I get that this is an argument one could make. But the reason I started this tangent was because you said:
Here CM doesn’t directly argue that there was any benefit to doxxing; instead he kinda conveys a vibe / ideology that if something is true then it is self-evidently intrinsically good to publish it
That is, my original argument was not in response to the “Anyway, if the true benefit is zero (as I believe), then we don’t have to quibble over whether the cost was big or small” part of your post, it was to the vibe/ideology part.
Where I was trying to say, it doesn’t seem to me that Cade Metz was the one who introduced this vibe/ideology, rather it seems to have been introduced by rationalists prior to this, specifically to defend tinkering with taboo topics.
Like, you mention that Cade Metz conveys this vibe/ideology that you disagree with, and you didn’t try to rebut I directly, I assumed because Cade Metz didn’t defend it but just treated it as obvious.
And that’s where I’m saying, since many rationalists including Scott Alexander have endorsed this ideology, there’s a sense in which it seems wrong, almost rude, to not address it directly. Like a sort of Motte-Bailey tactic.
I get that this is an argument one could make. But the reason I started this tangent was because you said:
That is, my original argument was not in response to the “Anyway, if the true benefit is zero (as I believe), then we don’t have to quibble over whether the cost was big or small” part of your post, it was to the vibe/ideology part.
Where I was trying to say, it doesn’t seem to me that Cade Metz was the one who introduced this vibe/ideology, rather it seems to have been introduced by rationalists prior to this, specifically to defend tinkering with taboo topics.
Like, you mention that Cade Metz conveys this vibe/ideology that you disagree with, and you didn’t try to rebut I directly, I assumed because Cade Metz didn’t defend it but just treated it as obvious.
And that’s where I’m saying, since many rationalists including Scott Alexander have endorsed this ideology, there’s a sense in which it seems wrong, almost rude, to not address it directly. Like a sort of Motte-Bailey tactic.