I don’t think that’s the main thrust of his complaint. Lack of specifics is the main problem. If you say “Something must be done!” but not what, then the tone of the writing is moot, so far as righteousness-detectors go.
But at the end of the day, this is supposed to be a rationalist community. All I did was communicate a true fact, without attempting to “sound righteous”—which is a form of social signalling.
If we cannot state true facts without false accusations of social signalling being levelled—well, then we have a long we to go as a rationalist group.
Telling someone off because they tripped your righteousness detector when all they are trying to do is present an accurate piece of the map is not good group epistemic rationality.
I don’t think that’s the main thrust of his complaint. Lack of specifics is the main problem. If you say “Something must be done!” but not what, then the tone of the writing is moot, so far as righteousness-detectors go.
But at the end of the day, this is supposed to be a rationalist community. All I did was communicate a true fact, without attempting to “sound righteous”—which is a form of social signalling.
If we cannot state true facts without false accusations of social signalling being levelled—well, then we have a long we to go as a rationalist group.
Telling someone off because they tripped your righteousness detector when all they are trying to do is present an accurate piece of the map is not good group epistemic rationality.
As discussed I screwed this post up. I wanted to split up the two tasks logically:
establish that there really is a problem
say what to do about it—IN THE NEXT POST!
I could have rolled it all into one big post, but that’s a lot of material.