“Contra Collier on IABIED” by Max Harms

LessWrong (Curated & Popular)

Clara Collier recently reviewed If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies in Asterisk Magazine. I’ve been a reader of Asterisk since the beginning and had high hopes for her review. And perhaps it was those high hopes that led me to find the review to be disappointing.
Collier says “details matter,” and I absolutely agree. As a fellow rationalist, I’ve been happy to have nerds from across the internet criticizing the book and getting into object-level fights about everything from scaling laws to neuron speeds. While they don’t capture my perspective, I thought Scott Alexander and Peter Wildeford's reviews did a reasonable job at poking at the disagreements with the source material without losing track of the big picture.
But I did not feel like Collier's review was getting the details or the big picture right. Maybe I’m missing something important. Part of my motive for writing this “rebuttal” is [...]
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Outline:
(01:38) FOOM
(13:47) Gradualism
(20:27) Nitpicks
(35:35) More Was Possible
The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
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First published:
September 20th, 2025
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/JWH63Aed3TA2cTFMt/contra-collier-on-iabied
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.