By the way, Phil Goetz’s comment (of those you linked to) is, far from being an example of your thesis—despite the quoted bit—a perfect illustration, and explanation, of what I am talking about. Phil is arguing for the same thing that I am!
I don’t think I understand your claim here. After the quoted bit, Phil seems to then go on and say that it is important that people try less hard to just understand Eliezer’s ideas and instead develop our own ideas independently of Eliezer, since most conversations in which we just asked Eliezer for clarification tend to not go super well, and seem to clog up his time, and actively prevent independent intellectual progress from happening.
I do agree there is some similarity between the pattern that Phil describes of someone “trying to give their interpretation of what Eliezer is saying” and Eliezer responding negatively to that, which I do think is evidence against the specific fix I suggested for your comments, though I don’t think the conversations would go any different if you were to just ask Eliezer the questions you tend to ask of people currently on LessWrong. So it’s more evidence of the difficulty of the problem, than evidence against the damage of the thing that I am trying to point to as damaging.
By the way, Phil Goetz’s comment (of those you linked to) is, far from being an example of your thesis—despite the quoted bit—a perfect illustration, and explanation, of what I am talking about. Phil is arguing for the same thing that I am!
I don’t think I understand your claim here. After the quoted bit, Phil seems to then go on and say that it is important that people try less hard to just understand Eliezer’s ideas and instead develop our own ideas independently of Eliezer, since most conversations in which we just asked Eliezer for clarification tend to not go super well, and seem to clog up his time, and actively prevent independent intellectual progress from happening.
I do agree there is some similarity between the pattern that Phil describes of someone “trying to give their interpretation of what Eliezer is saying” and Eliezer responding negatively to that, which I do think is evidence against the specific fix I suggested for your comments, though I don’t think the conversations would go any different if you were to just ask Eliezer the questions you tend to ask of people currently on LessWrong. So it’s more evidence of the difficulty of the problem, than evidence against the damage of the thing that I am trying to point to as damaging.