I think there are a fair number of wrong (or at least underjustified/unfounded) claims in the above. e.g. “cults don’t work.”
My opinion of CFAR just fell from “neutral” to “mildly harmful” because they hired someone who’s willing to say the above. On old LW (where Eliezer wrote a sequence on avoiding cults and I was contributing decision theory math) this would’ve been unbelievable. Or maybe I’ve been missing the signs, not being in the Bay Area.
You’re not thinking or arguing clearly, and are instead leaping to conclusions and pulling from stereotypes.
If you lose respect for CFAR over that, it’s the result of your own confusion, and the loss of your endorsement is not one I’d lose sleep over.
One can say “guns are indeed effective” and not be advocating for wanton gun violence. It’s a statement about objective reality—guns do things—not a statement about normative values. Similarly, I can argue with your claim “cults don’t work” (which is clearly,demonstrably false on at least some axes; cults were in fact successful enough to cause large damage to a lot of people’s lives at the very least) without saying “HECK YEAH, GO CULTS.”
I’ll continue to engage, or not, based on whether or not you respond reasonably to the above. Sorry for the impatience, but I’ve written thousands upon thousands of words in this thread by now, and I’m not at all in the mood to let people strawman me at this point (even if they want to try to pull a sneaky status move by claiming seniority-on-the-forum and trying to shame a certain kind of statement without any model behind the shaming).
(I also note that you didn’t bother to respond AT ALL to my claim that you’re making unfounded leaps, nor to my claim that this is in fact a return to previous proven systems rather than an attempt to invent a new one, which makes me think that in addition to smushing together unrelated things in your arguments, you’re not actually here to discuss, i.e. swap statements back and forth on a topic and in fact interact with what the other person is saying, and are instead here to just score points or confirm (rather than falsify) your own models.)
If you took my original comment to mean that cults are harmless, that’s a bit bizarre.
As for previous proven systems, I’m not sure which ones you mean. The closest analogue is religious or socialist communes, which turn bad too often for my taste. The happiest exception is kibbutzim which weren’t nearly as authoritarian as your idea. Then you have the army, which exists today just fine and we know what it’s good for, not sure why we need another one. Then there are boarding schools, sport camps etc. but these are based on learning from professionals which you don’t have.
I took your original comment to be saying “cults don’t work.”
Then, when I said “they do, though,” I took your second comment to be pearl-clutching and saying “well, now I think CFAR must be (slightly) evil or stupid for hiring someone who is willing to say out loud that cults work (gasp).”
You cannot possibly have drawn out of my statements above “Duncan thinks cousin_it thinks cults are harmless.”
I’m going to disengage because it’s not easy to have discourse with you (say things clearly, stick to a topic, expose reasoning, actually make progress toward truth or convergence). I don’t understand how your reasoning process works. I’m finding this subthread frustrating and low-value, and thus far the specific points I have been able to tease out of what you’re saying, I generally disagree with (and trust my domain knowledge and expertise more than I trust your skepticism-without-any-concrete-evidence-backing-it-up-from-someone-who’s-already-demonstrated-willingness-to-make-unfounded-leaps).
The militaries have a pretty big stick. You can go to prison for insubordination or disobeying orders; in wartime you might well just be shot for that. The Dragon Army… will give you a stern talking to?
The only person I heard of go to the brig was one who broke into barracks and stole personal property. Falsifying official records or running off to run a side job as a real estate broker was more of a ’30 days restriction, 30 days extra duty, reduction in rate to the next inferior rate, forfeiture of 1⁄2 month’s base pay for 2 months’ thing.
Actually I agree. It feels weird to see that one person upvoted my comment without knowing how many would have downvoted it. The same might apply to Duncan’s post, from the comments it seems like it was really polarizing, but the score only shows the 28 upvotes. If I may be allowed another reference to old LW, Eliezer used to advocate that people downvote more, ideally without replying. I think he saw it as a defense against noise and then left when the noise became too much.
You can get a clearer-if-still-imperfect sense from contrasting upvotes on parallel, opposing comments, e.g. it has 28 upvotes and 1029823904812309481320948blargltroll has 10. I highly doubt this would have ever received sufficient mass of downvotes to become invisible.
You can get a clearer-if-still-imperfect sense from contrasting upvotes on parallel,
I’m fairly certain that P(disagrees with blargtroll | disagrees with your proposal) >> P(agrees with blargtroll | disagrees with your proposal), simply because blargtroll’s counterargument is weak and its followups reveal some anger management issues.
For example, I would downvote both your proposal and blargtroll’s counterargument if I could—and by the Typical Mind heuristic so would everyone else :)
That said, I think you’re right in that this would not have received sufficiently many downvotes to become invisible.
It’s an appeal to authority and someone shitting on an organization based on one line of a lesswrong comment by one member of that organization, with no request for clarification or depth.
