I believe Eliezer about his intended message, though I think it’s right to dock him some points for phrasing it poorly—being insufficiently self-critical is an attractor that idea-based groups have to be careful of, so if there’s a risk of some people misinterpreting you as saying ‘don’t criticize the ingroup’, you should at least take the time to define what you mean by “hating on”, or give examples of the kinds of Topher-behaviors you have in mind.
There’s a different attractor I’m worried about, which is something like “requiring community leaders to walk on eggshells all the time with how they phrase stuff, asking them to strictly optimize for impact/rhetoric/influence over blurting out what they actually believe, etc.” I think it’s worth putting effort into steering away from that outcome. But I think it’s possible to be extra-careful about ‘don’t criticize the ingroup’ signals without that spilling over into a generally high level of self-censorship.
You can avoid both by not having leaders who believe in terrible things (like “black people are genetically too stupid to govern themselves”) that they have to hide behind a veil of (im)plausible deniability.
I believe Eliezer about his intended message, though I think it’s right to dock him some points for phrasing it poorly—being insufficiently self-critical is an attractor that idea-based groups have to be careful of, so if there’s a risk of some people misinterpreting you as saying ‘don’t criticize the ingroup’, you should at least take the time to define what you mean by “hating on”, or give examples of the kinds of Topher-behaviors you have in mind.
There’s a different attractor I’m worried about, which is something like “requiring community leaders to walk on eggshells all the time with how they phrase stuff, asking them to strictly optimize for impact/rhetoric/influence over blurting out what they actually believe, etc.” I think it’s worth putting effort into steering away from that outcome. But I think it’s possible to be extra-careful about ‘don’t criticize the ingroup’ signals without that spilling over into a generally high level of self-censorship.
You can avoid both by not having leaders who believe in terrible things (like “black people are genetically too stupid to govern themselves”) that they have to hide behind a veil of (im)plausible deniability.