I have an extremely negative emotional reaction to this.
More seriously. While LW can be construed as “trying to promote something” (i.e. rational thinking), in my opinion it is mostly a place to have rational discussions, using much stronger discursive standards than elsewhere on the internet.
If people decide to judge us on cherry pickings, that is sad, but it is much better than having them control what topics are or are not allowed. I am with Ben on this one.
About your friend in particular, if they have to be turned off of the community because of some posts and the fact we engage with idea at the object-level instead of yucking-out socially awkward ideas, then she might not yet be ready to receive rationality in her heart.
This post triggers a big “NON-QUANTITATIVE ARGUMENT” alarm in my head.
I’m not super confident in my ability to assess what the quantities are, but I’m extremely confident that they matter. It seems to me like your post could be written in exactly the same way if the “wokeness” phenomenon was “half as large” (fewer people care about, or they don’t care as strongly). Or, if it was twice as large. But this can’t be good – any sensible opinion on this issue has to depend on the scope of the problem, unless you think it’s in principle inconceivable for the wokeness phenomenon to be prevalent enough to matter.
I’ve explained the two categories I’m worried about here, and while there have been some updates since (biggest one: it may be good talk about politics now if we assume AI safety is going to be politicized anyway), I still think about it in roughly those terms. Is this a framing that makes sense to you?
It very much is a non-quantitative argument—since it’s a matter of principle. The principle being not to let outside perceptions dictate the topic of conversations.
I can think of situations were the principles could be broken, or unproductive. If upholding it would make it impossible to have these discussions in the first place (because engaging would mean you get stoned, or something) and hiding is not an option (or still too risky), then it would make sense to move conversations towards the overton window.
Said otherwise, the quantity I care about is “ability to have quote rational unquote conversations” and no amount of outside woke prevalence can change that *as long as they don’t drive enough community member away*. It will be a sad day for freedom and for all of us if that ends up one day being the case.
I have an extremely negative emotional reaction to this.
More seriously. While LW can be construed as “trying to promote something” (i.e. rational thinking), in my opinion it is mostly a place to have rational discussions, using much stronger discursive standards than elsewhere on the internet.
If people decide to judge us on cherry pickings, that is sad, but it is much better than having them control what topics are or are not allowed. I am with Ben on this one.
About your friend in particular, if they have to be turned off of the community because of some posts and the fact we engage with idea at the object-level instead of yucking-out socially awkward ideas, then she might not yet be ready to receive rationality in her heart.
This post triggers a big “NON-QUANTITATIVE ARGUMENT” alarm in my head.
I’m not super confident in my ability to assess what the quantities are, but I’m extremely confident that they matter. It seems to me like your post could be written in exactly the same way if the “wokeness” phenomenon was “half as large” (fewer people care about, or they don’t care as strongly). Or, if it was twice as large. But this can’t be good – any sensible opinion on this issue has to depend on the scope of the problem, unless you think it’s in principle inconceivable for the wokeness phenomenon to be prevalent enough to matter.
I’ve explained the two categories I’m worried about here, and while there have been some updates since (biggest one: it may be good talk about politics now if we assume AI safety is going to be politicized anyway), I still think about it in roughly those terms. Is this a framing that makes sense to you?
It very much is a non-quantitative argument—since it’s a matter of principle. The principle being not to let outside perceptions dictate the topic of conversations.
I can think of situations were the principles could be broken, or unproductive. If upholding it would make it impossible to have these discussions in the first place (because engaging would mean you get stoned, or something) and hiding is not an option (or still too risky), then it would make sense to move conversations towards the overton window.
Said otherwise, the quantity I care about is “ability to have quote rational unquote conversations” and no amount of outside woke prevalence can change that *as long as they don’t drive enough community member away*. It will be a sad day for freedom and for all of us if that ends up one day being the case.