a) A lot of your points are specifically about Altman and the board, whereas many of my points started that way but then went into the abstract/hypothetical/philosophical. At least, that’s how I meant it – I should have made this more clear. I was assuming, for the sake of the argument, that we’re speaking of a situation where the person in the board’s position found out that someone else is deceptive to their very core, with no redeeming principles they adhere to. So, basically what you’re describing in your point “I” with the lizardpeople. I focused on that type of discussion because I felt like you were attacking my principles, and I care about defending my specific framework of integrity. (I’ve commented elsewhere on things that I think the board should or shouldn’t have done, so I also care about that, but I probably already spent too many comments on speculations about the board’s actions.) Specifically about the actual situation with Altman, you say: “I’m saying that you should honor the agreement you’ve made to wield your power well and not cruelly or destructively. It seems to me that it has likely been wielded very aggressively and in a way where I cannot tell that it was done justly.” I very much agree with that, fwiw. I think it’s very possible that the board did not act with integrity here. I’m just saying that I can totally see circumstances where they did act with integrity. The crux for me is “what did they believe about Altman and how confident were they in their take, and did they make an effort to factor in moral injunctions against using their power in a self-serving way, etc?”
b) You make it seem like I’m saying that it’s okay to move against people (and e.g. oust them) without justifying yourself later or giving them the chance to reply at some point later when they’re in a less threatening position. I think we’re on the same page about this: I don’t believe that it would be okay to do these things. I wasn’t saying that you don’t have to stand answer to what you did. I was just saying that it can, under some circumstances, be okay to act first and then explain yourself to others later and establish yourself as still being trustworthy.
c) About your first point (point “I”), I disagree. I think you’re too deontological here. Numbers do count. Being unfair to someone who you think is a bad actor but turns out they aren’t has a victim count of one. Letting a bad actor take over the startup/community/world you care about has a victim count of way more than one. I also think it can be absolutely shocking how high this can go (in terms of various types of harms caused by the bad tail of bad actors) depending on the situation. E.g., think of Epstein or dictators. On top of that, there are indirect bad effects that don’t quite fit the name “victim count” but that still weigh heavily, such as distorted epistemics or destruction of a high-trust environment when it gets invaded by bad actors. Concretely, I feel like when you talk about the importance of the variable “respect towards Altman in the context of how much notice to give him,” I’m mostly thinking, sure, it would be nice to be friendly and respectful, but that’s a small issue compared to considerations like “if the board is correct, how much could he mobilize opposition against them if he had a longer notice period?” So, I thought three months notice would be inappropriate given what’s asymmetrically at stake on both sides of the equation. (It might change once we factor in optics and how it’ll be easier for Altman to mobilize opposition if he can say he was treated unfairly – for some reason, this always works wonders. DARVO is like dark magic. Sure, it sucks for Altman to lose a 100 billion company that they built. But an out-of-control CEO recklessly building the most dangerous tech in the world sucks more for way more people in expectation.) In the abstract, I think it would be an unfair and inappropriate sense of what matters if a single person who is accused of being a bad actor gets more respect than their many victims would suffer in expectation. And I’m annoyed that it feels like you took the moral high ground here by making it seem like my positions are immoral. But maybe you meant the “shame on yourself” for just one isolated sentence, and not my stance as a whole. I’d find that more reasonable. In any case, I understand now that you probably feel bothered for an analogous reason, namely that I made a remark about how it’s naive to be highly charitable or cooperative under circumstances where I think it’s no longer appropriate. I want to flag that nothing you wrote in your newest reply seems naive to me, even though I do find it misguided. (The only thing that I thought was maybe naive was the point about three months notice – though I get why you made it and I generally really appreciate examples like that about concrete things the board could have done. I just think it would backfire when someone would use these months to make moves against you.)
d) The “shame on yourself” referred to something where you perceived me to be tribal, but I don’t really get what that was about. You write “and (c) kind of saying your tribe is the only one with good people in it.” This is not at all what I was kind of saying. I was saying my tribe is the only one with people who are “naive in such-and-such specific way” in it, and yeah, that was unfair towards EAs, but then it’s not tribal (I self-identify as EA), and I feel like it’s okay to use hyperbole this way sometimes to point at something that I perceive to be a bit of a problem in my tribe. In any case, it’s weirdly distorting things when you then accuse me of something that only makes sense if you import your frame on what I said. I didn’t think of this as being a virtue, so I wasn’t claiming that other communities don’t also have good people.
