Getting a strong current of “being smart and having interesting and current tastes is more important than trying to combat AI Danger, and I want all my online spaces to reflect this” from this. You even seem upset that Kat is contaminating subreddits that used to not be about Safety with Safety content… Like you’re mad about progress in embrace of AI Safety. You critique her for making millennial memes as if millennials don’t exist anymore (lesswrong is millennial and older) and content should only be for you.
You seem kinda self-aware of this at one point, but doesn’t that seem really petty and selfish of you?
I appreciate how upfront you are here, bc a lot of people who feel the same way disguise it behind moralistic or technical arguments. And your clarity should make it easier for you to get over yourself and come to your senses.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. The post is both venting for the fun of it (which, clearly, landed with absolutely nobody here) and earnestly questioning whether the content is net positive (which, clearly, very few interpreted as being earnest):
But honestly, is this content for the greater good? Are the clickbait titles causing people to earnestly engage? Are peoples’ minds being changed? Are people thinking thoughtfully about the facts and ideas being presented?
I don’t know. It seems like Kat Woods is spending a lot of time making these posts. Maybe, in true EA spirit, she’s also put effort into quantifying her impact. I want to give Kat Woods the person the benefit of the doubt here. [...] Certainly, personally, her content feels bad for my brain.
There is precedent for brands and/or causes making bad memes and suffering backlash. I mention PETA in the post. Another example is this Pepsi commercial. There is also specifically precedent for memes getting backlash because they are dated, e.g. this Wendy’s commercial. You might say that for brands all press is good press, but this seems less true to me when it comes to causes.
I don’t know a lot about PETA and whether their animal activism is considered net positive. On the one hand a cursory google seems to say they caused some vegetarian options at fast food restaurants to exist. On the other hand it wouldn’t be surprising if they shifted public sentiment negatively towards vegetarianism or veganism. That’s what most people think of when they think of PETA.
Anyway, you could imagine something similar happening with AI safety, where sufficiently bad memes cause people to not take it seriously.
I have a history in animal activism (both EA and mainstream) and I think PETA has been massively positive by pushing the Overton window. People think PETA isn’t working bc they feel angry at PETA when they feel judged or accused, but they update on how it’s okay to treat animals, and that’s the point. More moderate groups like the Humane Society get the credit, but it takes an ecosystem. You don’t have to be popular and well-liked to push the Overton window. You also don’t have to be a group that people want to identify with.
But I don’t think PETA’s an accurate comparison for Kat. It seems like you’re comparing Kat and PETA bc you would be embarrassed to be implicated by both, not bc they have the same tactics or extremity of message. And then the claim that other people will be turned off or misinformed becomes a virtuous pretext to get them and their ideas away from your social group and identity. But you haven’t open-mindedly tried to discover what’s good for the cause. You’re just using your kneejerk reaction to justify imposing your preferences.
There’s a missing mood here—you’re not interested in learning if Kat’s strategy is effective at AI Safety. You’re just asserting that what you like would be the best for saving everyone’s lives too and don’t really seem concerned about getting the right answer to the larger question.
Again, I have contempt for treating moral issues like a matter of ingroup coolness. This is the banality of evil as far as I’m concerned. It’s natural for humans but you can do better. The LessWrong community is supposed to help people not to do this but they aren’t honest with themselves about what they get out of AI Safety, which is something very similar to what you’ve expressed in this post (gatekept community, feeling smart, a techno-utopian aesthetic) instead of trying to discover in an open-minded way what’s actually the right approach to help the world.
“The LessWrong community is supposed to help people not to do this but they aren’t honest with themselves about what they get out of AI Safety, which is something very similar to what you’ve expressed in this post (gatekept community, feeling smart, a techno-utopian aesthetic) instead of trying to discover in an open-minded way what’s actually the right approach to help the world.
I have argued with this before—I have absolutely been through an open minded process to discover the right approach and I genuinely believe the likes of MIRI, pause AI movements are mistaken and harmful now, and increase P(doom). This is not gatekeeping or trying to look cool! You need to accept that there are people who have followed the field for >10 years, have heard all the arguments, used to believe Yud et all were mostly correct, and now agree with the positions of Pope/Belrose/Turntrout more. Do not belittle or insult them by assigning the wrong motives to them.
If you want a crude overview of my position
Superintelligence is extremely dangerous even though at least some of MIRI worldview is likely wrong.
