Comment by sublinear | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sublinear | Hacker News Reader

> My reasoning was that Powell, Bush, Straw, etc, were clearly making false claims and therefore ought to be discounted completely, and that there were actually very few people who knew a bit about Iraq but were not fatally compromised in this manner who were making the WMD claim

At the risk of missing the point, I have to say that knowing what we know now, this is a very poor heuristic. Predicting a lack of WMD was not only correct by mere coincidence, but also irrelevant to the decisions made about the war in Iraq.

What is this blog post even saying? When you can't distinguish a lie, trust the room vibes? Seeking comfort won't give you any answers or get you closer to the truth.

Not enough people ask "why". They instead argue about effectiveness or correctness. At some point you have to determine whether you're chasing the truth to make a decision or just for its own sake. In the vast majority of cases what you want is a decision that will produce the desired results. That's the real reason why lies happen and why merely knowing the truth doesn't get you anywhere and often nobody cares.

EDIT: for the sanity of any late replies. My bad. I replaced the part about AI with something I thought was more interesting.

> WMD was not only correct by mere coincidence, but also irrelevant to the decisions made about the war in Iraq.

This was the stated purpose of the war! If Bush and Blair had said "there are no WMD in Iraq", the war would not have happened.

> Right now, we have a similar situation with AI. Not enough people are asking why AI is being pushed so hard. Instead they pointlessly bicker about its effectiveness.

We know why it's being pushed so hard - people need a return on all that money being burnt.

It's effectiveness is argued about because it's not clear one way or the other where things are, where they are heading, and where they will end up.

There has been a strong push for AI/AGI since before computing, so every time there's a breakthrough to the next level there's a hypewagon doing the rounds, followed by a "oh, actually it's not there yet" - and this time, like every other time, we go through a "is this the time? It's so tantalisingly close"

Are we actually there now? Emphatically no.

Are we at a point where it's usable and improving our lives - yes, with a PILE of caveats.

Edit: I wanted to add

There's always "True believers" whenever there is a fork in the road, and con artists looking to take advantage of them, but that happens whether there is a genuine breakthrough, or not - the hype is never a guide on whether the breakthrough exists OR not, so purely being a sceptic isn't worthwhile (IMO)

It pretty clearly says, "Do not give liars the benefit of the doubt with respect to their current claims." If you want to believe there are WMDs in Iraq, do it because you have evidence, or at least the word of trustworthy people. Don't assume that there has to be a little fig leaf WMD in Iraq because the Emperor wouldn't really go out in public naked.

Was it immaterial to the fact that we were going to war, regardless of the effectiveness of the "sell"? Yes, that's true, but it gives a lot of cover to the Bush administration that so many people, including 110 Democratic congressmen, voted for the authorization to use military force.

Why is it being re-posted now? Who knows... AI, Iran, whatever.

How was predicting a lack of WMD correct by mere coincidence? He ignored the blatant liars, believed people with a good record on the subject, and got it right as a result. That's not coincidence, that's an excellent heuristic.

It is a bit of a weird article, though. Correctly predicting Iraq isn't some amazing feat. All it required was being paying some vague attention to the available facts. The question is not, how did some people get it right. The question is, how did so many people not?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com