e) Your point “III” reminds me of this essay by Eliezer titled “Meta-Honesty: Firming Up Honesty Around Its Edge-Cases.” Just like Eliezer in that essay explains that there are circumstances where he thinks you can hide info or even deceive, there are circumstances where I think you can move against someone and oust them without advance notice. If a prospective CEO interviews me as a board member, I’m happy to tell them exactly under which circumstances I would give them advance notice (or things like second and third chances) and under which ones I wouldn’t. (This is what reminded me of the essay and the dialogues with the Gestapo officer.) (That said, I’d decline the role because I’d probably have overdosed on anxiety medication if I had been in the OpenAI board’s position.) The circumstances would have to be fairly extreme for me not to give advanced warnings or second chances, so if a CEO thinks I’m the sort of person who doesn’t have a habit of interpreting lots of things in a black-and-white and uncharitable manner, then they wouldn’t have anything to fear if they’re planning on behaving well and are at least minimally skilled at trust-building/making themselves/their motives/reasons for actions transparent.
f) You say: “I think it is damaging to the trust people place in board members, to see them act with so little respect or honor. It reduces everyone’s faith in one another to see people in powerful positions behave badly.” I agree that it’s damaging, but the way I see it, the problem here is the existence of psychopaths and other types of “bad actors” (or “malefactors”). They are why issues around trust and trustworthiness are sometimes so vexed and complicated. It would be wonderful if such phenotypes didn’t exist, but we have to face reality. It doesn’t actually help “the social fabric/fabric of trust” if one lends too much trust to people who abuse it to harm others and add more deception. On the contrary, it makes things worse.
g) I appreciate what you say in the first paragraph of your point IV! I feel the same way about this. (I should probably have said this earlier in my reply, but I’m about to go to sleep and so don’t want to re-alphabetize all of the points.)
a) A lot of your points are specifically about Altman and the board, whereas many of my points started that way but then went into the abstract/hypothetical/philosophical. At least, that’s how I meant it – I should have made this more clear. I was assuming, for the sake of the argument, that we’re speaking of a situation where the person in the board’s position found out that someone else is deceptive to their very core, with no redeeming principles they adhere to. So, basically what you’re describing in your point “I” with the lizardpeople. I focused on that type of discussion because I felt like you were attacking my principles, and I care about defending my specific framework of integrity. (I’ve commented elsewhere on things that I think the board should or shouldn’t have done, so I also care about that, but I probably already spent too many comments on speculations about the board’s actions.)
Specifically about the actual situation with Altman, you say:
“I’m saying that you should honor the agreement you’ve made to wield your power well and not cruelly or destructively. It seems to me that it has likely been wielded very aggressively and in a way where I cannot tell that it was done justly.”
I very much agree with that, fwiw. I think it’s very possible that the board did not act with integrity here. I’m just saying that I can totally see circumstances where they did act with integrity. The crux for me is “what did they believe about Altman and how confident were they in their take, and did they make an effort to factor in moral injunctions against using their power in a self-serving way, etc?”
b) You make it seem like I’m saying that it’s okay to move against people (and e.g. oust them) without justifying yourself later or giving them the chance to reply at some point later when they’re in a less threatening position. I think we’re on the same page about this: I don’t believe that it would be okay to do these things. I wasn’t saying that you don’t have to stand answer to what you did. I was just saying that it can, under some circumstances, be okay to act first and then explain yourself to others later and establish yourself as still being trustworthy.
