You don’t have to justify your updates to me (and also, I agree that the comment I wrote was too combative, and I’m sorry), but I want to respond to this because the context of this reply implies that I’m against against weird ideas. I vehemently dispute this. My main point was that it’s possible to argue for censorship for genuine reasons (rather than become one is closed-minded). I didn’t advocate for censoring anything, and I don’t think I’m in the habit of downvoting things because they’re weird, at all.
This may sound unbelievable or seem like a warped framing, but I honestly felt like I was going against censorship by writing that comment. Like as a description of my emotional state while writing it, that was absolutely how I felt. Because I viewed (and still view) your post as a character attack on people-who-think-that-sometimes-censorship-is-justified, and one that’s primarily based on an emotional appeal rather than a consequentialist argument. And well, you’re a very high prestige person. Posts like this, if they get no pushback, make it extremely emotionally difficult to argue for a pro-censorship position regardless of the topic. So even though I acknowledge the irony, it genuinely did feel like you were effectively censoring pro-censorship arguments, even if that wasn’t the intent.
I guess you could debate whether or not censoring pro-censorship views is pro or anti censorship. But regardless, I think it’s bad. It’s not impossible for reality to construct a situation in which censorship is necessary. In fact, I think they already exist; if someone posts a trick that genuinely accelerates AI capabilities by 5 years, I want that be censored. (Almost all examples I’d think of would relate to AI or viruses.) The probability that something in this class happens on LW is not high, but it’s high enough that we need to be able to talk about this without people feeling like they’re impure for suggesting it.
You don’t have to justify your updates to me (and also, I agree that the comment I wrote was too combative, and I’m sorry), but I want to respond to this because the context of this reply implies that I’m against against weird ideas. I vehemently dispute this. My main point was that it’s possible to argue for censorship for genuine reasons (rather than become one is closed-minded). I didn’t advocate for censoring anything, and I don’t think I’m in the habit of downvoting things because they’re weird, at all.
This may sound unbelievable or seem like a warped framing, but I honestly felt like I was going against censorship by writing that comment. Like as a description of my emotional state while writing it, that was absolutely how I felt. Because I viewed (and still view) your post as a character attack on people-who-think-that-sometimes-censorship-is-justified, and one that’s primarily based on an emotional appeal rather than a consequentialist argument. And well, you’re a very high prestige person. Posts like this, if they get no pushback, make it extremely emotionally difficult to argue for a pro-censorship position regardless of the topic. So even though I acknowledge the irony, it genuinely did feel like you were effectively censoring pro-censorship arguments, even if that wasn’t the intent.
I guess you could debate whether or not censoring pro-censorship views is pro or anti censorship. But regardless, I think it’s bad. It’s not impossible for reality to construct a situation in which censorship is necessary. In fact, I think they already exist; if someone posts a trick that genuinely accelerates AI capabilities by 5 years, I want that be censored. (Almost all examples I’d think of would relate to AI or viruses.) The probability that something in this class happens on LW is not high, but it’s high enough that we need to be able to talk about this without people feeling like they’re impure for suggesting it.
I stumbled over this part. What makes someone high prestige? Their total LW karma? To me that doesn’t really make sense as a proxy for prestige.