There is no disagreement that only a small percentage of LWers believe in it (just as there’s no disagreement that only a small % of scientologists are even aware of the more arcane aspects of their “religion”). But yeah if you had a survey the actual % may be worth listing on RW.
There is no disagreement that only a small percentage of LWers believe in it
The coverage of the basilisk I’ve seen in the media does not include that, IIRC.
there’s no disagreement that only a small % of scientologists are even aware of the more arcane aspects of their “religion”
Given the widespread mockery of those aspects & their failure to keep it under wraps, I’m not sure how ignorant the rank and file these days really are.
The coverage of the basilisk I’ve seen in the media does not include that, IIRC.
But then, media is not really focussing on the peripheral aspects of the movement. They’re interested in what’s being radiated from the core, that’s why it is basilisk in the spotlight and not some random insane guy pondering the efficacy of shooting people rather than blowing them up, even though the latter is in principle more outrageous.
Given the widespread mockery of those aspects & their failure to keep it under wraps, I’m not sure how ignorant the rank and file these days really are.
There’s just so many stupid details besides the big concepts like thetans...
But then, media is not really focussing on the peripheral aspects of the movement.
The census provides a lot of ways to define core and most of them likely would give the answer that the majority of the LW core think differently than Eliezer about the basilisk.
The basilisk isn’t a very central idea of that FAI thing.
If you define remarkability the way Seth Godin does, LW might be remarkable in this case.
I don’t know whether FAI is central enough that a journalist get’s tasked to do a story about FAI and then finds LW and writes a story about the basilisk. It might very well have been that the journalist heard about LW and then found that it makes a good publishable story.
Lastly the article that could be said to be written about me because they write directly about my person are in the context of QS and not FAI.
Central ideas are those that matter for the discourse about the idea. In academia that means ideas in academic papers. Ideas that are important enough that they get space in textbooks.
Given low little academic papers MIRI publishes there might be central ideas that are unpublished and still important but I don’t think the basilisk is among them by any reasonable count..
The most important tenet of the Catholic Church is probably something like “Jesus died for our sins”.
The tenets of the Catholic Church that critics pay the most attention to are their beliefs on abortion, contraceptives, homosexuality, etc. even though they are widely ignored by Catholics and certainly less central than “Jesus died for our sins”. Why? Because even though the church would describe them as less important, they are the ones that get non-churchmembers the most worried. And they are consequences of the church’s core beliefs, even if not (by church standards) the most important ones.
And it’s completely legitimate to criticize the church for its stand on abortion, and not criticize it for the matters that the church considers more important.
The basilisk is every bit as central to criticsm of LW as abortion is to criticism of Catholicism, even if it’s not central to the church and most LWers don’t believe it. Most Catholics are fine with abortion too.
The Catholic Church spends a great deal of effort trying to influence the secular politics of abortion, with effects on the lives of non-Catholics. This is why non-Catholics criticize it. Less Wrong spends no time at all trying to influence the world at large with respect to Roko’s basilisk. It is an amusing episode, but not likely to cause any problems for anybody.
Use the Galileo analogy then. The Pope’s belief that Galileo, while right on the facts, shouldn’t have challenged the church has pretty much no influence on anyone’s lives, but still gets criticism.
Also, LW has as its goal influencing the world about rationality and AI, and it seems that LW or at least Eliezer is unable to disentangle the Basilisk from tthe ideas it does want to spread. (Again, Eliezer doesn’t believe in the Basilisk exactly as stated, but he does believe Basilisk-like ideas could be dangerous.)
The tenets of the Catholic Church that critics pay the most attention to are their beliefs on abortion, contraceptives, homosexuality, etc. even though they are widely ignored by Catholics and certainly less central than “Jesus died for our sins”.
If you ask a catholic priest whether the position of the church on abortion is important for him, I think he will say “yes”. I you count official speeches and writing by popes I also think that abortion will come up from time to time.
The basilisk is every bit as central to criticsm of LW
We are not talking about criticism of LW. LW as it stands is not important enough in society as a whole to warrant criticism from journalism.
We are talking about centrality to FAI under the assumption that it’s a topic that journalists want to write about. maybe in the background of Transcendence that raised the topic a bit in public awareness.
If you ask a catholic priest whether the position of the church on abortion is important for him, I think he will say “yes”.
It’s not an exact analogy, but it’s close because it’s much more important to outsiders than to insiders.
The basilisk isn’t directly a LW idea. but the basilisk follows from LW-style ideas and is close enough that Eliezer couldn’t just say “nothing like the basilisk could possibly work”. A closer analogy may be more like, oh, geocentricism. The church does not believe that geocentricism is true any more than LW believes in the basilisk. On the other hand, the man who became the current Pope has pretty much said that the church was right in its treatment of Galileo even if the church was wrong about geocentricism itself. And you still see this used to criticize the church. And I doubt that many priests would think that the way the church treated Galileo is very important compared to either abortion or Jesus dying for our sins.
Well, the point is, almost nobody cares about LW and where LW fits in. Few people have some ideas that are interesting due to the sheer ridiculousness, rest of the board is of no interest.
Define “believe in the basilisk”. Even Eliezer doesn’t believe in the basilisk exactly as stated. But he does believe that basilisk-like ideas could be dangerous for basilisk-like reasons.
Geez, this might be the only issue so contentious that it can attract significant downvotes to a “did the survey” comment. Ironic that an alleged literal-mindkiller would become such a figurative-mindkiller.
