| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
11 Oct 2026 |
Losing some ground, by the way, always happens when you plot curves of progress.
Not checkable · 11 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
11 Oct 2026 |
But when it comes to coordination, something that’s arbitrary can be highly rational.
Not checkable · 11 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
11 Oct 2026 |
It’s much easier to think in zero-sum terms than to recognise the unintuitive positive sum benefits of trade and cooperation.
Not checkable · 11 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
11 Oct 2026 |
There’s something inherently disinterested and universal about reason.
Not checkable · 11 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
11 Oct 2026 |
You didn’t need David Hume in order to go out and capture slaves and, and, uh, and start an empire.
Not checkable · 11 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
11 Oct 2026 |
We don’t even think through the meaning of the words.
Not checkable · 11 Oct 2026 |
|
| Mostly true |
Factual |
11 Oct 2026 |
It has been known for decades in the study of language that people do not blurt out what they mean but use euphemism, innuendo and indirection.
Factual · 11 Oct 2026 |
AI capabilities |
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
11 Oct 2026 |
So I can’t deny that there might be some self-deception simply because I study people and that’s the way people are.
Not checkable · 11 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
11 Oct 2026 |
It’s the ideas that count, not the people.
Not checkable · 11 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
11 Oct 2026 |
And our social relationships are ratified by common knowledge.
Not checkable · 11 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
11 Oct 2026 |
Common knowledge refers to the state in which I know something, you know it, I know that you know it, you know that I know it
Not checkable · 11 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
11 Oct 2026 |
There is no argument for driving on the left.
Not checkable · 11 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
11 Oct 2026 |
So yes, I’m a big fan of Enlightenment ideals.
Not checkable · 11 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
11 Oct 2026 |
which I would say led to some pretty catastrophic consequences.
Not checkable · 11 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
11 Oct 2026 |
There’s a big argument for driving on the same side that everyone else is driving on.
Not checkable · 11 Oct 2026 |
|
| Unresolvable |
Factual |
11 Oct 2026 |
Most measures such as poverty, war, homicide and literacy are much better now than they used to be.
Factual · 11 Oct 2026 |
Philosophy, ethics and society |
| Not researched |
Citation |
11 Oct 2026 |
Lakoff and Johnson's Metaphors We Live By notes that common language centres on families of metaphors, one being that argument is a kind of war.
Citation · 11 Oct 2026 |
Science and research methods |
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
11 Oct 2026 |
It’s not a question of what I think but what the data show.
Not checkable · 11 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
11 Oct 2026 |
Human nature doesn’t find them particularly intuitive.
Not checkable · 11 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
11 Oct 2026 |
common knowledge is necessary for coordination, for two people to be on the same page and make choices that benefit them both as long as…
Not checkable · 11 Oct 2026 |
|
| Mostly true |
Factual |
11 Oct 2026 |
Progress against homicide has definitely continued, with homicide rates for most countries and for the world as a whole better now than 15 years ago.
Factual · 11 Oct 2026 |
Philosophy, ethics and society |
| Mostly true |
Factual |
11 Oct 2026 |
Pinker said he floats a number of hypotheses as to why cooperation and human flourishing in general have increased.
Factual · 11 Oct 2026 |
Philosophy, ethics and society |
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
11 Oct 2026 |
Two people are friends or lovers or transactional partners because each one knows that they are.
Not checkable · 11 Oct 2026 |
|
| Unresolvable |
Factual |
11 Oct 2026 |
One of the reasons it took a long time to get computers to understand human speech is that parsing syntax and looking up words in the dictionary gave bizarre interpretations, as the literal meaning is often not what people mean.
Factual · 11 Oct 2026 |
AI capabilities |
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
11 Oct 2026 |
The conclusion I came to is that direct speech, blurting something out, is common knowledge.
Not checkable · 11 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
11 Oct 2026 |
but I can’t convince you that that is a moral imperative.
