Even though it’s an exaggeration, Eliezer is, with this exaggeration, trying to indicate an extremely high level of fear, off the charts compared with what people are normally used to, as a result of really taking in the information. Such a level of fear is not clearly lower than the level of fear experienced by the psychotic people in question, who experienced e.g. serious sleep loss due to fear.
I strong-upvoted both of Jessica’s comments in this thread despite disagreeing with her interpretation in the strongest possible terms; I did so because I think it is important to note that, for every “common-sense” interpretation of a community leader’s words, there will be some small minority who interpret it in some other (possibly more damaging) way—and while I think (importantly) this does not imply it is the community leader’s responsibility to manage their words in such a way that no misinterpretation is possible (which I think is simply completely unfeasible), I am nonetheless in favor of people sharing their (non-standard) interpretations, given the variation in potential responses.
As Eliezer once said (I’m paraphrasing from memory here, so the following may not be word-for-word accurate, but I am >95% confident I’m not misremembering the thrust of what he said), “The question I have to ask myself is, will this drive more than 5% of my readers insane?”
EDIT: I have located the text of the original comment. I note (with some vindication) that once again, it seems that Eliezer was sensitive to this concern way ahead of when it actually became a thing.
Even though it’s an exaggeration, Eliezer is, with this exaggeration, trying to indicate an extremely high level of fear, off the charts compared with what people are normally used to, as a result of really taking in the information. Such a level of fear is not clearly lower than the level of fear experienced by the psychotic people in question, who experienced e.g. serious sleep loss due to fear.
I strong-upvoted both of Jessica’s comments in this thread despite disagreeing with her interpretation in the strongest possible terms; I did so because I think it is important to note that, for every “common-sense” interpretation of a community leader’s words, there will be some small minority who interpret it in some other (possibly more damaging) way—and while I think (importantly) this does not imply it is the community leader’s responsibility to manage their words in such a way that no misinterpretation is possible (which I think is simply completely unfeasible), I am nonetheless in favor of people sharing their (non-standard) interpretations, given the variation in potential responses.
As Eliezer once said (I’m paraphrasing from memory here, so the following may not be word-for-word accurate, but I am >95% confident I’m not misremembering the thrust of what he said), “The question I have to ask myself is, will this drive more than 5% of my readers insane?”
EDIT: I have located the text of the original comment. I note (with some vindication) that once again, it seems that Eliezer was sensitive to this concern way ahead of when it actually became a thing.