My opinion of CFAR just fell from “neutral” to “mildly harmful” because they hired someone who’s willing to say the above. On old LW (where Eliezer wrote a sequence on avoiding cults and I was contributing decision theory math) this would’ve been unbelievable. Or maybe I’ve been missing the signs, not being in the Bay Area.
You’re not thinking or arguing clearly, and are instead leaping to conclusions and pulling from stereotypes.
If you lose respect for CFAR over that, it’s the result of your own confusion, and the loss of your endorsement is not one I’d lose sleep over.
One can say “guns are indeed effective” and not be advocating for wanton gun violence. It’s a statement about objective reality—guns do things—not a statement about normative values. Similarly, I can argue with your claim “cults don’t work” (which is clearly, demonstrably false on at least some axes; cults were in fact successful enough to cause large damage to a lot of people’s lives at the very least) without saying “HECK YEAH, GO CULTS.”
I’ll continue to engage, or not, based on whether or not you respond reasonably to the above. Sorry for the impatience, but I’ve written thousands upon thousands of words in this thread by now, and I’m not at all in the mood to let people strawman me at this point (even if they want to try to pull a sneaky status move by claiming seniority-on-the-forum and trying to shame a certain kind of statement without any model behind the shaming).
(I also note that you didn’t bother to respond AT ALL to my claim that you’re making unfounded leaps, nor to my claim that this is in fact a return to previous proven systems rather than an attempt to invent a new one, which makes me think that in addition to smushing together unrelated things in your arguments, you’re not actually here to discuss, i.e. swap statements back and forth on a topic and in fact interact with what the other person is saying, and are instead here to just score points or confirm (rather than falsify) your own models.)
If you took my original comment to mean that cults are harmless, that’s a bit bizarre.
As for previous proven systems, I’m not sure which ones you mean. The closest analogue is religious or socialist communes, which turn bad too often for my taste. The happiest exception is kibbutzim which weren’t nearly as authoritarian as your idea. Then you have the army, which exists today just fine and we know what it’s good for, not sure why we need another one. Then there are boarding schools, sport camps etc. but these are based on learning from professionals which you don’t have.
sigh.
I took your original comment to be saying “cults don’t work.”
Then, when I said “they do, though,” I took your second comment to be pearl-clutching and saying “well, now I think CFAR must be (slightly) evil or stupid for hiring someone who is willing to say out loud that cults work (gasp).”
You cannot possibly have drawn out of my statements above “Duncan thinks cousin_it thinks cults are harmless.”
I’m going to disengage because it’s not easy to have discourse with you (say things clearly, stick to a topic, expose reasoning, actually make progress toward truth or convergence). I don’t understand how your reasoning process works. I’m finding this subthread frustrating and low-value, and thus far the specific points I have been able to tease out of what you’re saying, I generally disagree with (and trust my domain knowledge and expertise more than I trust your skepticism-without-any-concrete-evidence-backing-it-up-from-someone-who’s-already-demonstrated-willingness-to-make-unfounded-leaps).
The Army works just fine, and has goals that aren’t ours. Why not steal much of their model /which works and has been proven to work/?
Especially if the problematic aspects of Army culture can be avoided by seeing the skulls on the ground.
The militaries have a pretty big stick. You can go to prison for insubordination or disobeying orders; in wartime you might well just be shot for that. The Dragon Army… will give you a stern talking to?
.… will banish you from the tribe.
The only person I heard of go to the brig was one who broke into barracks and stole personal property. Falsifying official records or running off to run a side job as a real estate broker was more of a ’30 days restriction, 30 days extra duty, reduction in rate to the next inferior rate, forfeiture of 1⁄2 month’s base pay for 2 months’ thing.
This is why we need downvotes.
Actually I agree. It feels weird to see that one person upvoted my comment without knowing how many would have downvoted it. The same might apply to Duncan’s post, from the comments it seems like it was really polarizing, but the score only shows the 28 upvotes. If I may be allowed another reference to old LW, Eliezer used to advocate that people downvote more, ideally without replying. I think he saw it as a defense against noise and then left when the noise became too much.
You can get a clearer-if-still-imperfect sense from contrasting upvotes on parallel, opposing comments, e.g. it has 28 upvotes and 1029823904812309481320948blargltroll has 10. I highly doubt this would have ever received sufficient mass of downvotes to become invisible.
I’m fairly certain that P(disagrees with blargtroll | disagrees with your proposal) >> P(agrees with blargtroll | disagrees with your proposal), simply because blargtroll’s counterargument is weak and its followups reveal some anger management issues.
For example, I would downvote both your proposal and blargtroll’s counterargument if I could—and by the Typical Mind heuristic so would everyone else :)
That said, I think you’re right in that this would not have received sufficiently many downvotes to become invisible.
First time I’ve heard it referred to as a heuristic. +1 =P
This is a little ambiguous, and it would be more helpful to be concrete.
It’s an appeal to authority and someone shitting on an organization based on one line of a lesswrong comment by one member of that organization, with no request for clarification or depth.