Well, if counterfactually Roko hadn’t wanted to take it down I think it would have been even more of a mistake to delete it, because then the author would have been peeved, not just the audience/commenters.
But Eliezer’s comments on the subject suggest to me that he doesn’t think that.
More specifically, they suggest that he thinks the most important thing is that the post not be viewable, and if we can achieve that by quietly convincing the author to take it down, great, and if we can achieve it by quietly deleting it without anybody noticing, great, and if we can’t do either of those then we achieve it without being quiet, which is less great but still better than leaving it up.
And it seemed to me your parenthetical could be taken to mean that he agrees with you that deleting it would be a mistake in all of those cases, so I figured I would clarify (or let myself be corrected, if I’m misunderstanding).
Just to be clear: he recognizes this by comparison with the alternative of privately having the poster delete it themselves, rather than by comparison to not-deleting.
Or at least that was my understanding.
Regardless, thanks for a breath of clarity in this thread. As a mostly disinterested newcomer, I very much appreciated it.
Well, if counterfactually Roko hadn’t wanted to take it down I think it would have been even more of a mistake to delete it, because then the author would have been peeved, not just the audience/commenters.
Which is fine.
But Eliezer’s comments on the subject suggest to me that he doesn’t think that.
More specifically, they suggest that he thinks the most important thing is that the post not be viewable, and if we can achieve that by quietly convincing the author to take it down, great, and if we can achieve it by quietly deleting it without anybody noticing, great, and if we can’t do either of those then we achieve it without being quiet, which is less great but still better than leaving it up.
And it seemed to me your parenthetical could be taken to mean that he agrees with you that deleting it would be a mistake in all of those cases, so I figured I would clarify (or let myself be corrected, if I’m misunderstanding).