Interview with gwern

Strong gatekeeping vibes. "Not even wrong" is perfect for this sort of fixation with labels and titles and an odd seemingly resentful take that gwern has being an AI influencer as a specific goal.

OK, I concede that if I try to separate engineers from scientists it sounds like I'm trying to gatekeep. In truth, I'm organising things in my head because I started out thinking of myself as an engineer, because I like to make stuff, and at some point I started thinking of myself as a scientist, malgré moi, because I also like to know how stuff works and why. I multiclassed, you see, so I am trying to understand exactly what changed, when, and why.

I mean obviously it happened when I moved from industry to academia, but it's still the case there's a lot of overlap between the two areas, at least in CS and AI. In CS and AI the best engineers make the best scientists and vv. I think.

Btw, "gatekeeping" I think assumes that I somehow think of one category less than the other? Is that right? To be clear, I don't. I was responding to the use of both terms in the OP's comments with a personal reflection on the two categories.

"not even wrong" is supposed to refer to a specific category of flawed argument, but of course like many other terms it's come to really mean "low status belief"

I sure hope nobody ever remembers you being confidently wrong about something. But if they do, hopefully that person will have the grace and self-restraint not to broadcast it any time you might make a public appearance, because they're apparently bitter that you still have any credibility.

Point taken and I warned my comment would sound vituperative. Again, the difference is that I'm not an AI influencer, and I'm not trying to make a living by claiming an expertise I don't have. I don't make "public appearances" except in conferences where I present the results of my research.

And you should see the criticism I get by other academics when I try to publish my papers and they decide I'm not even wrong. And that kind of criticism has teeth: my papers don't get published.

Please be aware that your criticism has teeth too, you just don't feel the bite of them. You say I "should see" that criticism you receive on your papers, but I don't; it's delivered in private. Unlike the review comments you get from your peers, you are writing in public. I'm sure you wouldn't appreciate it if your peer reviewer stood up after your conference keynote and told the audience that they'd rejected your paper five years ago, described your errors, and went on to say that nobody at this conference should be listening to you.

Can I say a bit more about criticism on the side? I've learned to embrace it as a necessary step to self-improvement.

My formative experience as a PhD student was when a senior colleague attacked my work. That was after I asked for his feedback for a paper I was writing where I showed that my system beat his system. He didn't deal with it well, sent me a furiously critical response (with obvious misunderstandings of my work) and then proceeded to tell my PhD advisor and everyone else in a conference we were attending that my work is premature and shouldn't be submitted. My advisor, trusting his ex-student (him) more than his brand new one (me), agreed and suggested I should sit on the paper a bit longer.

Later on the same colleague attacked my system again, but this time he gave me a concrete reason why: he gave me an example of a task that my system could not complete (learn a recursive logic program to return the last element in a list from a single example that is not an example of the base-case of the recursion; it's a lot harder than it may sound).

Now, I had been able to dismiss the earlier criticism as sour grapes, but this one I couldn't get over because my system really couldn't deal with it. So I tried to figure out why- where was the error I was making in my theories? Because my theoretical results said that my system should be able to learn that. Long story short, I did figure it out and I got that example to work, plus a bunch of other hard tests that people had thrown at me in the meanwhile. So I improved.

I still think my colleague's behaviour was immature and not becoming of a senior academic- attacking a PhD student because she did what you 've always done, beat your own system, is childish. In my current post-doc I just published a paper with one of our PhD students where we report his system trouncing mine (in speed; still some meat on those old bones otherwise). I think criticism is a good thing overall, if you can learn to use it to improve your work. It doesn't mean that you'll learn to like it, or that you'll be best friends with the person criticising you, it doesn't even mean that they're not out to get you; they probably are... but if the criticism is pointing out a real weakness you have, you can still use it to your advantage no matter what.

Constructive criticism is a good thing, but in this thread you aren't speaking to Gwern directly, you're badmouthing him to his peers. I'm sure you would have felt different if your colleague had done that.

I think I'm addressing some of what you say in my longer comment above.

>> Please be aware that your criticism has teeth too, you just don't feel the bite of them.

Well, maybe it does. I don't know if that can be avoided. I think most people don't take criticism well. I've learned for example that there are some conversations I can't have with certain members of my extended family because they're not used to being challenged about things they don't know and they react angrily. I'm specifically remember a conversation where I was trying to explain the concept of latent hypoxia and ascent blackout [1] (I free dive recreationally) to an older family member who is an experienced scuba diver, and they not only didn't believe me, they called me an ignoramus. Because I told them something they didn't know about. Eh well.

_____________

[1] It can happen that while you're diving deep, the pressure of the water keeps the pressure of oxygen in your blood sufficient that you don't pass out, but then when you start coming up, the pressure drops and the oxygen in your blood thins out so much that you pass out. In my lay terms. My relative didn't believe that the water pressure affects the pressure of the air in your vessels. I absolutely can feel that when I'm diving- the deeper I go the easier it gets to hold my breath and it's so noticeable because it's so counter-intuitive. My relative wouldn't have experienced that during scuba diving (since they breathe pressurised air, I think) and maybe it helps he's a smoker. Anyway I never managed to convince him.

As I never managed to convince him that we eat urchins' genitals, not their eggs. After a certain point I stopped trying to convince him of anything. I mean I felt like a know-it-all anyway, even if I knew what I was talking about.

He did and I did feel very angry about it and it hurt our professional relationship irreparably.

But above I'm only discussing my experience of criticism as an aside, unrelated to Gwern. To be clear, my original comment was not meant as constructive criticism. Like I think my colleague was at the time, I am out to get Gwern because I think, like I say, that he is a clueless AI influencer, a cheer-leader of deep learning who is piggy-backing on the excitement about AI that he had nothing to do with creating. I wouldn't find it so annoying if he, like many others who engage in the same parasitism, did not sound so cock-sure that he knows what he's talking about.

I do not under any circumstances claim that my original comment is meant to be nice.

Btw, I remember now that Gwern has in other times accused me , here on HN, of being confidently wrong about things I don't know as well as I think I do (deep learning stuff). I think it was in a comment about Mu Zero (the DeepMind system). I don't think Gwern likes me much, either. But, then, he's a famous influencer and I'm not and I bet he finds solace in that so my criticism is not going to hurt him in the end.

I actually either didn't know about that pressure thing [0], or I forgot. I suspect I read about it at some point because at some level I knew ascending could have bad effects even if you don't need decompression stops. But I didn't know why, even though it's obvious in retrospect.

So thanks for that, even though it's entirely unrelated to AI.

[0]: though I've seen videos of the exact same effect on a plastic water bottle, but my brain didn't make the connection

It all feels like their only goal is circumlocutions over the subset of contemporary glyphs they know?

The physical principles remain regardless of how humans write them down.

What is the point of saying "I warned my comment would sound vituperative"? Acknowledging a flaw in the motivation of your comment doesn't negate that flaw, it means you realize you are posting something mean spirited and consciously deciding to do it even though you recognize you're being mean spirited.