Many of the specific statements related to a bunch of MIRI stuff seem straightforwardly false to me. They might be honest misunderstandings. In many cases Ziz was shown pretty clear and concrete evidence on what happened, but then just decided that their favorite narrative is correct, and is now just repeatedly announcing that narrative as true. I don’t know whether I would count this as lying, but like, it definitely includes making many wrong statements, and with a process that seems mostly driven by motivated cognition.
Ziz has quoted me a few times. Frequently these quotes are outright fabrications, such as this one: “He suggested me saying this was defamation.” and “the same man who threatened frivolous defamation lawsuits to deter me from relating what Vassar said”. I am extremely hesitant to generally call things defamation and have quite strong personal rules against bringing in defamation lawsuits. I never said that sentence or tried to imply it in the conversation that is being referenced.
Many other people I’ve talked to who were quoted by Ziz felt their statements drastically distorted, enough to really very seriously change their truth-value. I can confirm this based on the above.
While I don’t think any of the above requires “lying”, I do think it makes most statements from Ziz straightforwardly untrustworthy.
Thanks, I appreciate the concrete examples of untrustworthiness than don’t rely on inferences made about reputation. I am specifically concerned about things like this (which seems like a weird and bad direction to take a conversation (https://sinceriously.fyi/net-negative/). It also seems hard to recount falsely without active deception or complete detachment from reality and I doubt Ziz is completely detached from reality:
They asked if I’d rape their corpse. Part of me insisted this was not going as it was supposed to. But I decided inflicting discomfort in order to get reliable information was a valid tactic.
You say that you “never said that sentence or tried to imply it...” Do you have any sense of why Ziz interpreted you as saying that? I’d like to gauge the distance between what you said and how Ziz interpreted it to gauge degree-of-untrustworthiness.
Do you have any sense of why Ziz interpreted you as saying that?
I don’t know. I think part of the conversation was about some meta-level stuff on when it’s just and fair to attack MIRI and other institutions if they do something terrible. I don’t think I remember the details, but I might have said something like “I generally think it would be bad to make up outright lies and falsehoods about a thing, and I do think that if someone is very obviously making stuff up, something like a defamation lawsuit might make sense as a kind of last resort, though I am generally quite hesitant about defamation lawsuits and think they are pretty bad for the world”.
Again, I don’t remember the details, sadly. It was over 3 years ago. But my sense is that transforming sentences like the above into sentences like the one Ziz accuses me of is how most of their “quotes” work.
Some of my thoughts on Ziz’s honesty:
Many of the specific statements related to a bunch of MIRI stuff seem straightforwardly false to me. They might be honest misunderstandings. In many cases Ziz was shown pretty clear and concrete evidence on what happened, but then just decided that their favorite narrative is correct, and is now just repeatedly announcing that narrative as true. I don’t know whether I would count this as lying, but like, it definitely includes making many wrong statements, and with a process that seems mostly driven by motivated cognition.
Ziz has quoted me a few times. Frequently these quotes are outright fabrications, such as this one: “He suggested me saying this was defamation.” and “the same man who threatened frivolous defamation lawsuits to deter me from relating what Vassar said”. I am extremely hesitant to generally call things defamation and have quite strong personal rules against bringing in defamation lawsuits. I never said that sentence or tried to imply it in the conversation that is being referenced.
Many other people I’ve talked to who were quoted by Ziz felt their statements drastically distorted, enough to really very seriously change their truth-value. I can confirm this based on the above.
While I don’t think any of the above requires “lying”, I do think it makes most statements from Ziz straightforwardly untrustworthy.
Thanks, I appreciate the concrete examples of untrustworthiness than don’t rely on inferences made about reputation. I am specifically concerned about things like this (which seems like a weird and bad direction to take a conversation (https://sinceriously.fyi/net-negative/). It also seems hard to recount falsely without active deception or complete detachment from reality and I doubt Ziz is completely detached from reality:
You say that you “never said that sentence or tried to imply it...” Do you have any sense of why Ziz interpreted you as saying that? I’d like to gauge the distance between what you said and how Ziz interpreted it to gauge degree-of-untrustworthiness.
I don’t know. I think part of the conversation was about some meta-level stuff on when it’s just and fair to attack MIRI and other institutions if they do something terrible. I don’t think I remember the details, but I might have said something like “I generally think it would be bad to make up outright lies and falsehoods about a thing, and I do think that if someone is very obviously making stuff up, something like a defamation lawsuit might make sense as a kind of last resort, though I am generally quite hesitant about defamation lawsuits and think they are pretty bad for the world”.
Again, I don’t remember the details, sadly. It was over 3 years ago. But my sense is that transforming sentences like the above into sentences like the one Ziz accuses me of is how most of their “quotes” work.