I read Duncan’s post as being mainly about LW, using the society of Athens as an analogy. “Poisoning Socrates” to me would be more like reprimanding or firing an employee at a startup who’s demoralizing the team, not literally forcing somebody to commit suicide for criticizing someone else. In most places I think it’s recognized that there’s a balance between critique and creativity, and Duncan’s saying that specifically on LW, we seem to have stumbled into a bad equilibrium with way more cheap criticism than is productive to truth-seeking.
I read Duncan’s post as being mainly about LW, using the society of Athens as an analogy. “Poisoning Socrates” to me would be more like reprimanding or firing an employee at a startup who’s demoralizing the team, not literally forcing somebody to commit suicide for criticizing someone else. In most places I think it’s recognized that there’s a balance between critique and creativity, and Duncan’s saying that specifically on LW, we seem to have stumbled into a bad equilibrium with way more cheap criticism than is productive to truth-seeking.