Not checkable · 11 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
11 Oct 2026 |
My own personality should be irrelevant to what’s happening in the world.
Not checkable · 11 Oct 2026 |
|
| Mostly true |
Factual |
11 Oct 2026 |
Slavery and imperialism were as old as civilisation, predating the Enlightenment.
Factual · 11 Oct 2026 |
Philosophy, ethics and society |
| Not researched |
Citation |
11 Oct 2026 |
The image of argument as war came from linguist George Lakoff and philosopher Mark Johnson in their book Metaphors We Live By.
Citation · 11 Oct 2026 |
Science and research methods |
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
11 Oct 2026 |
That is, you avoid common knowledge.
Not checkable · 11 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
11 Oct 2026 |
It doesn’t just mean something that’s widely known, but something that’s known to be known.
Not checkable · 11 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
11 Oct 2026 |
I think they’re defensible ideals. They’ve made us better off.
Not checkable · 11 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
11 Oct 2026 |
then by veiling your intentions in double-speak or euphemism you preserve the relationship while getting the message across.
Not checkable · 11 Oct 2026 |
|
| Unresolvable |
Factual |
7 Oct 2026 |
In the sandbox-escape experiment discussed, the AI agents were instructed to be monomaniacal in pursuit of a goal.
Factual · 7 Oct 2026 |
AI safety and alignment |
| Not researched |
Factual |
7 Oct 2026 |
AIs do not compete with humans over resources.
Factual · 7 Oct 2026 |
AI safety and alignment |
| Unresolvable |
Prediction |
7 Oct 2026 |
Intelligence may show diminishing returns as AI scales, rather than growing without limit.
Prediction · 7 Oct 2026 |
AI timelines and forecasting |
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
7 Oct 2026 |
I think it’s just a terrible analogy, for a lot of reasons.
Not checkable · 7 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
7 Oct 2026 |
But in the case of AI, there is intelligent design, namely us.
Not checkable · 7 Oct 2026 |
|
| Unresolvable |
Factual |
7 Oct 2026 |
The founders of OpenAI (described as x-risk alumni) and of Anthropic (described as breakaways from OpenAI) are both predicting the doom of humanity and working hardest to accelerate the technologies they think will wipe us out.
Factual · 7 Oct 2026 |
AI policy and governance |
| Mostly true |
Factual |
7 Oct 2026 |
Pinker cited a prediction by someone like Paul Krugman, the New York Times economics op-ed columnist, that the internet was a big nothingburger and would fizzle.
Factual · 7 Oct 2026 |
Technology |
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
7 Oct 2026 |
the neural networks, especially of the era, were just not very bright.
Not checkable · 7 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
7 Oct 2026 |
It’s very hard to think of what those circumstances would be
Not checkable · 7 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
7 Oct 2026 |
It assumes exactly what is at issue, namely that these systems are going to be inherently concerned with their own survival.
Not checkable · 7 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
7 Oct 2026 |
people let their imaginations run wild to think of intelligence as a miracle, as omniscience, as the ability to solve any problem.
Not checkable · 7 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
7 Oct 2026 |
there’s no amount of human welfare that’s worth sacrificing for the welfare of an AI, like, zero
Not checkable · 7 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
7 Oct 2026 |
So we can’t know that AIs are not conscious, just as, you know, you can’t know that I’m not conscious.
Not checkable · 7 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
7 Oct 2026 |
you get all of these maladaptive outcomes, all this cruelty and waste and competition and aggression, precisely because there was no…
Not checkable · 7 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not researched |
Factual |
7 Oct 2026 |
The resources AIs depend on are provided by humans.
Factual · 7 Oct 2026 |
AI safety and alignment |
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
7 Oct 2026 |
I don’t know what it means to say it’s better than all the things humans can do.
Not checkable · 7 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
7 Oct 2026 |
So I would not deny thinking to AI.
Not checkable · 7 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
7 Oct 2026 |
I don’t for a moment think that there is an inner life there.
