most catastrophes through both recent and long-ago history have been caused by governments
Interesting lens! Though I’m not sure if this is fair—the largest things that are done tend to get done through governments, whether those things are good or bad. If you blame catastrophes like Mao’s famine or Hitler’s genocide on governments, you should also credit things like slavery abolition and vaccination and general decline of violence in civilized society to governments too.
I’d be interested to hear how Austin has updated regarding Sam’s trustworthiness over the past few days.
Hm I feel like a bunch of people have updated majorly negatively, but I haven’t—only small amounts. I think he eg gets credit for the ScarJo thing. I am mostly withholding judgement, though; now that the NDAs have been dropped, curious to see what comes to light (if nothing does, that would be more positive credit towards Sam, and some validation to my point that NDAs were not really concealing much).
Wait, to be clear, are you saying that you think it would be to Sam’s credit to learn that he forced employees to sign NDAs by straightforwardly lying to them about their legal obligations, using extremely adversarial time pressure tactics and making very intense but vague threats?
This behavior seems really obviously indefensible.
I don’t have a strong take on the ScarJo thing. I don’t really see how it would be to his credit, my guess is he straightforwardly lied about his intention to make the voice sound like ScarJo, but that’s of course very hard to verify, and it wouldn’t be a big deal either way IMO.
Sure, but the evidence is about the filtering that has occurred and how the filtering was conducted, not about what the filters were hiding. Threatening someone with violence to not insult you is bad independently of whether they had anything to insult you about.
What does “the evidence is about” mean? I don’t think there’s one piece of evidence, and I think evidence is normally relevant to multiple latent variables.
I agree that the fact there was filtering and how it was conducted is bad evidence. On the other hand, “now that the NDAs have been dropped, curious to see what comes to light (if nothing does, that would be more positive credit towards Sam [...])” seems to be talking about how the lack of something to insult Sam about is positive evidence about Sam. I don’t think it’s very strong evidence, fwiw, but noting that it is positive evidence seems pretty clearly distinct from saying “it would be to Sam’s credit to learn that he forced employees to sign NDAs by [bad stuff]”
Sure, but Austin answered the fully general question of “how [have you] updated regarding Sam’s trustworthiness over the past few days[?]” with “I haven’t updated majorly negatively”, in a generic tone.
When I say “the evidence is about the filtering” I am saying “the thing that seems like the obvious update would be about would be the filtering, not what the filtering was hiding”.
I agree that one can keep a separate ledger, but to not make a major negative update on Sam in the aggregate based on the information that was released requires IMO either that one already knew about such things and had the information integrated (which would presumably result in a low opinion of Sam’s conduct) or a distinct lack of moral compass (or third, a positive update that happened to mostly cancel out the negative update, though I think it would be confusing to communicate that via saying “I [updated] only small amounts”).
I have some feeling that this back-and-forth is bad or a waste of something, but I just don’t see how
[Austin is saying that] it would be to Sam’s credit to learn that he forced employees to sign NDAs by straightforwardly lying to them about their legal obligations, using extremely adversarial time pressure tactics and making very intense but vague threats?
is at all a plausible interpretation, or anything like a necessary implication, of what Austin wrote.
Ah, sure. I didn’t meant to say much about implying a large positive update here, and mostly intended to say “are you saying it’s not to any kind of substantial discredit here?”.
Interesting lens! Though I’m not sure if this is fair—the largest things that are done tend to get done through governments, whether those things are good or bad. If you blame catastrophes like Mao’s famine or Hitler’s genocide on governments, you should also credit things like slavery abolition and vaccination and general decline of violence in civilized society to governments too.
I do mostly[1] credit such things to governments, but the argument is about whether companies or governments are more liable to take on very large tail risks. Not about whether governments are generally good or bad. It may be that governments just like starting larger projects than corporations. But in that case, I think the claim that a greater percentage of those end in catastrophe than similarly large projects started by corporations still looks good.
I definitely don’t credit slavery abolition to governments, at least in America, since that industry was largely made possible in the first place by governments subsidizing the cost of chasing down runaway slaves. I’d guess general decline of violence is more attributable to generally increasing affluence, which has a range of factors associated with it, than government intervention so directly. But I’m largely ignorant on that particular subject. The “mostly” here means “I acknowledge governments do some good things”.
