• David Gerard@awful.systemsOPM
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    22 days ago

    i actually got hold of a review copy of this

    (using the underhand scurvy weasel trick of asking for one)

    that was two weeks ago and i still haven’t opened it lol

    better get to that, sigh

    this review has a number of issues (he liked HPMOR) but the key points are clear: bad argument, bad book, don’t bother

    • blakestacey@awful.systemsM
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      22 days ago

      this review has a number of issues

      For example, it doesn’t even get through the subhead before calling Yud an “AI researcher”.

      All three of these movements [Bay Area rationalists, “AI safety” and Effective Altruists] attempt to derive their way of viewing the world from first principles, applying logic and evidence to determine the best ways of being.

      Sure, Jan.

    • Architeuthis@awful.systems
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      21 days ago

      They also seem to broadly agree with the ‘hey, humans are pretty shit at thinking too, you know’ line of LLM apologetics.

      “LLMs and humans are both sentence-producing machines, but they were shaped by different processes to do different work,” say the pair – again, I’m in full agreement.

      But judging from the rest of the review I can see how you kind of have to be at least somewhat rationalist-adjacent to have a chance of actually reading the thing to the end.

        • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems
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          20 days ago

          Methods is increasingly looking like Ulysses for the Internet age. You may or may not get anything worthwhile from trying to read it, but the scope and scale are such that it’s impressive it exists and also you will almost certainly not finish it, leaving the parts justifying it’s considerable reputation somewhere in the 40,000 we words you didn’t read.