Has anyone else been disgusted by how partisan and mindkilled many “rationality figureheads” have been during this election?
I’ve stopped supporting 80,000 Hours because of their employees’ writings and lost trust in CFAR; I now see them as political think tanks that are possibly even more biased and broken than the average organization.
Rationality is not Kolinahr: if a hot iron is traveling towards your face, the rational reaction is not “huh!” but getting the hell out of the way. To mean that it is possible to talk about politics, and to talk passionately, and still being rational. Not to defend 80k or CFAR, but “being partisan” is most definitely NOT “being mindkilled”. They travel on two orthogonal dimensions. On the other hand, it is totally possible that those figureheads were indeed mindkilled. I have followed only what Yudkowski said: what are examples of being mindkilled? Have they acknowledged such behaviour afterwards?
Is there any 80,000/CFAR statement on Trump or are you just talking about the personal writings of individual people who happen to work in these organizations?
(Also, did you consistently think it was wrong for them to fervently espouse the AI-as-existential risk narrative?)
No, I don’t think that either organization has taken an official stance, and I respect them for that. I’ve also talked with some people within 80,000 Hours who are clearly not mind-killed; who have been very reasonable and convincing instead. I was maybe a bit too harsh and do not mean this as a recommendation that everyone should stop supporting these organizations.
(Very rarely—that’s a good point. If you imagine people fighting between two different friendly AI approaches with the same fervor, though..)
edit: someone may think this comment doesn’t contribute at all. the someone that did also took the additional step of downvoting the OP, so make of that what you will.
As I’m waiting to watch the Trump Obama meeting, I’m changing my mind to elaborate. I’ve never really been an active participator in the LW community and if I’m going to distance myself further so be it. As an example, compare this to this and this. If Eliezer actually believed that politics is the mind killer and had any interest in intellectual honesty, he would admit he was hoodwinked by that live action roleplay game of his. He won’t, hence my disgust.
I don’t see anything in those posts that point to mindkilled partisanship. (And I’m very anti-EY on many points, so I’m not giving him any handicap here.)
The first was a statement of confusion about the behavior of the equity markets surrounding the US election. This seems a very reasonable observation to make.
The second was a long article pointing out that politics does sometimes have real world consequences, things you have to pay attention to even if you’d rather ignore politics in general. It explicitly mentions the difference between political partisanship theater (the mind-killing stuff), and the business of running the world. Most of the article is actually about when politics should be relevant to a rationalist and when it should be ignored. Also I’m not sure why you think he was hoodwinked by the live action simulation? I’ve participated in one of these before as a corporate training event and in university (both under different circumstances), and I have to say they are very effective educational tools.
The third is literally a single sentence.
What exactly do you find hypocritical about these posts?
Can you give some examples? I haven’t paid much attention to this.
While we’re on the topic, “politics is the mind-killer” isn’t sufficiently broad in my opinion. People can frequently are “mind-killed” in other areas, especially when conflicts of interest are involved. My experience suggests certain topics like diet tend to go just as poorly as politics.
Claiming Trump as the most significant current existential risk, and prioritizing political activism over all other charity work, are the two that I was most offended by. These were usually not backed by any rigorous analysis or explanation, just the assumption that the reader conforms to the beliefs.
But I think ultimately, it was the frequency and amount of emotion and hostility that was shown that made my mind image these people as mind-killed.
Thanks. I agree that those examples are problematic. Do you have the link for Trump being the most significant current existential risk? I think he’s a major risk, but relatively less important than many other things.
The biggest risk from him is starting a major war and/or using nuclear weapons, but as I recall from speaking with Vaniver, not everyone thinks he’s a higher risk than Clinton would be in that area.
Outside of Trump’s family the person who knows Trump best said “I genuinely believe that if Trump wins and gets the nuclear codes there is an excellent possibility it will lead to the end of civilization”, as a significant X-risk makes sense.
In contrast to an X-risk like UFAI, it was a lot of tractable and thus there were rational arguments to exert more resources on it.
The political aspect can as well mean that you misjudge the risk posed.
A statement made by a lifelong liberal writer, who was offended by Trump’s lifestyle. Trump has short attention span, and doesn’t read books—therefore he will use nukes!
Predicting one person’s proclivity to cause nuclear war is an incredibly complicated prediction problem, and one flimsy and tribally motivated statement has almost zero predictive power. If I see a reasonable analysis, which considers both candidates and what kind of scenarios could actually lead to nuclear war; I’m ready to change my beliefs.
Why do you call a statement made in a long article and based on spending over a year studying Trump while listing in to his calls ‘flimsy’?
On his facebook EY describes having taken part in a scenario planning exercise that ended up with nuclear war simply because the players miscalculated their moves.
Having a short attention span and not listening to experts who study the possible moves leads to miscalculated moves.
Nuclear war happens when other wars escalate because no side is willing to make move that look like a local loss or concessions to the other side.
The US basically has undeclared wars with most countries including Nato countries like Germany that are under cyber attacks by the US (the US considers cyber attacks to be acts of war). At the same time the NSA doesn’t use their powers to the maximum.
When the Obama administration or Clinton administration runs cyber attacks against German targets there’s less pressure on German political leaders to retaliate then when a Trump administration does so.
You also forget the lying. Lying to his ghostwriter about the size of his business deal is illustrative. Trump is going to lie to various people inside his administration. That’s going to make it a lot harder for that administration to make effective moves.
Clinton on the other hand listens to experts when making geopolitical calcuations and that matters.
Trump already said that he’s okay with Saudi Arabia getting nukes. That move alone might produce nuclear war but it would be a mistake to focus at the moment on any specific scenario, because the problem is the decision making.
