Astral Codex Ten

Acemoglu

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Acemoglu

Article

Acemoglu is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 4 times across 4 issues between March 21, 2021 and October 30, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as “claims to debunk the Acemoglu paper - they say that Acemoglu et al miscoded some regions”; “I remember Acemoglu’s papers at all! I remember them being very careful and full of sober statistical analysis”; “Acemoglu says the “most ominous” effect of existing AI is its contribution to employment”. It most often appears alongside Elon Musk, Bill Gates, China.

Metadata

  • Category: People
  • Mention count: 4
  • Issue count: 4
  • First seen: March 21, 2021
  • Last seen: October 30, 2024

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Open Thread 164
March 21, 2021 · Original source
2: In response to my post on the consequences of the French Revolution, several people sent me Kopsidis and Bromley, which claims to debunk the Acemoglu paper - they say that Acemoglu et al miscoded some regions, and when you correct that, it becomes apparent that the real reason some parts of Germany did better than others wasn’t because Napoleon reformed them, but because they had more coal. But see also Donges, Jean-Marie, and Silva, which concludes that the original Acemoglu coding was better. And here’s a paper which claims to replicate and extend Acemoglu et al’s results to Italy. This debate seems to have reached a level of complexity where I no longer feel comfortable having an opinion on it.
Inline links: my post on the consequences of the French Revolution, Kopsidis and Bromley, Donges, Jean-Marie, and Silva, replicate and extend Acemoglu et al’s results to Italy
Contra Acemoglu On...Oh God, We're Doing This Again, Aren't We?
July 27, 2021 · Original source
The Washington Post has published yet another "luminary in unrelated field discovers AI risk, pronounces it stupid" article. This time it's Daron Acemoglu. I respect Daron Acemoglu and appreciate the many things I’ve learned from his work in economics. In particular, I respect him so much that I wish he would stop embarrassing himself by writing this kind of article (I feel the same way about Steven Pinker and Ted Chiang).
Inline links: has published yet another, Ted Chiang
I have no idea why Daron Acemoglu and every single other person who writes articles on AI for the popular media thinks this is such a knockdown argument. But here we are. He writes:
How do you write an entire article dismissing fear of superintelligent AI, which doesn’t contain a single argument against fear of superintelligent AI? Daron Acemoglu is a smart person and I doubt he did this by accident. I think he just didn’t care about the topic at all. He wanted space to make his argument that narrow AI is pernicious and that somebody needs to do something. Pitching it as “instead of worrying about superintelligence, worry about this!” seemed like a cute framing device that would probably get the article a few extra eyeballs.
When Does Worrying About Things Trade Off Against Worrying About Other Things?
July 28, 2021 · Original source
On yesterday’s post, some people tried to steelman Acemoglu’s argument into something like this:
Inline links: yesterday’s post
There’s a limited amount of public interest in AI. The more gets used up on the long-term risk of superintelligent AI, the less is left for near-term AI risks like unemployment or autonomous weapons. Sure, maybe Acemoglu didn’t explain his dismissal of long-term risks very well. But given that he thinks near-term risks are bigger than long-term ones, it’s fair to argue that we should shift our limited budget of risk awareness more towards the former at the expense of the latter.
Maybe there’s some narrow band where topics are related enough to draw from a common pool of resources, but not related enough to be natural allies, and Acemoglu thinks AI falls in that band? But I tried to capture that kind of situation with arguments (3) and (4), which are very close matches to the AI situation (long-term major speculative risk vs. near-term smaller obvious risk). And (3) and (4) still ring false - they’re theoretically plausible arguments, but nobody would ever make them.
ACX Endorses Harris, Oliver, Or Stein
October 30, 2024 · Original source
Why does autocracy correlate with low development? I’m not sure, and I’m not trying to make some grand Acemoglu-style thesis, but again Chavez provides a useful model. Chavez fired everyone competent or independent in government, because they sometimes talked back to him or disagreed with him; he replaced them with craven yes-men and toadies. His ideas weren’t all bad, but when he did have bad ideas, there was nobody to challenge or veto them. He frequently chose what was good for his ego (or his ability to short-term maintain power) over what was good for the country, and there was no system to punish him for those decisions. Since rule-of-law would block his whims, he kept undermining rule-of-law until it was no longer strong enough to protect things like property, investment, or a free economy. Ambitious educated people, seeing nothing left in Venezuela besides a lifetime of trying to out-bootlick the other bootlickers to curry favor from a narcissist, left the country for greener pastures.