Here's why I like this response (I got one more along these lines but not this detailed). My whole criticism of METR is that that they're a collection of LW forum posters whose goal is to stop AI development, & to do this they've stood up a benchmarking & safety org that A) aims to make the already decided (to them) case that AI is moving too fast & is unsafe, & B) is not staffed by people who know anything about benchmarks or safety as an actual discipline. This post essentially concedes the two-part (A & B) motivation criticism, i.e. that the whole plan here is the Pause, & they don't need to engage w/ legacy tech safety concerns because the plan is to Pause & then learn about that stuff & apply it to AI. The post also sort of implicitly supports my first criticism (that they're a bunch of LW posters who cooked up a plan to Pause AI) by responding to a criticism of METR with essentially, "hey there! LW posters DO talk about this stuff!" At any rate, the core disconnect between me & this person I'm QTing & METR & most of LW, is that I am in the "Normal Technology" camp. Also, normal tech can be extremely disruptive & dangerous, which is why safety matters, & the approach I'm criticizing (& that he's describing!) is inimical to safety IF we're dealing with a normal tech. But if LW is right and AI really a totally not-at-all-normal tech & we're 10yrs away from Dyson Spheres (per Cotra in other threads), then ok yeah I suppose any and all types of resistance are licensed, including standing up a benchmarking & safety org that has very little connection to anything anyone else can recognize in the pre-existing areas of benchmarking and safety. So in that respect, I get it, tho I strongly disagree. At any rate, it really does matter where you fall on this matter of "This is an emergency!" or "This is a dangerous but normal tech!", for exactly the reasons I'm talking about here. Because if one of those is true, then the other one is unsafe.