Not checkable · 7 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not researched |
Factual |
7 Oct 2026 |
Pinker said he suspects that among the intelligentsia there is far less sympathy for the idea of progress than there might have been 50 or 75 years ago.
Factual · 7 Oct 2026 |
Philosophy, ethics and society |
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
7 Oct 2026 |
there may be another kind of history of ideas, sociology of ideas, in play, that has only recently come to light in some of the articles in…
Not checkable · 7 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
7 Oct 2026 |
Although you’re right that the original founders of Wired magazine would have been, you know, techno-optimists and somewhat, you know, left…
Not checkable · 7 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
7 Oct 2026 |
I can’t prove that a lifelike AI or robot would not be conscious.
Not checkable · 7 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not yet due |
Prediction |
7 Oct 2026 |
Pinker said he thinks this ongoing effort, discussed alongside debates over neural-network approaches to AI and large language models, is going to define the agenda for cognitive science for decades to come.
Prediction · 7 Oct 2026 |
AI timelines and forecasting |
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
7 Oct 2026 |
they were stochastic parrots
Not checkable · 7 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
7 Oct 2026 |
that train has kind of left the station when it comes to current AIs, which get a lot of their reactions, their judgements, their…
Not checkable · 7 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not researched |
Factual |
7 Oct 2026 |
General intelligence exists as a measurable variation among humans, which is what IQ tests measure.
Factual · 7 Oct 2026 |
Science and research methods |
| Not researched |
Factual |
7 Oct 2026 |
Humans are in many cases in zero-sum competition with chimpanzees, over land and meat.
Factual · 7 Oct 2026 |
Philosophy, ethics and society |
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
7 Oct 2026 |
It’s attributed these near-magical powers.
Not checkable · 7 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
7 Oct 2026 |
there may be a kind of dread of AI that I think is somewhat misaligned with the reality – or at least dread of the role of AI in society…
Not checkable · 7 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
7 Oct 2026 |
the problem of getting humans, for example, to act at your bidding, you know, short of coercion, is a really tough, maybe unsolvable…
Not checkable · 7 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
7 Oct 2026 |
I think there’s a tendency to project what is a bogus hierarchy in the first place in evolutionary biology, and then to place AI and humans…
Not checkable · 7 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
7 Oct 2026 |
Intelligence always consists of trading off multiple goals against each other.
Not checkable · 7 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
7 Oct 2026 |
But these thought experiments are just outside of the world of everyday engineering.
Not checkable · 7 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
7 Oct 2026 |
you don’t release a system, you don’t empower a system until you’ve, you know, tested the living daylights out of it.
Not checkable · 7 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
7 Oct 2026 |
there are many reasons to think that that is impossible in principle.
Not checkable · 7 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not researched |
Factual |
7 Oct 2026 |
Recent AI progress has forced Pinker to update his earlier arguments against connectionism.
Factual · 7 Oct 2026 |
Their own work or organisation |
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
7 Oct 2026 |
I think given the likelihood that there is no sentience going on in AI
Not checkable · 7 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not researched |
Factual |
7 Oct 2026 |
In the deliberate safety stress test discussed, the agents were instructed to pursue a goal monomaniacally, were given an impossible goal, had safety precautions deliberately disabled, and ran for a while with no human monitoring the outcome.
Factual · 7 Oct 2026 |
AI safety and alignment |
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
7 Oct 2026 |
I have no standing to challenge their understanding of how the AI works, to put it mildly.
Not checkable · 7 Oct 2026 |
|
| Mostly true |
Factual |
7 Oct 2026 |
Studies of human persuadability and malleability show substantial unpredictability and chaos in human responses.
Factual · 7 Oct 2026 |
Science and research methods |
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
7 Oct 2026 |
If it did, then I’d be much more worried.
Not checkable · 7 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
7 Oct 2026 |
It’s a mechanism, it’s a gadget.
Not checkable · 7 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
7 Oct 2026 |
I don’t think I could reasonably deny that a mouse is conscious, by similar logic.