P(doom) is a feeling, it is too uncertain to be rational about, however mine is about 20% if humanity develops TAI in the next <50 years. (This is probably more because of my personal psychology than a fact about the world and I am not trying to strongly pretend otherwise)
P(doom) if superintelligence was impossible is also about 20% for me, because the current tech (LLM etc) can clearly enable “1984” or worse type societies for which there is no comeback and extinction is preferable. Our current society/tech/world politics is not proven to stable.
Because of this, it is not at all clear what the best path forward is and people should have more humility about their proposed solutions. There is no obvious safe path forward given our current situation. (Yes if things had gone differently 20-50 years ago there perhaps could be...)
I left one comment replying to a critical comment this post got saying that it wasn’t being charitable (which turned into a series of replies) and now I find myself in a position (a habit?) of defending the OP from potentially-insufficiently-charitable criticisms. Hence, when I read your sentence...
There’s a missing mood here—you’re not interested in learning if Kat’s strategy is effective at AI Safety.
...my thought is: Are you sure? When I read the post I remember reading:
But if it’s for the greater good, maybe I should just stop being grumpy.
But honestly, is this content for the greater good? Are the clickbait titles causing people to earnestly engage? Are peoples’ minds being changed? Are people thinking thoughtfully about the facts and ideas being presented?
This series of questions seems to me like it’s wondering whether Kat’s strategy is effective at AI safety, which is the thing you’re saying it’s not doing.
(I just scrolled up on my phone and saw that OP actually quoted this herself in the comment you’re replying to. (Oops. I had forgotten this as I had read that comment yesterday.))
Sure, the OP is also clearly venting about her personal distaste for Kat’s posts, but it seems to me that she is also asking the question that you say she isn’t interested in: are Kat’s posts actually effective?
(Side note: I kind of regret leaving any comments on this post at all. It doesn’t seem like the post did a good job encouraging a fruitful discussion. Maybe OP and anyone else who wants to discuss the topic should start fresh somewhere else with a different context. Just to put an idea out there: Maybe it’d be a more productive use of everyone’s energy for e.g. OP, Kat, and you Holly to get on a call together and discuss what sort of content is best to create and promote to help the cause of AI safety, and then (if someone was interested in doing so) write up a summary of your key takeaways to share.)
Yeah, this is the first time I’ve commented on lesswrong in months and I would prefer to just be out of here. But OP was such nasty meangirl bullying that, when someone showed it to me, I wanted to push back.
If OP was geniunely curious, she could’ve looked for evidence beyond her personal feelings (e.g. ran an internet survey) and / or asked Kat privately. What OP did here is called “concern trolling”.
I agree that that would be evidence of OP being more curious. I just don’t think that given what OP actually did it can be said that she wasn’t curious at all.
Let’s just observe that your “fun” is policing someone’s popular memes, on an entirely different social media site that’s not LessWrong, because you find them cringe.
And what was all the more “fun” for you was to psychoanalyze and essentially pressure her to cut back with cancel culture tactics.
I say that because if you wanted to question the merits of the content and it being net-positive, wouldn’t you just post the memes themselves?
Trying to police a seperate site on LessWrong, and doing so by going after the poster for “fun” on the basis of divergent personal taste, seems not only like the “engagement baiting” you’re accusing her of but also legitimately scummy ethics.
If you and the LW forum holds itself to higher standards, I struggle to understand why it’s acceptable to have posts that expressly attempts to tarnish someone’s reputation largely because you think it’s fun to say that their jokes aren’t humorous.
expressly attempts to tarnish someone’s reputation
I don’t think that’s accurate. The OP clearly states:
One upfront caveat. I am speaking about “Kat Woods” the public figure, not the person. If you read something here and think, “That’s not a true/nice statement about Kat Woods”, you should know that I would instead like you to think “That’s not a true/nice statement about the public persona Kat Woods, the real human with complex goals who I’m sure is actually really cool if I ever met her, appears to be cultivating.”
What does it mean to tarnish the reputation of someone as a “public figure” and not as a person?
He’s a dick politician (but a great husband)?
Consumers are only aware of whatever is publicly known to them, so their reputation is entirely depenedent of what one thinks about the “public figure.”
Herego, his actions expressly are meant to tarnish her reputation.
