I’m tired of folks projecting motives and views onto you that aren’t entailed by what you’ve actually said merely because your words triggered an association with people who do have bad motives who’ve said somewhat similar things.
Yes indeed—it’s the phenomenon of pattern-completion, the same thing that Eliezer talks about all the time in the context of his views on the Singularity. People expect certain opinions or characteristics to go together, so that when a person exhibits a subset of these, people’s brains complete the pattern and automatically fill in the rest, regardless of whether or not the rest is actually there.
It’s incredibly frustrating, but also predictable. I should have seen it coming.
To satisfy my own curiosity, could you clarify you original thoughts when making the comment you got jumped on for? What did you think might make it controversial? What do you now think of the comment, and what have you learned from the responses to it?
There’s a limit to how much I can say without breaking my vow to never again discuss the underlying topic. Basically, it was an honest passing thought that should have been censored. In the context of explaining specific reservations about a portion of a comment by SarahC, I briefly took a broader view, focused on a more general human problem, and more-or-less offhandedly wondered whether a solution could be found by tweaking in a certain direction.
I expected it to be controversial in the sense that I thought people would be strongly inclined to reject the proposal. It sounds incredibly naïve now, but I thought people would reply by saying “no, that wouldn’t work” or “that’s not the real source of the problem” or “you won’t find a solution by going down that particular path”. I had little or no notion that I was at risk of being treated like the next Sexist Villain. If I had to verbalize my unconscious, automatic thought processes, I suppose what I thought was that I had built up too much of a reputation here as a reasonable person for that!
I had forgotten how many different people read this site, and how little of a detailed model of me they have.
Yes indeed—it’s the phenomenon of pattern-completion, the same thing that Eliezer talks about all the time in the context of his views on the Singularity. People expect certain opinions or characteristics to go together, so that when a person exhibits a subset of these, people’s brains complete the pattern and automatically fill in the rest, regardless of whether or not the rest is actually there.
It’s incredibly frustrating, but also predictable. I should have seen it coming.
There’s a limit to how much I can say without breaking my vow to never again discuss the underlying topic. Basically, it was an honest passing thought that should have been censored. In the context of explaining specific reservations about a portion of a comment by SarahC, I briefly took a broader view, focused on a more general human problem, and more-or-less offhandedly wondered whether a solution could be found by tweaking in a certain direction.
I expected it to be controversial in the sense that I thought people would be strongly inclined to reject the proposal. It sounds incredibly naïve now, but I thought people would reply by saying “no, that wouldn’t work” or “that’s not the real source of the problem” or “you won’t find a solution by going down that particular path”. I had little or no notion that I was at risk of being treated like the next Sexist Villain. If I had to verbalize my unconscious, automatic thought processes, I suppose what I thought was that I had built up too much of a reputation here as a reasonable person for that!
I had forgotten how many different people read this site, and how little of a detailed model of me they have.
The illusion of transparency strikes again!