c) About your first point (point “I”), I disagree. I think you’re too deontological here. Numbers do count. Being unfair to someone who you think is a bad actor but turns out they aren’t has a victim count of one. Letting a bad actor take over the startup/community/world you care about has a victim count of way more than one. I also think it can be absolutely shocking how high this can go (in terms of various types of harms caused by the bad tail of bad actors) depending on the situation. E.g., think of Epstein or dictators. On top of that, there are indirect bad effects that don’t quite fit the name “victim count” but that still weigh heavily, such as distorted epistemics or destruction of a high-trust environment when it gets invaded by bad actors. Concretely, I feel like when you talk about the importance of the variable “respect towards Altman in the context of how much notice to give him,” I’m mostly thinking, sure, it would be nice to be friendly and respectful, but that’s a small issue compared to considerations like “if the board is correct, how much could he mobilize opposition against them if he had a longer notice period?” So, I thought three months notice would be inappropriate given what’s asymmetrically at stake on both sides of the equation. (It might change once we factor in optics and how it’ll be easier for Altman to mobilize opposition if he can say he was treated unfairly – for some reason, this always works wonders. DARVO is like dark magic. Sure, it sucks for Altman to lose a 100 billion company that they built. But an out-of-control CEO recklessly building the most dangerous tech in the world sucks more for way more people in expectation.) In the abstract, I think it would be an unfair and inappropriate sense of what matters if a single person who is accused of being a bad actor gets more respect than their many victims would suffer in expectation. And I’m annoyed that it feels like you took the moral high ground here by making it seem like my positions are immoral. But maybe you meant the “shame on yourself” for just one isolated sentence, and not my stance as a whole. I’d find that more reasonable. In any case, I understand now that you probably feel bothered for an analogous reason, namely that I made a remark about how it’s naive to be highly charitable or cooperative under circumstances where I think it’s no longer appropriate. I want to flag that nothing you wrote in your newest reply seems naive to me, even though I do find it misguided. (The only thing that I thought was maybe naive was the point about three months notice – though I get why you made it and I generally really appreciate examples like that about concrete things the board could have done. I just think it would backfire when someone would use these months to make moves against you.)
d) The “shame on yourself” referred to something where you perceived me to be tribal, but I don’t really get what that was about. You write “and (c) kind of saying your tribe is the only one with good people in it.” This is not at all what I was kind of saying. I was saying my tribe is the only one with people who are “naive in such-and-such specific way” in it, and yeah, that was unfair towards EAs, but then it’s not tribal (I self-identify as EA), and I feel like it’s okay to use hyperbole this way sometimes to point at something that I perceive to be a bit of a problem in my tribe. In any case, it’s weirdly distorting things when you then accuse me of something that only makes sense if you import your frame on what I said. I didn’t think of this as being a virtue, so I wasn’t claiming that other communities don’t also have good people.
e) Your point “III” reminds me of this essay by Eliezer titled “Meta-Honesty: Firming Up Honesty Around Its Edge-Cases.” Just like Eliezer in that essay explains that there are circumstances where he thinks you can hide info or even deceive, there are circumstances where I think you can move against someone and oust them without advance notice. If a prospective CEO interviews me as a board member, I’m happy to tell them exactly under which circumstances I would give them advance notice (or things like second and third chances) and under which ones I wouldn’t. (This is what reminded me of the essay and the dialogues with the Gestapo officer.) (That said, I’d decline the role because I’d probably have overdosed on anxiety medication if I had been in the OpenAI board’s position.)
The circumstances would have to be fairly extreme for me not to give advanced warnings or second chances, so if a CEO thinks I’m the sort of person who doesn’t have a habit of interpreting lots of things in a black-and-white and uncharitable manner, then they wouldn’t have anything to fear if they’re planning on behaving well and are at least minimally skilled at trust-building/making themselves/their motives/reasons for actions transparent.
f) You say:
“I think it is damaging to the trust people place in board members, to see them act with so little respect or honor. It reduces everyone’s faith in one another to see people in powerful positions behave badly.”
I agree that it’s damaging, but the way I see it, the problem here is the existence of psychopaths and other types of “bad actors” (or “malefactors”). They are why issues around trust and trustworthiness are sometimes so vexed and complicated. It would be wonderful if such phenotypes didn’t exist, but we have to face reality. It doesn’t actually help “the social fabric/fabric of trust” if one lends too much trust to people who abuse it to harm others and add more deception. On the contrary, it makes things worse.
g) I appreciate what you say in the first paragraph of your point IV! I feel the same way about this. (I should probably have said this earlier in my reply, but I’m about to go to sleep and so don’t want to re-alphabetize all of the points.)