I don’t think you’re being charitable. There is an important difference between a personal attack and criticism of the project someone is engaging in. My reading of the OP is that it’s the latter, while I understand you to be accusing the OP of the former.
He’s a dick politician (but a great husband)?
“Dick” is a term used for personal attacks.
If you said “He’s a bad politician; He’s a good husband and good man, and I know he’s trying to do good, but his policies are causing harm to the world” so we really shouldn’t support Pro-America Joe (or whatever—assume Pro-America is a cause we support and we just don’t agree with the way Joe goes about trying to promote America) then I’d say yes, that’s how we criticize Pro-America Joe without attacking him as a person.
This wasn’t criticism of just the project (e.g. her content), it was criticism of the person because of the content they make, because let’s be real a personal attack is much more damaging. And yes, it was meant to tarnish her reputation because, well, did you not read the headline of the post?
Sure, consumers may form their opinion of a person, their reputation, based on a composite knowledge of their professional or personal behavior, so the post’s caveat factors in one small way to the equation. But what drove reputation change here much more significantly is browsing name calling Kat in the headline, and orienting the entire post as a complaint towards her.
You think I’m being uncharitable? I think you’re being so charitable towards one passing caveat you’re ignoring the obvious goal here: to bully someone to get in line on another forum, largely because she doesn’t like the vibes and it’s fun to do. And that’s why I think this is so inappropriate for this forum.
And yes, it was meant to tarnish her reputation because, well, did you not read the headline of the post?
[...]
But what drove reputation change here much more significantly is browsing name calling Kat in the headline
The headline I see is “Everywhere I Look, I See Kat Woods”. What name is this calling Kat? Am I missing something?
And why do you think that you can infer that the OP’s intent was to tarnish Kat’s peraonal reputation from that headline? That doesn’t make any sense.
Anyway, I don’t know the OP, but I’m confident in saying that the information here is not sufficient to conclude she was making a personal attack.
If she said that was her intent, I’d change my mind. Or if she said something that was unambiguously a personal attack I’d change my mind, but at the moment I see no reason not to read the post as well meaning innocent criticism.
And that’s why I think this is so inappropriate for this forum.
I also don’t think it’s very appropriate for this forum (largely because the complaint is not about Kat’s posting stlye on LessWrong). I didn’t downvote it because it seemed like it had already received a harsh enough reaction, but I didn’t upvote it either.
I’m confident in saying that the information here is not sufficient to conclude she was making a personal attack.
A wild claim to make about a post that explictly centers around shaming Kat for her posting style predominantly because it’s “cringe”, by putting her name in the headline (what I meant by name-calling) and orienting the entire argument around her. If it wasn’t meant to tarnish her reputation, why not instead make the post about just her issues with the disagreeable content?
If she said that was her intent, I’d change my mind. Or if she said something that was unambiguously a personal attack I’d change my mind, but at the moment I see no reason not to read the post as well meaning innocent criticism...I also don’t think it’s very appropriate for this forum.
If intent was determined solely by someone’s words than I’d agree with you that her caveat made in passing indicates well-meaningness, but the standard you’ve set for determining intent is as naive as believing when someone says “I like you as a person” before they knock you out with a punch that they do not intend to cause you harm.
Even by her own words this is not “innocent criticism”, because she states that she dislikes the “deluge of posts” and her “futile downvotes accomplish nothing, so instead I am writing this blog post” which indicate she elevated her response to bring about behavior change, not by using the methods native to Reddit, but rather by leaning on those friendly to her position in the group to shame Kat into compliance.
Before you misquote me as analogizing this post to a punch, let me be clear that I’m merely observing you are clinging so minutely to small signals that are arguably misdirections, that you’re missing the extent to which browsing’s post is more than “inappropriate” as you acknowledge, because as I said it amounts to bullying someone to get in line on another forum, because it’s fun to do. Why don’t you hold yourself to a higher standard?
by putting her name in the headline (what I meant by name-calling)
Gotcha, that’s fair.
If it wasn’t meant to tarnish her reputation, why not instead make the post about just her issues with the disagreeable content?
