“well, I sure have to at least do a lot of straussian reading if I want to understand what people actually believe, and should expect that depending on the circumstances community leaders might make up sophisticated stories for why pretty obviously true things are false in order to not have to deal with complicated political issues”
I kinda disagree that this is a mere issue of Straussian reading: I suspect that in this (and other cases), you are seeing the raw output of Elizer’s rationalizations and not some sort of instrumental coalition politics dark arts. If I was going for some sort of Straussian play, I wouldn’t bring it up unprompted or make long public declarations like this.
Zack is hypersensitive to this one issue because it interacts with his Something to Protect. But what I wonder about is where else Eliezer is trying to get away with things like this.
Yeah, I agree with this in this specific instance, hence the “at least do a lot of straussian reading”, part. I do think that there is a spectrum from radical honesty to straussian reading to something that looks like this, and that I do think it makes sense to consider the straussian case in many situations.
I kinda disagree that this is a mere issue of Straussian reading: I suspect that in this (and other cases), you are seeing the raw output of Elizer’s rationalizations and not some sort of instrumental coalition politics dark arts. If I was going for some sort of Straussian play, I wouldn’t bring it up unprompted or make long public declarations like this.
Zack is hypersensitive to this one issue because it interacts with his Something to Protect. But what I wonder about is where else Eliezer is trying to get away with things like this.
Yeah, I agree with this in this specific instance, hence the “at least do a lot of straussian reading”, part. I do think that there is a spectrum from radical honesty to straussian reading to something that looks like this, and that I do think it makes sense to consider the straussian case in many situations.