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.
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.