I can think of multiple possible reasons. E.g. If OP sees a pattern of several bad or problematic posts, it can make sense to go above the object-level criticisms of those posts and talk about the meta-level questions.
but the standard you’ve set for determining intent is as naive as
Maybe, but in my view accusing someone of making personal attacks is a serious thing, so I’d rather be cautious, have a high bar of evidence, and take an “innocent until proven guilty” approach. Maybe I’ll be too charitable in some cases and fail to condemn someone for making a personal attack, but that’s worth it to avoid making the opposite mistake: accusing someone of making a personal attack who was doing no such thing.
because it’s fun to do
That stated fun motivation did bother me. Obviously given that people feel the post is attacking Kat personally making the post for fun isn’t a good enough reason. However, I do also see the post as raising legitmate questions about whether the sort of content that Kat produces and promotes a lot of is actually helping to raise the quality of discourse on EA and AI safety, etc, so it’s clearly not just a post for fun. The OP seemed to be fustrated and venting when writing the post, resulting in it having an unnecessarily harsh tone. But I don’t think this makes it amount to bullying.
Why don’t you hold yourself to a higher standard?
I try to. I guess we just disagree about which kind of mistake (described above) is worse. In the face of uncertainty, I think it’s better to caution on the side of not mistakenly accusing someone of bullying and engaging in a personal attack than on the side of mistakenly being too charitable and failing to call out someone who actually said something mean (especially when there are already a lot of other people in the comments like you doing that).
After she elevates Kat’s name to the headline; uses the entire post to insult her writing; draws on ageist tropes and perjoratives like “cringe” to make her case; explicitly chooses to share the message not with the writing’s intended audience but rather a specific in-group who shares a distaste for Reddit’s lower-brow content; doing so in an effort to rile up pressure to change her behavior on the other site; an all the more potent strike considering the context that Kat is already a well-known figure who presumably cares about her standing among LW/EA communities… you don’t believe this is bullying because Browsing dropped a passing caveat that Kat might be nice in personal relations and that her object-level issue was largely that the content checks notes “feels bad for my brain” like the equivalent of eating cheetos.
Huh?
Here’s the problem with your view. You’re so reluctant to “accuse” someone of a “personal attack” or “bullying” that when it happens, you’re lost trying to determine where the behavior lies in gray thresholds of the definition that you ignore the misbehavior in plain sight. That lacks common sense. If she didn’t want this to be a “personal attack”, she could have made many different choices along the way, which she obviously did not, the most prominent being posting on Reddit rather than here and not putting her name in the headline, on top of what you already pointed out was “unnecessarily harsh tone” and what I will deem shallow and uncharitable motivations like being “grumpy” about the vibes and mounting this attack for “fun”, a far more viscious kind of engagement bait than the memes she criticized.
I’m going to withdraw from this comment thread since I don’t think my further participation is a good use of time/energy. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and sorry we didn’t come to agreement.
When we got drill down into the crux of disagreement you walk away because it’s not a good use of time/energy. Of course you’re welcome to do that, but unfortunate.
Come on, William. “But they said their criticism of this person’s reputation wasn’t personal” is not good enough. It’s like calling to “no take backs” or something.
Thanks for the feedback, Holly. I really don’t want to accuse the OP of making a personal attack if OP’s intent was to not do that, and the reality is that I’m uncertain and can see a clear possibility that OP has no ill will toward Kat personally, so I’m not going to take the risk by making the accusation. Maybe my being on the autism spectrum is making me oblivious or something, in which case sorry I’m not able to see things as you seem them, but this is how I’m viewing the situation.
Getting a strong current of “being smart and having interesting and current tastes is more important than trying to combat AI Danger, and I want all my online spaces to reflect this” from this. You even seem upset that Kat is contaminating subreddits that used to not be about Safety with Safety content… Like you’re mad about progress in embrace of AI Safety. You critique her for making millennial memes as if millennials don’t exist anymore (lesswrong is millennial and older) and content should only be for you.
You seem kinda self-aware of this at one point, but doesn’t that seem really petty and selfish of you?
I appreciate how upfront you are here, bc a lot of people who feel the same way disguise it behind moralistic or technical arguments. And your clarity should make it easier for you to get over yourself and come to your senses.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. The post is both venting for the fun of it (which, clearly, landed with absolutely nobody here) and earnestly questioning whether the content is net positive (which, clearly, very few interpreted as being earnest):
There is precedent for brands and/or causes making bad memes and suffering backlash. I mention PETA in the post. Another example is this Pepsi commercial. There is also specifically precedent for memes getting backlash because they are dated, e.g. this Wendy’s commercial. You might say that for brands all press is good press, but this seems less true to me when it comes to causes.
