I understood it, but I have an IT background. Yes it is the responsibility of the writer to maximise the understandability of their work. However it is also the job of the reader to learn more about the world the writer is trying to communicate. I can't think of a better word than pacing, but then apparently I'm not one of those "normal" people.
Everyone should read Amodei's essay. It is clearly written and makes specific proposals about an important public issue. No educated person will have trouble understanding it.
Philosophers who pick nits about Amodei's word-choice risk looking pedantic and irrelevant. Perhaps they should focus on the real issues.
you really think *everyone* should read it? will read it? what about the non-'educated' people? you really don't think there's game-playing going on here?
Saying that "everyone" should do something is hyperbole. The statement is not meant literally. It is not taken literally. "Everyone" understands that.
I'll rephrase the original statement: Everyone who is moderately well-educated and interested in the public policy issues raised by AI should read Amodei's essay. Would you agree?
he's doing incredibly significant things and has a vast amount of power, so i think it would be good if lots of people read his stuff for reasons like trying to understand his goals and trying to hold him to account, yes. but that's different from the point you're making about people's educational attainment and interest
It’s narrow but… Claude gives me: “Lowe's narrow point is better than it looks, though not for the reason she gives. She's wrong that "pace" meaning regulate the rate of is runners-only — pace yourself, the pacing of a novel, pacemaker.
The actual problem is the transitive construction with a place-object: pace the floor, pace the deck, pace the corridor all mean walking back and forth. "Pace the frontier" parses grammatically as the walking sense, and "frontier" is a border noun. The title read cold points the wrong way. That's a structural claim, not vibes.
…A coinage needing a gloss inside the essay is one that gets misused outside it, and phrases travel without their essays. There's a pacingthefrontier.com; this is intended to become the standard name for a policy position. It'll appear in headlines, select committee questions and comment threads with no definition attached. That's where Lowe bites, and Bruce's "no educated person will have trouble" quietly conflates understanding a document you read with understanding a term you encounter.”
Tho Claude does think most educated people who do read the essay will understand.
No worries on comment. Sadly I’m using the apocryphal Twain probably Pascal defence with a twist - is that if I had more time I wouldn’t need to paste the AI thought (which I did on the new spotty WiFi on the london Tube) - and better something than nothing… but I guess the thinking was if the code thought it was fair.
In short from me. Word choice should be more careful to speak to the person in the street. And should not be hard to get right. But in group thinkers often get their lingo wrong.
DA seems to be hard to read on some of his words eg the job loss numbers - and some games playing does seem to be some sub text but who knows.
The substance arguments are probably more important tho.
This was my response to the odd language: https://substack.com/@hollisrobbins/note/c-335607065?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=2wtp2
love Dickinson so much
There’s always an appropriate Dickinson poem… I was glad to see you too find “pacing” and “pacing the frontier” odd.
very!
I understood it, but I have an IT background. Yes it is the responsibility of the writer to maximise the understandability of their work. However it is also the job of the reader to learn more about the world the writer is trying to communicate. I can't think of a better word than pacing, but then apparently I'm not one of those "normal" people.
Everyone should read Amodei's essay. It is clearly written and makes specific proposals about an important public issue. No educated person will have trouble understanding it.
Philosophers who pick nits about Amodei's word-choice risk looking pedantic and irrelevant. Perhaps they should focus on the real issues.
you really think *everyone* should read it? will read it? what about the non-'educated' people? you really don't think there's game-playing going on here?
Saying that "everyone" should do something is hyperbole. The statement is not meant literally. It is not taken literally. "Everyone" understands that.
I'll rephrase the original statement: Everyone who is moderately well-educated and interested in the public policy issues raised by AI should read Amodei's essay. Would you agree?
he's doing incredibly significant things and has a vast amount of power, so i think it would be good if lots of people read his stuff for reasons like trying to understand his goals and trying to hold him to account, yes. but that's different from the point you're making about people's educational attainment and interest
Also - weirdly this seems to be very true - we like our own conversations with the AI but we generally don’t like others.
It’s narrow but… Claude gives me: “Lowe's narrow point is better than it looks, though not for the reason she gives. She's wrong that "pace" meaning regulate the rate of is runners-only — pace yourself, the pacing of a novel, pacemaker.
The actual problem is the transitive construction with a place-object: pace the floor, pace the deck, pace the corridor all mean walking back and forth. "Pace the frontier" parses grammatically as the walking sense, and "frontier" is a border noun. The title read cold points the wrong way. That's a structural claim, not vibes.
…A coinage needing a gloss inside the essay is one that gets misused outside it, and phrases travel without their essays. There's a pacingthefrontier.com; this is intended to become the standard name for a policy position. It'll appear in headlines, select committee questions and comment threads with no definition attached. That's where Lowe bites, and Bruce's "no educated person will have trouble" quietly conflates understanding a document you read with understanding a term you encounter.”
Tho Claude does think most educated people who do read the essay will understand.
I tend to find it more interesting to read someone's own thoughts rather than a transcript of their chat with an ai..
ps sorry i just realised this was you Ben! I would've worded it differently if I'd realised :D
No worries on comment. Sadly I’m using the apocryphal Twain probably Pascal defence with a twist - is that if I had more time I wouldn’t need to paste the AI thought (which I did on the new spotty WiFi on the london Tube) - and better something than nothing… but I guess the thinking was if the code thought it was fair.
In short from me. Word choice should be more careful to speak to the person in the street. And should not be hard to get right. But in group thinkers often get their lingo wrong.
DA seems to be hard to read on some of his words eg the job loss numbers - and some games playing does seem to be some sub text but who knows.
The substance arguments are probably more important tho.