I think it would be good to acknowledge here Eliezer’s edits.
I don’t. He made them only after ingroup criticism, and that only happened because it was so incredibly egregious. Remember, this was the LAST straw for me—not the first.
The thing about ingroupy status-quo bias is that you’ll justify one small thing after another, but when you get a big one-two punch—enough to shatter that bias and make you look at things from outside—your beliefs about the group can shift very rapidly. I had already been kind of leery about a number of things I’d seen, but the one-two-three punch of the Scott emails, Eliezer’s response, and the complete refusal of anyone I knew in the community to engage with these things as a problem, was that moment for me.
Even if I did give him credit for the edit—which I don’t, really—it was only the breaking point, not the sole reason I left.
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.
Hm, so. Even just saying you don’t give him credit for the edits is at least a partial acknowledgement in my book, if you actually mean “no credit” and not “a little credit but not enough”. It helps narrow down where we disagree, because I do give him credit for them—I think it would be better if he’d started with the current version, but I think it would be much worse if he’d stopped with the first version.
But also, I guess I still don’t really know what makes this a straw for you, last or otherwise. Like I don’t know if it would still be a straw if Eliezer had started with the current version. And I don’t really have a sense of what you think Eliezer thinks. (Or if you think “what Eliezer thinks” is even a thing it’s sensible to try to talk about.) It seems you think this was really bad[1], worse than Rob’s criticism (which I think I agree with) would suggest. But I don’t know why you think that.
Which, again. No obligation to share, and I think what you’ve already shared is an asset to the conversation. But that’s where I’m at.
[1]: I get this impression from your earlier comments. Describing it as “the last straw” kind of makes it sound like not a big deal individually, but I don’t think that’s what you intended?
It would still be a straw if it started with the current version, because it is defending Scott for holding positions and supporting people I find indefensible. The moment someone like Steve Sailer is part of your “general theory of who to listen to”, you’re intellectually dead to me.
The last straw for me is that the community didn’t respond to that with “wow, Scott’s a real POS, time to distance ourselves from him and diagnose why we ever thought he was someone we wanted around”. Instead, it responded with “yep that sounds about right”. Which means the community is as indefensible as Scott is. And Eliezer, specifically, doing it meant that it wasn’t even a case of “well maybe the rank and file have some problems but at least the leadership...”
I don’t. He made them only after ingroup criticism, and that only happened because it was so incredibly egregious. Remember, this was the LAST straw for me—not the first.
The thing about ingroupy status-quo bias is that you’ll justify one small thing after another, but when you get a big one-two punch—enough to shatter that bias and make you look at things from outside—your beliefs about the group can shift very rapidly. I had already been kind of leery about a number of things I’d seen, but the one-two-three punch of the Scott emails, Eliezer’s response, and the complete refusal of anyone I knew in the community to engage with these things as a problem, was that moment for me.
Even if I did give him credit for the edit—which I don’t, really—it was only the breaking point, not the sole reason I left.
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.
Hm, so. Even just saying you don’t give him credit for the edits is at least a partial acknowledgement in my book, if you actually mean “no credit” and not “a little credit but not enough”. It helps narrow down where we disagree, because I do give him credit for them—I think it would be better if he’d started with the current version, but I think it would be much worse if he’d stopped with the first version.
But also, I guess I still don’t really know what makes this a straw for you, last or otherwise. Like I don’t know if it would still be a straw if Eliezer had started with the current version. And I don’t really have a sense of what you think Eliezer thinks. (Or if you think “what Eliezer thinks” is even a thing it’s sensible to try to talk about.) It seems you think this was really bad[1], worse than Rob’s criticism (which I think I agree with) would suggest. But I don’t know why you think that.
Which, again. No obligation to share, and I think what you’ve already shared is an asset to the conversation. But that’s where I’m at.
[1]: I get this impression from your earlier comments. Describing it as “the last straw” kind of makes it sound like not a big deal individually, but I don’t think that’s what you intended?
It would still be a straw if it started with the current version, because it is defending Scott for holding positions and supporting people I find indefensible. The moment someone like Steve Sailer is part of your “general theory of who to listen to”, you’re intellectually dead to me.
The last straw for me is that the community didn’t respond to that with “wow, Scott’s a real POS, time to distance ourselves from him and diagnose why we ever thought he was someone we wanted around”. Instead, it responded with “yep that sounds about right”. Which means the community is as indefensible as Scott is. And Eliezer, specifically, doing it meant that it wasn’t even a case of “well maybe the rank and file have some problems but at least the leadership...”