I don’t know a lot about PETA and whether their animal activism is considered net positive. On the one hand a cursory google seems to say they caused some vegetarian options at fast food restaurants to exist. On the other hand it wouldn’t be surprising if they shifted public sentiment negatively towards vegetarianism or veganism. That’s what most people think of when they think of PETA.
Anyway, you could imagine something similar happening with AI safety, where sufficiently bad memes cause people to not take it seriously.
I have a history in animal activism (both EA and mainstream) and I think PETA has been massively positive by pushing the Overton window. People think PETA isn’t working bc they feel angry at PETA when they feel judged or accused, but they update on how it’s okay to treat animals, and that’s the point. More moderate groups like the Humane Society get the credit, but it takes an ecosystem. You don’t have to be popular and well-liked to push the Overton window. You also don’t have to be a group that people want to identify with.
But I don’t think PETA’s an accurate comparison for Kat. It seems like you’re comparing Kat and PETA bc you would be embarrassed to be implicated by both, not bc they have the same tactics or extremity of message. And then the claim that other people will be turned off or misinformed becomes a virtuous pretext to get them and their ideas away from your social group and identity. But you haven’t open-mindedly tried to discover what’s good for the cause. You’re just using your kneejerk reaction to justify imposing your preferences.
There’s a missing mood here—you’re not interested in learning if Kat’s strategy is effective at AI Safety. You’re just asserting that what you like would be the best for saving everyone’s lives too and don’t really seem concerned about getting the right answer to the larger question.
Again, I have contempt for treating moral issues like a matter of ingroup coolness. This is the banality of evil as far as I’m concerned. It’s natural for humans but you can do better. The LessWrong community is supposed to help people not to do this but they aren’t honest with themselves about what they get out of AI Safety, which is something very similar to what you’ve expressed in this post (gatekept community, feeling smart, a techno-utopian aesthetic) instead of trying to discover in an open-minded way what’s actually the right approach to help the world.
I have argued with this before—I have absolutely been through an open minded process to discover the right approach and I genuinely believe the likes of MIRI, pause AI movements are mistaken and harmful now, and increase P(doom). This is not gatekeeping or trying to look cool! You need to accept that there are people who have followed the field for >10 years, have heard all the arguments, used to believe Yud et all were mostly correct, and now agree with the positions of Pope/Belrose/Turntrout more. Do not belittle or insult them by assigning the wrong motives to them.
If you want a crude overview of my position
Superintelligence is extremely dangerous even though at least some of MIRI worldview is likely wrong.
P(doom) is a feeling, it is too uncertain to be rational about, however mine is about 20% if humanity develops TAI in the next <50 years. (This is probably more because of my personal psychology than a fact about the world and I am not trying to strongly pretend otherwise)
P(doom) if superintelligence was impossible is also about 20% for me, because the current tech (LLM etc) can clearly enable “1984” or worse type societies for which there is no comeback and extinction is preferable. Our current society/tech/world politics is not proven to stable.
Because of this, it is not at all clear what the best path forward is and people should have more humility about their proposed solutions. There is no obvious safe path forward given our current situation. (Yes if things had gone differently 20-50 years ago there perhaps could be...)
Hey Holly, great points about PETA.
I left one comment replying to a critical comment this post got saying that it wasn’t being charitable (which turned into a series of replies) and now I find myself in a position (a habit?) of defending the OP from potentially-insufficiently-charitable criticisms. Hence, when I read your sentence...
...my thought is: Are you sure? When I read the post I remember reading:
This series of questions seems to me like it’s wondering whether Kat’s strategy is effective at AI safety, which is the thing you’re saying it’s not doing.
(I just scrolled up on my phone and saw that OP actually quoted this herself in the comment you’re replying to. (Oops. I had forgotten this as I had read that comment yesterday.))
Sure, the OP is also clearly venting about her personal distaste for Kat’s posts, but it seems to me that she is also asking the question that you say she isn’t interested in: are Kat’s posts actually effective?
(Side note: I kind of regret leaving any comments on this post at all. It doesn’t seem like the post did a good job encouraging a fruitful discussion. Maybe OP and anyone else who wants to discuss the topic should start fresh somewhere else with a different context. Just to put an idea out there: Maybe it’d be a more productive use of everyone’s energy for e.g. OP, Kat, and you Holly to get on a call together and discuss what sort of content is best to create and promote to help the cause of AI safety, and then (if someone was interested in doing so) write up a summary of your key takeaways to share.)
