It’s completely orthogonal to the point that I’m making.
If somebody reads something and comes to a strange conclusion, there’s got to be some sort of five-second level trigger that stops them and says, “Wait, is this really what they’re saying?” The responses to the essay made it evident that there’s a lot of people that failed to have that reaction in that case.
That point is completely independent from any aesthetic/ethical judgments regarding the essay itself. If you want to debate that, I suggest talking to the author, and not me.
I’d have wondered about it myself if I hadn’t had prior evidence that Gwern wasn’t a crazy person, so I’m not convinced that it’s as obviously surface-innocuous as you feel it is. Perhaps I’ve been biased by hearing crazy-nerd stories (and actually going looking for them, ’cos I find them interesting). And I do think the PR disaster potential was something I would class as obvious, even if terrorist threats from web forum postings are statistically bogeyman stories.
I suspect we’ve reached the talking past each other stage.
It’s completely orthogonal to the point that I’m making.
If somebody reads something and comes to a strange conclusion, there’s got to be some sort of five-second level trigger that stops them and says, “Wait, is this really what they’re saying?” The responses to the essay made it evident that there’s a lot of people that failed to have that reaction in that case.
That point is completely independent from any aesthetic/ethical judgments regarding the essay itself. If you want to debate that, I suggest talking to the author, and not me.
I’d have wondered about it myself if I hadn’t had prior evidence that Gwern wasn’t a crazy person, so I’m not convinced that it’s as obviously surface-innocuous as you feel it is. Perhaps I’ve been biased by hearing crazy-nerd stories (and actually going looking for them, ’cos I find them interesting). And I do think the PR disaster potential was something I would class as obvious, even if terrorist threats from web forum postings are statistically bogeyman stories.
I suspect we’ve reached the talking past each other stage.