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Comment by monk_e_boy | Hacker News Reader

Interviewing Nick Bostrom was cringe worthy. I don't know what Joe was trying to achieve - maybe forming an argument against the simulation theory? But it was so bad. The youtube comment section is amusing.

But mostly Joe gets it spot on and does a great interview. What this does to popular discourse? When a small % of the population watch these types of long form interview and get deep, thoughtful and insightful answers to complex ideas .... and some % of the population watch Fox and read tabloids to get their news.

How does society fix this huge knowledge divide?

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> Interviewing Nick Bostrom was cringe worthy. I don't know what Joe was trying to achieve - maybe forming an argument against the simulation theory? But it was so bad.

Bostrom really failed there. He simply did not explain the argument very well. Everything Bostrom said is clear to someone who already understands the argument or has experience with statistics, but it was not at all a good explanation for someone who doesn't have the necessary intuitions to understand why they are more likely to be a simulated agent.

I had the opposite impression. Bostrom is just making up nonsense, then dressing it with fancy words and big numbers to prevent people from calling out his bullshit. It's the opposite of clear. If you look a little deeper he has nothing meaningful to offer in any field.

His argument is extremely clear. It's just unclear to anyone with absolutely no background knowledge, like Joe. He didn't explain it in the clearest way on the podcast because Joe was missing a lot of necessary basics, but if he sat down with Joe for longer and perhaps drew a diagram or something, I think he'd get it.

Perhaps "clear" isn't the right word. Sometimes when someone is spouting total nonsense I initially assume that I didn't understand them clearly because obviously no educated, articulate person could actually be that stupid. Let's give him the benefit of the doubt, right? But no, in Bostrom's case it's total unsupported bullshit all the way down regardless of whether he's talking about AGI / singularity / simulations / etc. A complete and utter waste of time. It's disappointing that he's managed to con so many otherwise intelligent people into taking him seriously and buying his books.

Please refute his simulation argument and arguments related to AGI, then. I find pretty much everything he says to be supported and insightful. If so many intelligent people like and agree with him, maybe the issue is with your understanding of his arguments than with the arguments themselves.

How would one "con" so many intelligent people for so many years with purely logical arguments, exactly? An argument is either coherent and valid and sound or it isn't. There's no room for conning or personal charm or anything related to the person themselves.

my impression is that you seem to have an emotional commitment to your position. why do you say that bostrom is "that stupid" talking about "bullshit all the way down" and is "conning" people?

It is actually not that complex of an argument. Well, in the sense that it doesn't strike me as over intellectualized and/or over complicated.

Actually, the simulation argument is solid. One of the three possibilities Bostrom outlines absolutely must be true.

Well, Bostrom states that there will be more ideas in the future that may change the simulation theory. It's the latest most plausable theory.

It may change the probabilities of the various outcomes entailed by the argument, it won't change the argument itself or its conclusions.

Its not just the lack of long form interviews, its the lack of long form in general. News is too short to be meaningful. I just checked the word count in the top 10 stories on BBC news.

Average number of words per article was 764.

While you can get long form fewer and fewer people read it, myself included. If a major player like the BBC resort to news in an average of 764 words the majority of people are not getting deep/insightful/challenging news or information.

In my 20s I used to read long form broadsheet articles on a Sunday, I don't seem to have the attention for it any more. Even articles from hacker news that are too long I just go straight to the comments to get a digest. I suspect my mobile phone addiction is to blame, even last week I signed up for blinkist after I tried to read Ray Dalios Principles for the third time and didn't have the attention for it when I saw an ad for the summary on blinkist and just signed up.

Not sure what point I'm trying to make but I just believe super shortform, dopamine induced hit of information may be detrimental to me/society in the long run.

*edited as table of data not displaying correctly

tl;dr please?

This operates under the assumption that your thing is good while the other is bad. I think the people in the other group would see it differently.

I also imagine on some other forum out there someone is lamenting the popularity of the Joe Rogan Experience while the media of their liking gets even less exposure, and wondering how they fix that knowledge divide in society.

The fact that the people in the other group see it differently doesn't mean they're right though. It doesn't mean either group is right, but at the end of the day one can still take a step back and evaluate the two sources/modes of informing oneself and decide that one is good and the other is bad - with respect to what we agree it's good to optimize for (forming more accurate mental models, being well informed in general and not being deceived either by others or self, etc).

> How does society fix this huge knowledge divide?

- Why should it?

- Isnt the divide inevitable anyway (X knows about Shakespeare, Y knows about quantum theory, Z knows how to grow corn...)

Just a few hundred years ago it was actually possible for a single person to learn essentially everything that was known in Western civilization. And some wealthy people with a lot of leisure time pretty much did that. So now we still see it as a goal to strive for even though it's no longer achievable.

But how many people really try to do that? I’m not aware of any well known true renaissance men/women. Perhaps, perhaps Elon Musk comes close. But even then he’s far too concentrated in tech, just different tech industries. And even short of that, what percentage of people have any kind of cross-training in orthogonal disciplines? Getting an advanced degree in one field is seen as a huge accomplishment. Is society missing out on something due to this? My impression is that ‘way back when,’ everyone who was ‘educated’ had a pretty solid background in history, literature, and philosophy. It was just what you did if you were ‘educated.’ I think much of that tradition is diminished now. Not gone, but diminished.

To some degree, yes, but a lot knowledge can be accurately summarised, and is also both useful in general and even necessary for the good functioning & growth of society. It's not even really about knowledge, it's more about ability - to think critically, to exercise empathy, etc.

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