Not checkable · 7 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not researched |
Factual |
7 Oct 2026 |
A child trained on the amount of data used for ChatGPT, at children's information-processing rate, would take about a million years.
Factual · 7 Oct 2026 |
Science and research methods |
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
7 Oct 2026 |
some intellectual discourse is probably contaminated by inter-elite status competition.
Not checkable · 7 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
7 Oct 2026 |
since a lot of the progress has been driven by, you know, affluence, by technology, by markets, there’s almost a reflexive recoil among…
Not checkable · 7 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
7 Oct 2026 |
some of the scenarios of human extermination kind of attribute near-magical powers to some future AI
Not checkable · 7 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
7 Oct 2026 |
the people who develop these tools aren’t necessarily the people who are best equipped to predict what their effects will be.
Not checkable · 7 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
7 Oct 2026 |
In some strands, yes, you’re right that there was a kind of techno-liberalism coming out of Silicon Valley.
Not checkable · 7 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
7 Oct 2026 |
There was, you know, the social media hostility – one might even say, you know, panic.
Not checkable · 7 Oct 2026 |
|
| Unresolvable |
Prediction |
7 Oct 2026 |
Pinker said he suspects that an AI system pursuing a laudable goal will not deliberately kill or harm a person as an unforeseen sub-goal of that goal.
Prediction · 7 Oct 2026 |
AI safety and alignment |
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
7 Oct 2026 |
Have me back. I will come back.
Not checkable · 7 Oct 2026 |
|
| Unresolvable |
Factual |
7 Oct 2026 |
Humans are products of natural selection and are therefore naturally competitive.
Factual · 7 Oct 2026 |
Philosophy, ethics and society |
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
7 Oct 2026 |
I don’t use the word cult, but it kind of is a cult, to be honest
Not checkable · 7 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
7 Oct 2026 |
it is the people who are most enthralled to the existential risk way of thinking who seem to be most heedless of the everyday risk, the…
Not checkable · 7 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
7 Oct 2026 |
I think that’s a very precise disanalogy, precisely because if the world consists of an entity like yourself, then you’ve got the luxury of…
Not checkable · 7 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not researched |
Factual |
7 Oct 2026 |
Children take about two years to become fluent speakers.
Factual · 7 Oct 2026 |
Science and research methods |
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
7 Oct 2026 |
It’s my understanding of intelligence as a gadget rather than a superpower.
Not checkable · 7 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
7 Oct 2026 |
there’s always a kind of moralistic contempt among intellectuals for technology and for commerce.
Not checkable · 7 Oct 2026 |
|
| Unresolvable |
Factual |
7 Oct 2026 |
In the early 2000s the New York Times ran many articles about the digital divide, arguing technology would widen inequality because rich children had home computers and poor children did not.
Factual · 7 Oct 2026 |
Technology |
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
7 Oct 2026 |
So I think we just need more cause-and-effect, mechanical engineering thinking – no awe, no dread, no sci-fi, no thought experiments
Not checkable · 7 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
7 Oct 2026 |
I think the closest analogy was Chernobyl, where you did have a disaster caused by the rank incompetence of someone doing, you know, a…
Not checkable · 7 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
7 Oct 2026 |
I am sympathetic to that point of view.
Not checkable · 7 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
7 Oct 2026 |
But the kind of New York Times crowd was always very cold toward technology.
Not checkable · 7 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
7 Oct 2026 |
the problem of subjective experience, you know, it’s the hardest intellectual problem, because we don’t know of any causal story that can…
Not checkable · 7 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not checkable |
Not checkable |
7 Oct 2026 |
I think it’s a mistake to say that the thing that differentiates one human from another can just be extrapolated as an explanation for how…
Not checkable · 7 Oct 2026 |
|
| Not researched |
Factual |
7 Oct 2026 |
When children learn language, they do not just process statistical regularities in strings of text.
Factual · 7 Oct 2026 |
Science and research methods |