Interesting lens! Though I’m not sure if this is fair—the largest things that are done tend to get done through governments, whether those things are good or bad. If you blame catastrophes like Mao’s famine or Hitler’s genocide on governments, you should also credit things like slavery abolition and vaccination and general decline of violence in civilized society to governments too.
Hm I feel like a bunch of people have updated majorly negatively, but I haven’t—only small amounts. I think he eg gets credit for the ScarJo thing. I am mostly withholding judgement, though; now that the NDAs have been dropped, curious to see what comes to light (if nothing does, that would be more positive credit towards Sam, and some validation to my point that NDAs were not really concealing much).
Wait, to be clear, are you saying that you think it would be to Sam’s credit to learn that he forced employees to sign NDAs by straightforwardly lying to them about their legal obligations, using extremely adversarial time pressure tactics and making very intense but vague threats?
This behavior seems really obviously indefensible.
I don’t have a strong take on the ScarJo thing. I don’t really see how it would be to his credit, my guess is he straightforwardly lied about his intention to make the voice sound like ScarJo, but that’s of course very hard to verify, and it wouldn’t be a big deal either way IMO.
Austin is saying absence of evidence is evidence of absence (in the absence of a preempting filter)
Sure, but the evidence is about the filtering that has occurred and how the filtering was conducted, not about what the filters were hiding. Threatening someone with violence to not insult you is bad independently of whether they had anything to insult you about.
What does “the evidence is about” mean? I don’t think there’s one piece of evidence, and I think evidence is normally relevant to multiple latent variables.
I agree that the fact there was filtering and how it was conducted is bad evidence. On the other hand, “now that the NDAs have been dropped, curious to see what comes to light (if nothing does, that would be more positive credit towards Sam [...])” seems to be talking about how the lack of something to insult Sam about is positive evidence about Sam. I don’t think it’s very strong evidence, fwiw, but noting that it is positive evidence seems pretty clearly distinct from saying “it would be to Sam’s credit to learn that he forced employees to sign NDAs by [bad stuff]”
Sure, but Austin answered the fully general question of “how [have you] updated regarding Sam’s trustworthiness over the past few days[?]” with “I haven’t updated majorly negatively”, in a generic tone.
When I say “the evidence is about the filtering” I am saying “the thing that seems like the obvious update would be about would be the filtering, not what the filtering was hiding”.
I agree that one can keep a separate ledger, but to not make a major negative update on Sam in the aggregate based on the information that was released requires IMO either that one already knew about such things and had the information integrated (which would presumably result in a low opinion of Sam’s conduct) or a distinct lack of moral compass (or third, a positive update that happened to mostly cancel out the negative update, though I think it would be confusing to communicate that via saying “I [updated] only small amounts”).
I have some feeling that this back-and-forth is bad or a waste of something, but I just don’t see how
is at all a plausible interpretation, or anything like a necessary implication, of what Austin wrote.
OK, perhaps you are saying what I would phrase as “are you saying it’s not greatly to Sam’s discredit if he forced employees to sign …?”.
Ah, sure. I didn’t meant to say much about implying a large positive update here, and mostly intended to say “are you saying it’s not to any kind of substantial discredit here?”.
I do mostly[1] credit such things to governments, but the argument is about whether companies or governments are more liable to take on very large tail risks. Not about whether governments are generally good or bad. It may be that governments just like starting larger projects than corporations. But in that case, I think the claim that a greater percentage of those end in catastrophe than similarly large projects started by corporations still looks good.
I definitely don’t credit slavery abolition to governments, at least in America, since that industry was largely made possible in the first place by governments subsidizing the cost of chasing down runaway slaves. I’d guess general decline of violence is more attributable to generally increasing affluence, which has a range of factors associated with it, than government intervention so directly. But I’m largely ignorant on that particular subject. The “mostly” here means “I acknowledge governments do some good things”.
Whoa! Source?
I don’t know the exact article that convinced me, but I bet this summary of the history of economic thought on the subject is a good place to start, which I have skimmed, and seems to cover the main points with citations.