Some reasons to not say "Doomer"
21clone of saturn
12iceman
12habryka
2iceman
6Martin Randall
5Ruby
4Buck
5Ruby
4Raemon
4David Hornbein
1dr_s
2David Hornbein
2dr_s
4Dagon
2Ruby
4Herb Ingram
1dr_s
2gjm
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Unfortunately, I think the tribalization and politicization is caused by the share-with-followers social media model, not by specific words, so using or not using the word "doomer" will have a negligible effect on the amount of tribalization. You just have to accept that people who insist on using Twitter will have their sanity eroded in this way, and do what you can to compartmentalize the damage and avoid becoming a target.
Why are you posting this here? My model is that the people you want to convince aren't on LessWrong and that you should be trying to argue this on Twitter; you included screenshots from that site, after all.
(My model of the AI critics would be that they'd shrug and say "you started it by calling us AI Risk Deniers.")
you started it by calling us AI Risk Deniers.
Just to check, has anyone actually done that? I don't remember that term used before. It's fine as an illustration, just trying to check whether this is indeed happening a bunch.
Why are you posting this here? My model is that the people you want to convince aren't on LessWrong and that you should be trying to argue this on Twitter; you included screenshots from that site, after all.
It's quite commonly used by a bunch of people at Constellation, Open Philanthropy and some adjacent spaces in Berkeley. It is indeed often not meant as any kind of slur, but seems genuinely used as a way to point towards a real cluster of views.
Just to check, has anyone actually done that?
I'm thinking of a specific recent episode where [i can't remember if it was AI Safety Memes or Connor Leahy's twitter account] posted a big meme about AI Risk Deniers and this really triggered Alexandros Marinos. (I tried to use Twitter search to find this again, but couldn't.)
It's quite commonly used by a bunch of people at Constellation, Open Philanthropy and some adjacent spaces in Berkeley.
Fascinating. I was unaware it was used IRL. From the Twitter user viewpoint, my sense is that it's mostly used by people who don't believe in the AI risk narrative as a pejorative.
Reflecting on it some more, I think the audience I implicitly had in mind for this is (a) people in my rough social network who use the term, not with any strong desire to mock or dismiss, e.g. Constellation, OpenPhil as Habryka mentioned elsethread. I also think it's even spread closer to home AI pessimist territory (Raemon told me he'd recently used it), so I'd address people just picking it up as the default term for the cluster. Basically people who still wish to engage productively, but have found themselves adopting the term as it spreads. And such people are on LessWrong (and even if they weren't, I might post here and then link to it).
The Twitter images are less than that's my target audience and more evidence for negative-valenced usage.
@clone of saturn @iceman @Herb Ingram I'm responding with this here rather than replying individually to your comments.
I use the term "doomer" to refer to people with a cluster of beliefs that I associate with LW users/MIRI people, including:
- high P(doom)
- fast takeoffs (i.e. little impact of AI on the world before AI is powerful enough to be very dangerous)
- transformative models will be highly rational agents
I don't think I can use "AI pessimist" as an alternative, because that only really describes the first of those beliefs, and often I want to refer to the cluster as a whole.
Maybe I should say MIRI-style pessimist?
If you want people to stop calling doomers "doomers", you need to provide a specific alternative. Gesturing vaguely at the idea of alternatives isn't enough. "Thou shalt not strike terms from others' expressive vocabulary without suitable replacement."
Doomers used to call themselves the "AI safety community" or "AI alignment community", but Yudkowsky recently led a campaign to strike those terms and replace them with "AI notkilleveryoneism". Unfortunately the new term isn't suitable and hasn't been widely adopted (e.g. it's not mentioned in the OP), which leaves the movement without a name its members endorse.
People are gonna use *some* name for it, though. A bunch of people are spending tens of millions of dollars per year advocating for a very significant political program! Of course people will talk about it! So unless and until doomers agree on a better name for themselves (which is properly the responsibility of the doomers, and not the responsibility of their critics) my choices are calling it "AI safety" and getting told that no, that's inaccurate, "AI safety" now refers to a different group of people with a different political program, or else I can call it "doomers" and get told I'm being rude. I don't want to be inaccurate or rude, but if you make me pick one of the two, then I'll pick rude, so here we are.
If the doomers were to agree on a new name and adopt it among themselves, I would be happy to switch. (Your "AI pessimist" isn't a terrible candidate, although if it caught on then it'd be subject to the same entryism which led Yudkowsky to abandon "AI safety".) Until then, "doomer" remains the most descriptive word, in spite of all its problems.
1my choices are calling it "AI safety" and getting told that no, that's inaccurate, "AI safety" now refers to a different group of people with a different political program
Wait, who?
If the doomers were to agree on a new name and adopt it among themselves
Honestly I think the only hope is unilateral action, start a catchy name and see if it achieves virality.
Yudkowsky says it's now "short-term publishable, fundable, 'relatable' topics affiliated with academic-left handwringing"
I assume this means, like, Timnit Gebru and friends.
I mean, sure. This applies to almost every label for a group of humans. It's not nuanced enough nor applied specifically enough to usefully discuss anything or think clearly about any topic.
But that's not the purpose of such a label. The purpose is to summarize an entire argument into a very small meme, so it can be easily ignored. the appropriate reaction is to recognize it as the slur it is, and treat the user as non-serious, uninterested in any details of a debate.
As I mention in the post, I don't think it's the same as every label. "Rationalist" and "Effective Altruist" are self-generated and applied labels for broader ideologies, vs a more narrow empirical belief for which evidence/reasoning continues to develop, and people can change their minds on frequently, and is the subject of much more active political pressures right now.
I agree some people are looking for a term so they can summarize and ignore, but some people are more looking to describe something, to which I say, maybe don't use that term?
Who is the target audience for this?
I doubt anyone has been calling themselves a "doomer". There are people on this site who wouldn't ever get called that but I haven't seen anyone else here label anyone a "doomer" yet. So it seems that you're left with people who don't frequent this site and would probably dismiss your arguments as "a doomer complaining about being called a doomed"?
Did I miss people call each other "doomer" on LW? Did you also post something like this on Twitter?
I think sometimes it happens, either as a form of shortcut (Twitter character limits, alas) or a sort of reclamation of the terms. Usually in response to someone who used it demeaningly first.
I don't think "AI pessimist" is a good term for what is currently sometimes expressed by "doomer", because many people are very pessimistic about AI in ways that don't have anything to do with doom. For instance, I don't think it would be reasonable to say that Timnit Gebru and Emily Bender are not AI pessimists, but they are savagely critical of the "doom" position and its adherents.
