I recall that among the reasons given were that it had triggered severe reactions in some members of the community. “Horrified” would be a mild way to describe the reaction that was claimed at the time. There was discussion about whether the idea itself could be self-fulfilling and thus inherently dangerous (in addition to the pain caused in some people thinking about it), but that didn’t last long.
I don’t think simply being wrong would have been enough to try to censor it.
Jessica wrote a post about how the people at MIRI at the time thought about keeping information that’s a potentially dangerous secret. It was pretty extreme and they’re trying to keep information that Jessica would have seen as a more trivial secret drove her into schizophrenia.
It was not an intellectual atmosphere of keeping ideas that are horrifying people, dangerous because those are horrifying ideas. MIRI had complex ideas about secrecy that they considered very serious and if you ignore those but treat the motivation like “people did something because they are horrified” you project decision heuristics onto EY that he didn’t use.
Fair enough. I’m not part of the Bay Area rationalist community, and I suspect there was a lot of stuff going on that didn’t appear in public posts or discussion on the topic. People (including Eliezer and others) are complicated, and there are both private and public reasons for actions, as well as reasons that aren’t easily understood, even by the actors.
BTW, none of this explains why lincolnquirk’s comment was strong-downvoted. Even if it’s incorrect (though it doesn’t seem to me to be—more incomplete), it’s not harmful or wasteful.
I don’t think that someone who by their own admission doesn’t think that they have a good understanding should offer up their explanation on a rumor in a case like this.
I recall that among the reasons given were that it had triggered severe reactions in some members of the community. “Horrified” would be a mild way to describe the reaction that was claimed at the time. There was discussion about whether the idea itself could be self-fulfilling and thus inherently dangerous (in addition to the pain caused in some people thinking about it), but that didn’t last long.
I don’t think simply being wrong would have been enough to try to censor it.
The precautionary principle mattered.
Jessica wrote a post about how the people at MIRI at the time thought about keeping information that’s a potentially dangerous secret. It was pretty extreme and they’re trying to keep information that Jessica would have seen as a more trivial secret drove her into schizophrenia.
It was not an intellectual atmosphere of keeping ideas that are horrifying people, dangerous because those are horrifying ideas. MIRI had complex ideas about secrecy that they considered very serious and if you ignore those but treat the motivation like “people did something because they are horrified” you project decision heuristics onto EY that he didn’t use.
Fair enough. I’m not part of the Bay Area rationalist community, and I suspect there was a lot of stuff going on that didn’t appear in public posts or discussion on the topic. People (including Eliezer and others) are complicated, and there are both private and public reasons for actions, as well as reasons that aren’t easily understood, even by the actors.
BTW, none of this explains why lincolnquirk’s comment was strong-downvoted. Even if it’s incorrect (though it doesn’t seem to me to be—more incomplete), it’s not harmful or wasteful.
I don’t think that someone who by their own admission doesn’t think that they have a good understanding should offer up their explanation on a rumor in a case like this.