding might have been forgivable, but what really made people 
dismiss him as a "juvenile amateur" was the fact that he condemned the 
person he was arguing against as an ignorant crackpot, when all that 
person did was quote the standard textbook line at him.

When you or I face scathing criticism about psi, it is not because we 
make pugnacious claims about our knowledge of the t-test, and then use 
the wrong definition .... and then accuse someone else, who gives us the 
correct definition of a t-test, of being a crackpot.  :-)

So, I hear what you say, but the two cases are only superficially the 
same.



Richard Loosemore