Yeah, this is the first time I’ve commented on lesswrong in months and I would prefer to just be out of here. But OP was such nasty meangirl bullying that, when someone showed it to me, I wanted to push back.
If OP was geniunely curious, she could’ve looked for evidence beyond her personal feelings (e.g. ran an internet survey) and / or asked Kat privately. What OP did here is called “concern trolling”.
I agree that that would be evidence of OP being more curious. I just don’t think that given what OP actually did it can be said that she wasn’t curious at all.
Let’s just observe that your “fun” is policing someone’s popular memes, on an entirely different social media site that’s not LessWrong, because you find them cringe.
And what was all the more “fun” for you was to psychoanalyze and essentially pressure her to cut back with cancel culture tactics.
I say that because if you wanted to question the merits of the content and it being net-positive, wouldn’t you just post the memes themselves?
Trying to police a seperate site on LessWrong, and doing so by going after the poster for “fun” on the basis of divergent personal taste, seems not only like the “engagement baiting” you’re accusing her of but also legitimately scummy ethics.
If you and the LW forum holds itself to higher standards, I struggle to understand why it’s acceptable to have posts that expressly attempts to tarnish someone’s reputation largely because you think it’s fun to say that their jokes aren’t humorous.
I don’t think that’s accurate. The OP clearly states:
What does it mean to tarnish the reputation of someone as a “public figure” and not as a person?
He’s a dick politician (but a great husband)?
Consumers are only aware of whatever is publicly known to them, so their reputation is entirely depenedent of what one thinks about the “public figure.”
Herego, his actions expressly are meant to tarnish her reputation.
I don’t think you’re being charitable. There is an important difference between a personal attack and criticism of the project someone is engaging in. My reading of the OP is that it’s the latter, while I understand you to be accusing the OP of the former.
“Dick” is a term used for personal attacks.
If you said “He’s a bad politician; He’s a good husband and good man, and I know he’s trying to do good, but his policies are causing harm to the world” so we really shouldn’t support Pro-America Joe (or whatever—assume Pro-America is a cause we support and we just don’t agree with the way Joe goes about trying to promote America) then I’d say yes, that’s how we criticize Pro-America Joe without attacking him as a person.
This wasn’t criticism of just the project (e.g. her content), it was criticism of the person because of the content they make, because let’s be real a personal attack is much more damaging. And yes, it was meant to tarnish her reputation because, well, did you not read the headline of the post?
Sure, consumers may form their opinion of a person, their reputation, based on a composite knowledge of their professional or personal behavior, so the post’s caveat factors in one small way to the equation. But what drove reputation change here much more significantly is browsing name calling Kat in the headline, and orienting the entire post as a complaint towards her.
You think I’m being uncharitable? I think you’re being so charitable towards one passing caveat you’re ignoring the obvious goal here: to bully someone to get in line on another forum, largely because she doesn’t like the vibes and it’s fun to do. And that’s why I think this is so inappropriate for this forum.
The headline I see is “Everywhere I Look, I See Kat Woods”. What name is this calling Kat? Am I missing something?
And why do you think that you can infer that the OP’s intent was to tarnish Kat’s peraonal reputation from that headline? That doesn’t make any sense.
Anyway, I don’t know the OP, but I’m confident in saying that the information here is not sufficient to conclude she was making a personal attack.
If she said that was her intent, I’d change my mind. Or if she said something that was unambiguously a personal attack I’d change my mind, but at the moment I see no reason not to read the post as well meaning innocent criticism.
I also don’t think it’s very appropriate for this forum (largely because the complaint is not about Kat’s posting stlye on LessWrong). I didn’t downvote it because it seemed like it had already received a harsh enough reaction, but I didn’t upvote it either.
A wild claim to make about a post that explictly centers around shaming Kat for her posting style predominantly because it’s “cringe”, by putting her name in the headline (what I meant by name-calling) and orienting the entire argument around her. If it wasn’t meant to tarnish her reputation, why not instead make the post about just her issues with the disagreeable content?
If intent was determined solely by someone’s words than I’d agree with you that her caveat made in passing indicates well-meaningness, but the standard you’ve set for determining intent is as naive as believing when someone says “I like you as a person” before they knock you out with a punch that they do not intend to cause you harm.
