Looking over this again and thinking for a few minutes, I see why (a) the claim isn’t technically false, and (b) it’s nonetheless confusing.
Why (a): Let’s just take a fragment of the claim: “the problems I experienced at MIRI and CFAR were not unique or unusually severe for people in the professional-managerial class. By the law of excluded middle, the only possible alternative hypothesis is that the problems I experienced at MIRI and CFAR were unique or at least unusually severe”.
This is straightforwardly true: either ¬(x>y), or x>y. Where x is “how severe were the problems I experienced at MIRI and CFAR were” and y is “how severe the problems for people in the professional-managerial class generally are”.
Why (b): in context it’s followed by a claim about regular society being infinitely corrupt etc; that would require y to be above some absolute threshold, z. So it looks like I’m asserting the disjunction (¬(x>y)∧y>z)∨x>y, which isn’t tautological. So there’s a misleading Gricean implicature.
I’ll edit to make this clearer.
Similarly, you seem to partially conflate the actions of Ziz, who I consider an outright enemy of the community, with actions of “mainstream” community leaders. This does not strike me as a very honest way to engage.
In the previous post I said Ziz formed a “splinter group”, in this post I said Ziz was “marginal” and has a “negative reputation among central Berkeley rationalists”.
Looking over this again and thinking for a few minutes, I see why (a) the claim isn’t technically false, and (b) it’s nonetheless confusing.
Why (a): Let’s just take a fragment of the claim: “the problems I experienced at MIRI and CFAR were not unique or unusually severe for people in the professional-managerial class. By the law of excluded middle, the only possible alternative hypothesis is that the problems I experienced at MIRI and CFAR were unique or at least unusually severe”.
This is straightforwardly true: either ¬(x>y), or x>y. Where x is “how severe were the problems I experienced at MIRI and CFAR were” and y is “how severe the problems for people in the professional-managerial class generally are”.
Why (b): in context it’s followed by a claim about regular society being infinitely corrupt etc; that would require y to be above some absolute threshold, z. So it looks like I’m asserting the disjunction (¬(x>y)∧y>z)∨x>y, which isn’t tautological. So there’s a misleading Gricean implicature.
I’ll edit to make this clearer.
In the previous post I said Ziz formed a “splinter group”, in this post I said Ziz was “marginal” and has a “negative reputation among central Berkeley rationalists”.