I had this thought too but there's kind of a problem, which is that the more compelling the example of "tall poppy", the more politically controversial which can distract from and undermine your message. I kinda think Elon Musk is the perfect example to use though. I wish the post could somehow autodetect the reader's politics and select statements about Elon accordingly.
"Elon Musk [lately seems to be going off the antisemitism deep end/does a lot of securities fraud/comes up with dumb fake ideas like Hyperloop/calls people pedos for no reason/exaggerates how good Tesla autopilot is in a way that seems likely to kill people] but I still really appreciate how he [jump-started the modern electric car industry/brought innovation back to space launches/something something Starlink].
I have seen this idea presented as Natural Law Theory. The dumb unsophisticated version of Natural Law theory purport that certain laws are universal due to being derived from some kind of abstract first principles. The smart versions of Natural Law Theory posit that these "natural laws" are more like laws of engineering than like laws of physics - if you want a bridge that will stand up, you need to follow these kinds of rules. If you want a human society that will "stand up", you need to follow these kinds of rules. But the nature of those rules are derived from facts about humans, not from abstract universal principles or formal logic.
[MENTOR]
This is a bit off-center from the normal LW topic of trying to prevent AI Doom, but I'm interested in helping out people who are interested in law or public policy. I don't post here much (long time near-lurker), but I am a state government lawyer who works in public health and consumer finance. I am interested in:
Will provide my real name and links to public facing things I've done on request. I don't have any particular need or use for an "Apprentice" per se, so I see what I'm offering as a mentor/mentee model more than a master/apprentice model.
On the third hand, the Luddites made a prediction about a bad (for them) outcome, and were absolutely correct. They were against automatic looms because they thought the autolooms would replace their artisan product with lower quality goods and also worsen their wages and working conditions. They were right: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-the-luddites-really-fought-against-264412/
Right, but if you wait for the water to boil before you put the pasta in, then you are waiting a little longer before adding the pasta. Then cooking the pasta slightly shorter after you put it in.
Admittedly I have not. TBH I'm not sure i could tell even if I did. But I'm very confident just by looking at the world around me that predictions by minwage opponents of imminent mass unemployment every time it's raised are wrong.
What I also know is that the ultimate effect is controversial among respected economists. What I deduce from this is that if there's an effect it must be small, because if it was big it would be obvious.
Right but i think part of the argument being made above is that we shouldn't bother will all this pie-in-the-sky stuff because the gas transition has caused almost all the actual emission reduction. It's boneheaded as a statement on climate policy, but in a way i think is constructive to explore and apply more broadly.
If you have achieved big gains doing some thing X, but you are very confident that ultimately X has fundamental limitations such that it can't possibly solve your ultimate problem....then it's not good to put all your resources into X. (cf RLHF, i guess)
The other problem with the Natural Gas argument is right there in the premise. If burning natural gas is twice as carbon efficient as burning coal (X emissions -> X/2 emissions), you can never do better than halving your emissions by switching everything to natural gas. So even though it's good that gas has led to lower emissions so far, we must necessarily work on these other technologies if we ever want to do better than X/2.
Also you would have to add back in additional time to get the water to its (new, higher) boiling point in the first place...
Yeah, I really strongly agree with this. If high-tech aliens have been in contact with Earth for some significant time, the general public weren't aware, and we aren't all dead? "Halt and Catch Fire" moment for sure (wanted to make that a link to where I learned that phrase in The Sequences but I couldn't find it by search. Did I confabulate??)