You cannot beg off responsibility for power that you actually do possess. “Alice put a post on your web forum saying that all green-eyed, black-haired people are dirty wiggins and maybe we should bisect them all! Are you really OK with that!?”
Youtube and Reddit all have a mostly hands-off approach towards moderation. When people use poor grammar and poor spelling on those sites, the administrators don’t come down and say that those comments are not allowed. When near-illiterate people make garbage comments on those websites, people don’t assume that the creators and administrators are also nearly illiterate.
Sure, it states that the creators and administrators are willing to tolerate low-quality comments. What does that say about them? Nothing, actually, except that they espouse freedom of expression.
I believe that the same principle is at play here, on this website. Although Eliezer Yudkowsky isn’t willing to tolerate idiocy on this website, he is willing to tolerate intelligent dissent. I recall a discussion a while back about how a physicist felt that Eliezer’s presentation of the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics, and how it must be “obviously correct”, is wrong. The mods could have deleted that thread immediately; however the mods were shown to tolerate that.
Likewise, I think that we have the option of tolerating intelligent discussions concerning what type of torture is acceptable vs what type of torture is unacceptable, or whether certain forms of violence qualify as disproportionate force or not. Tolerating an open discussion is never a liability.
As I said in my comment below, I think that if there is a justification for this decision, it would be to prevent intelligent discussions from being derailed by emotional responses.
I have some trouble with your logic.
Youtube and Reddit all have a mostly hands-off approach towards moderation. When people use poor grammar and poor spelling on those sites, the administrators don’t come down and say that those comments are not allowed. When near-illiterate people make garbage comments on those websites, people don’t assume that the creators and administrators are also nearly illiterate.
Sure, it states that the creators and administrators are willing to tolerate low-quality comments. What does that say about them? Nothing, actually, except that they espouse freedom of expression.
I believe that the same principle is at play here, on this website. Although Eliezer Yudkowsky isn’t willing to tolerate idiocy on this website, he is willing to tolerate intelligent dissent. I recall a discussion a while back about how a physicist felt that Eliezer’s presentation of the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics, and how it must be “obviously correct”, is wrong. The mods could have deleted that thread immediately; however the mods were shown to tolerate that.
Likewise, I think that we have the option of tolerating intelligent discussions concerning what type of torture is acceptable vs what type of torture is unacceptable, or whether certain forms of violence qualify as disproportionate force or not. Tolerating an open discussion is never a liability.
As I said in my comment below, I think that if there is a justification for this decision, it would be to prevent intelligent discussions from being derailed by emotional responses.