This is the weekly visible open thread. Post about anything you want, ask random questions, whatever. ACX has an unofficial subreddit, Discord, and bulletin board, and in-person meetups around the world. 95% of content is free, but for the remaining 5% you can subscribe here. Also:
1: Philosophy Bear, who wrote the original piece on the chatbot apocalypse, responds to my response.
2: Correction from last week’s links: Steve Kirsch did not in fact back out of his bet with Saar Wilf; although they briefly reached an impasse, they’ve solved it and plan to go forward with the debate. I’m not sure if this is a good truth-finding method, but I’m intrigued by it and will probably cover it when it happens.
3: Comments of the week: Maximum Limelihood Estimator explains why we should expect the error on Wisdom of Crowds task to be the inverse square root. And demost beat me to analyzing the Wisdom of Crowds survey results.
4: Someone recently contacted me saying there was a potential emergency involving an Internet friend of theirs, and asked if I could help them get in touch. As the admin of SSC, I’m able to see the email addresses attached to people’s comments, even if they’re not public. After thinking a bit about my responsibilities, I told him his friend’s nonpublic email (which didn’t include their real name). I’m not sure what I would do in a similar situation where it did. If you have any (ethical, not legal) advice for me, please let me know.
Open Thread 263