Like the previous post, there’s something weird about the framing here that makes me suspicious of this. It feels like certain perspectives are being “smuggled in”—for example:
Scott asserts that Michael Vassar thinks “regular society is infinitely corrupt and conformist and traumatizing”. This is hyperbolic (infinite corruption would leave nothing to steal) but Michael and I do believe that 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, significantly worse than companies like Google for employees’ mental well-being.
This looks like a logical claim at first glance—of course the only options are “the problems weren’t unique or severe” or “the problems were unique and severe”—but posing the matter this way conflates problems that you had as an individual (“the problems I experienced”) with problems with the broader organization (“significantly worse… for employees’ well-being”), which I do not think have been adequately established to exist.
I think this is improper because it jumps from problems you had as an individual to problems that applied to the well-being of employees as a whole without having proved that this was the case. In other words, it feels like this argument is trying to smuggle in the premise that the problems you experienced were also problems for a broader group of employees as a whole, which I think has not properly been established.
Another perspective—and one which your framing seems to exclude—would be that your experience was unusually severe, but that the unique or unusual element had to do with personal characteristics of yours, particular conflicts or interactions you-in-particular had with others in the organization, or similar.
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.
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”.
Like the previous post, there’s something weird about the framing here that makes me suspicious of this. It feels like certain perspectives are being “smuggled in”—for example:
This looks like a logical claim at first glance—of course the only options are “the problems weren’t unique or severe” or “the problems were unique and severe”—but posing the matter this way conflates problems that you had as an individual (“the problems I experienced”) with problems with the broader organization (“significantly worse… for employees’ well-being”), which I do not think have been adequately established to exist.
I think this is improper because it jumps from problems you had as an individual to problems that applied to the well-being of employees as a whole without having proved that this was the case. In other words, it feels like this argument is trying to smuggle in the premise that the problems you experienced were also problems for a broader group of employees as a whole, which I think has not properly been established.
Another perspective—and one which your framing seems to exclude—would be that your experience was unusually severe, but that the unique or unusual element had to do with personal characteristics of yours, particular conflicts or interactions you-in-particular had with others in the organization, or similar.
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.
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”.