Even by her own words this is not “innocent criticism”, because she states that she dislikes the “deluge of posts” and her “futile downvotes accomplish nothing, so instead I am writing this blog post” which indicate she elevated her response to bring about behavior change, not by using the methods native to Reddit, but rather by leaning on those friendly to her position in the group to shame Kat into compliance.
Before you misquote me as analogizing this post to a punch, let me be clear that I’m merely observing you are clinging so minutely to small signals that are arguably misdirections, that you’re missing the extent to which browsing’s post is more than “inappropriate” as you acknowledge, because as I said it amounts to bullying someone to get in line on another forum, because it’s fun to do. Why don’t you hold yourself to a higher standard?
Gotcha, that’s fair.
I can think of multiple possible reasons. E.g. If OP sees a pattern of several bad or problematic posts, it can make sense to go above the object-level criticisms of those posts and talk about the meta-level questions.
Maybe, but in my view accusing someone of making personal attacks is a serious thing, so I’d rather be cautious, have a high bar of evidence, and take an “innocent until proven guilty” approach. Maybe I’ll be too charitable in some cases and fail to condemn someone for making a personal attack, but that’s worth it to avoid making the opposite mistake: accusing someone of making a personal attack who was doing no such thing.
That stated fun motivation did bother me. Obviously given that people feel the post is attacking Kat personally making the post for fun isn’t a good enough reason. However, I do also see the post as raising legitmate questions about whether the sort of content that Kat produces and promotes a lot of is actually helping to raise the quality of discourse on EA and AI safety, etc, so it’s clearly not just a post for fun. The OP seemed to be fustrated and venting when writing the post, resulting in it having an unnecessarily harsh tone. But I don’t think this makes it amount to bullying.
I try to. I guess we just disagree about which kind of mistake (described above) is worse. In the face of uncertainty, I think it’s better to caution on the side of not mistakenly accusing someone of bullying and engaging in a personal attack than on the side of mistakenly being too charitable and failing to call out someone who actually said something mean (especially when there are already a lot of other people in the comments like you doing that).
Let me get this straight.
After she elevates Kat’s name to the headline; uses the entire post to insult her writing; draws on ageist tropes and perjoratives like “cringe” to make her case; explicitly chooses to share the message not with the writing’s intended audience but rather a specific in-group who shares a distaste for Reddit’s lower-brow content; doing so in an effort to rile up pressure to change her behavior on the other site; an all the more potent strike considering the context that Kat is already a well-known figure who presumably cares about her standing among LW/EA communities… you don’t believe this is bullying because Browsing dropped a passing caveat that Kat might be nice in personal relations and that her object-level issue was largely that the content checks notes “feels bad for my brain” like the equivalent of eating cheetos.
Huh?
Here’s the problem with your view. You’re so reluctant to “accuse” someone of a “personal attack” or “bullying” that when it happens, you’re lost trying to determine where the behavior lies in gray thresholds of the definition that you ignore the misbehavior in plain sight. That lacks common sense. If she didn’t want this to be a “personal attack”, she could have made many different choices along the way, which she obviously did not, the most prominent being posting on Reddit rather than here and not putting her name in the headline, on top of what you already pointed out was “unnecessarily harsh tone” and what I will deem shallow and uncharitable motivations like being “grumpy” about the vibes and mounting this attack for “fun”, a far more viscious kind of engagement bait than the memes she criticized.
I’m going to withdraw from this comment thread since I don’t think my further participation is a good use of time/energy. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and sorry we didn’t come to agreement.
When we got drill down into the crux of disagreement you walk away because it’s not a good use of time/energy. Of course you’re welcome to do that, but unfortunate.
OP is a woman not a man.
Come on, William. “But they said their criticism of this person’s reputation wasn’t personal” is not good enough. It’s like calling to “no take backs” or something.
Thanks for the feedback, Holly. I really don’t want to accuse the OP of making a personal attack if OP’s intent was to not do that, and the reality is that I’m uncertain and can see a clear possibility that OP has no ill will toward Kat personally, so I’m not going to take the risk by making the accusation. Maybe my being on the autism spectrum is making me oblivious or something, in which case sorry I’m not able to see things as you seem them, but this is how I’m viewing the situation.