Done. Too bad the basilisk question wasn’t on it; I hope that will one day be possible.
There is no disagreement that only a small percentage of LWers believe in it (just as there’s no disagreement that only a small % of scientologists are even aware of the more arcane aspects of their “religion”). But yeah if you had a survey the actual % may be worth listing on RW.
The coverage of the basilisk I’ve seen in the media does not include that, IIRC.
Given the widespread mockery of those aspects & their failure to keep it under wraps, I’m not sure how ignorant the rank and file these days really are.
But then, media is not really focussing on the peripheral aspects of the movement. They’re interested in what’s being radiated from the core, that’s why it is basilisk in the spotlight and not some random insane guy pondering the efficacy of shooting people rather than blowing them up, even though the latter is in principle more outrageous.
There’s just so many stupid details besides the big concepts like thetans...
The census provides a lot of ways to define core and most of them likely would give the answer that the majority of the LW core think differently than Eliezer about the basilisk.
Media is not writing about you. Or LW. It is writing about that FAI thing for which LW is just an online board that is in and of itself unremarkable.
The basilisk isn’t a very central idea of that FAI thing.
If you define remarkability the way Seth Godin does, LW might be remarkable in this case.
I don’t know whether FAI is central enough that a journalist get’s tasked to do a story about FAI and then finds LW and writes a story about the basilisk. It might very well have been that the journalist heard about LW and then found that it makes a good publishable story.
Lastly the article that could be said to be written about me because they write directly about my person are in the context of QS and not FAI.
What counts as a central idea? Does it have to be believed by a majority of the rank and file? Or is it sufficient that it is believed by the leader?
Central ideas are those that matter for the discourse about the idea. In academia that means ideas in academic papers. Ideas that are important enough that they get space in textbooks.
Given low little academic papers MIRI publishes there might be central ideas that are unpublished and still important but I don’t think the basilisk is among them by any reasonable count..
The most important tenet of the Catholic Church is probably something like “Jesus died for our sins”.
The tenets of the Catholic Church that critics pay the most attention to are their beliefs on abortion, contraceptives, homosexuality, etc. even though they are widely ignored by Catholics and certainly less central than “Jesus died for our sins”. Why? Because even though the church would describe them as less important, they are the ones that get non-churchmembers the most worried. And they are consequences of the church’s core beliefs, even if not (by church standards) the most important ones.
And it’s completely legitimate to criticize the church for its stand on abortion, and not criticize it for the matters that the church considers more important.
The basilisk is every bit as central to criticsm of LW as abortion is to criticism of Catholicism, even if it’s not central to the church and most LWers don’t believe it. Most Catholics are fine with abortion too.
The Catholic Church spends a great deal of effort trying to influence the secular politics of abortion, with effects on the lives of non-Catholics. This is why non-Catholics criticize it. Less Wrong spends no time at all trying to influence the world at large with respect to Roko’s basilisk. It is an amusing episode, but not likely to cause any problems for anybody.
Use the Galileo analogy then. The Pope’s belief that Galileo, while right on the facts, shouldn’t have challenged the church has pretty much no influence on anyone’s lives, but still gets criticism.
Also, LW has as its goal influencing the world about rationality and AI, and it seems that LW or at least Eliezer is unable to disentangle the Basilisk from tthe ideas it does want to spread. (Again, Eliezer doesn’t believe in the Basilisk exactly as stated, but he does believe Basilisk-like ideas could be dangerous.)
If you ask a catholic priest whether the position of the church on abortion is important for him, I think he will say “yes”. I you count official speeches and writing by popes I also think that abortion will come up from time to time.
We are not talking about criticism of LW. LW as it stands is not important enough in society as a whole to warrant criticism from journalism.
We are talking about centrality to FAI under the assumption that it’s a topic that journalists want to write about. maybe in the background of Transcendence that raised the topic a bit in public awareness.
It’s not an exact analogy, but it’s close because it’s much more important to outsiders than to insiders.
The basilisk isn’t directly a LW idea. but the basilisk follows from LW-style ideas and is close enough that Eliezer couldn’t just say “nothing like the basilisk could possibly work”. A closer analogy may be more like, oh, geocentricism. The church does not believe that geocentricism is true any more than LW believes in the basilisk. On the other hand, the man who became the current Pope has pretty much said that the church was right in its treatment of Galileo even if the church was wrong about geocentricism itself. And you still see this used to criticize the church. And I doubt that many priests would think that the way the church treated Galileo is very important compared to either abortion or Jesus dying for our sins.
Well, the point is, almost nobody cares about LW and where LW fits in. Few people have some ideas that are interesting due to the sheer ridiculousness, rest of the board is of no interest.
If you are dealing with media and the write partly about you, it’s quite useful to understand what they do care about in more detail.
Define “believe in the basilisk”. Even Eliezer doesn’t believe in the basilisk exactly as stated. But he does believe that basilisk-like ideas could be dangerous for basilisk-like reasons.
There’s no such thing as basilisk exactly as stated, because it has never been stated exactly.
It would have been a nice insurance agains possible future PR shitstorms. Was that your primary reason for suggesting it?
Yes.
Geez, this might be the only issue so contentious that it can attract significant downvotes to a “did the survey” comment. Ironic that an alleged literal-mindkiller would become such a figurative-mindkiller.