To report my gut reaction, not necessarily endorsed yet. I am sharing this to help other people understand how I feel about this, not as a considered argument:
I have a slight sense of ickyness, though a much weaker one. “Swindle” feels less bad to me, though I also haven’t really heard the term used particularly much in recent times, so it’s associations feel a lot less clear to me. I think I would have reacted less bad to the OP had it used “swindle” instead of “scam” but I am not super confident.
The other thing is that the case for the “two party swindle” feels a lot more robust than the case for the “AI timelines scam”. I don’t think you should never call something a scam or swindle, but if you do you should make really sure it actually is. Though I do still think there is a noncentral fallacy thing going on with calling it a swindle (though again it feels less noncentral for “swindle” instead of “scam”).
The third thing is that the word “swindle” only shows up in the title of the post, and is not reinforced with words like “fraud” or trying to accuse any specific individual actors of lying or deceiving. “Scam” also only shows up in the title of this post, but I feel like it’s much more trying to accuse people of immoral behavior, whereas Eliezer goes out of his way to emphasize that he doesn’t think anyone in this situation should obviously be punished.
The last thing is that it’s mostly talking about a relatively distant outgroupy-feeling thing that makes sense to analyze to learn things from it, but that I am quite confident Eliezer has little to gain from criticizing and just doesn’t feel close to me (this might also partially because I grew up in Germany which does not have a two-party system). In the AI Timelines Scam post, I felt like there was more of a political undertone that highlighted the hypothesis of local political conflict to gain social points by trying to redefine words.
In was going to say the much the same. I think it kind of is a noncentral fallacy too, but not one that strikes me as problematic.
Perhaps I’d add that I feel the argument/persuasion being made by Eliezer doesn’t really rest on trying to import my valence towards “swindle” over to this. I don’t have that much valence to a funny obscure word.
I guess it has to be said that it’s a noncentral noncentral fallacy.
I see two links in your comment that are both linking to the same place—did you mean for the first one (with the text: “the criticism that the usage of “scam” in the title was an instance of the noncentral fallacy”) to link to something else?
Exercise for those (like me) who largely agreed with the criticism that the usage of “scam” in the title was an instance of the noncentral fallacy (drawing the category boundaries of “scam” too widely in a way that makes the word less useful): do you feel the same way about Eliezer Yudkowsky’s “The Two-Party Swindle”? Why or why not?
I like this question.
To report my gut reaction, not necessarily endorsed yet. I am sharing this to help other people understand how I feel about this, not as a considered argument:
I have a slight sense of ickyness, though a much weaker one. “Swindle” feels less bad to me, though I also haven’t really heard the term used particularly much in recent times, so it’s associations feel a lot less clear to me. I think I would have reacted less bad to the OP had it used “swindle” instead of “scam” but I am not super confident.
The other thing is that the case for the “two party swindle” feels a lot more robust than the case for the “AI timelines scam”. I don’t think you should never call something a scam or swindle, but if you do you should make really sure it actually is. Though I do still think there is a noncentral fallacy thing going on with calling it a swindle (though again it feels less noncentral for “swindle” instead of “scam”).
The third thing is that the word “swindle” only shows up in the title of the post, and is not reinforced with words like “fraud” or trying to accuse any specific individual actors of lying or deceiving. “Scam” also only shows up in the title of this post, but I feel like it’s much more trying to accuse people of immoral behavior, whereas Eliezer goes out of his way to emphasize that he doesn’t think anyone in this situation should obviously be punished.
The last thing is that it’s mostly talking about a relatively distant outgroupy-feeling thing that makes sense to analyze to learn things from it, but that I am quite confident Eliezer has little to gain from criticizing and just doesn’t feel close to me (this might also partially because I grew up in Germany which does not have a two-party system). In the AI Timelines Scam post, I felt like there was more of a political undertone that highlighted the hypothesis of local political conflict to gain social points by trying to redefine words.
Agree, good question.
In was going to say the much the same. I think it kind of is a noncentral fallacy too, but not one that strikes me as problematic.
Perhaps I’d add that I feel the argument/persuasion being made by Eliezer doesn’t really rest on trying to import my valence towards “swindle” over to this. I don’t have that much valence to a funny obscure word.
I guess it has to be said that it’s a noncentral noncentral fallacy.
I see two links in your comment that are both linking to the same place—did you mean for the first one (with the text: “the criticism that the usage of “scam” in the title was an instance of the noncentral fallacy”) to link to something else?
Yes, thank you; the intended target was the immortal Scott Alexander’s “Against Lie Inflation” (grandparent edited to fix). I regret the error.