I’m very pessimistic about this. Basically, a single person, with very few exceptions, cannot influence politics in any meaningful way. Therefore there is no motivation, no utility to be gained from actions themselves. The only way to extract any utility from a political discussion is by bonding with similarly minded people, making new friends and having fun. And for that purpose, the more echo-chamber-y your environment is, the better. And most people use political discussion that way—very few are interested in small scale local politics, where they could have some influence, and most attention is being paid to the presidential elections because they are the most entertaining, even though their influence on them is negligible.
As a local decision making model, they figured out how to get everyone involved, but still not get logjammed.
A well structured town hall model.
I am not too enamored of the single vote method anyway, the “pick 1,2,3” model has been shown to work, I think Australia is going to try that model soon.
Hate, fear, and prejudice is always effective in making people act as if in mob mode, but I havn’t seen the Tea Party folks accomplish anything other than obstruction. But they did get elected, and in a large enough block to make an impact, they just havn’t.
Let’s see if those Bernie folks stay engaged, they may yet get involved in local, if not national politics.
I only have third-hand information, but I heard that in Occupy the constant “privilege checking” and “you came here to fight the rich 1%, but now we will educate you that the true enemy is patriarchy, and the first step is that the white cis het males must shut up” actually drove away many participants.
Do you think that everybody who takes a political stance is automatically mindkilled? Do you have more complains than just that certain people found it important that Hillary wins?
No, of course not. There are many situations where one can be reasonably certain that one political stance is better than another. My feeling of disgust was not caused by them supporting Hillary, but by the fervor and conviction displayed. It felt like at some point they had good reasons to choose a political stance, but then took it to the extreme and forgot all caution.
The goal of motivating people, as opposed to truth-seeking, is exactly the objection. They may or may not be mind-killed, but seeing them turn so easily toward the dark arts makes me value them a lot less as allies in rationality.
In my case, not signaling any caution was enough to make me think that they’re mind-killed. I also understand well what kind of strategies may be more effective in influencing the general public; which is part of the problem. I doubt their behavior and writings convinced anyone who hadn’t already decided.
There were other writings which were much more persuasive, Scott’s writings for example. The people I’m referring to, just spent the last year doing tribal screaming. And they’re still doing it. Freaking out because their foretold doomsday came (and went).
Has anyone else been disgusted by how partisan and mindkilled many “rationality figureheads” have been during this election?
I’ve stopped supporting 80,000 Hours because of their employees’ writings and lost trust in CFAR; I now see them as political think tanks that are possibly even more biased and broken than the average organization.
Rationality is not Kolinahr: if a hot iron is traveling towards your face, the rational reaction is not “huh!” but getting the hell out of the way.
To mean that it is possible to talk about politics, and to talk passionately, and still being rational. Not to defend 80k or CFAR, but “being partisan” is most definitely NOT “being mindkilled”. They travel on two orthogonal dimensions. On the other hand, it is totally possible that those figureheads were indeed mindkilled.
I have followed only what Yudkowski said: what are examples of being mindkilled? Have they acknowledged such behaviour afterwards?
Is there any 80,000/CFAR statement on Trump or are you just talking about the personal writings of individual people who happen to work in these organizations?
(Also, did you consistently think it was wrong for them to fervently espouse the AI-as-existential risk narrative?)
No, I don’t think that either organization has taken an official stance, and I respect them for that. I’ve also talked with some people within 80,000 Hours who are clearly not mind-killed; who have been very reasonable and convincing instead. I was maybe a bit too harsh and do not mean this as a recommendation that everyone should stop supporting these organizations.
(Very rarely—that’s a good point. If you imagine people fighting between two different friendly AI approaches with the same fervor, though..)
I fully agree with this.
edit: someone may think this comment doesn’t contribute at all. the someone that did also took the additional step of downvoting the OP, so make of that what you will.
A datapoint is better than nothing. I haven’t downvoted you, but a couple of sentence more explaining your reasons are always appreciated.
As I’m waiting to watch the Trump Obama meeting, I’m changing my mind to elaborate. I’ve never really been an active participator in the LW community and if I’m going to distance myself further so be it. As an example, compare this to this and this. If Eliezer actually believed that politics is the mind killer and had any interest in intellectual honesty, he would admit he was hoodwinked by that live action roleplay game of his. He won’t, hence my disgust.
I don’t see anything in those posts that point to mindkilled partisanship. (And I’m very anti-EY on many points, so I’m not giving him any handicap here.)
The first was a statement of confusion about the behavior of the equity markets surrounding the US election. This seems a very reasonable observation to make.
The second was a long article pointing out that politics does sometimes have real world consequences, things you have to pay attention to even if you’d rather ignore politics in general. It explicitly mentions the difference between political partisanship theater (the mind-killing stuff), and the business of running the world. Most of the article is actually about when politics should be relevant to a rationalist and when it should be ignored. Also I’m not sure why you think he was hoodwinked by the live action simulation? I’ve participated in one of these before as a corporate training event and in university (both under different circumstances), and I have to say they are very effective educational tools.
The third is literally a single sentence.
What exactly do you find hypocritical about these posts?
I’m writing a post about it.
Can you give some examples? I haven’t paid much attention to this.
While we’re on the topic, “politics is the mind-killer” isn’t sufficiently broad in my opinion. People can frequently are “mind-killed” in other areas, especially when conflicts of interest are involved. My experience suggests certain topics like diet tend to go just as poorly as politics.
Claiming Trump as the most significant current existential risk, and prioritizing political activism over all other charity work, are the two that I was most offended by. These were usually not backed by any rigorous analysis or explanation, just the assumption that the reader conforms to the beliefs.
But I think ultimately, it was the frequency and amount of emotion and hostility that was shown that made my mind image these people as mind-killed.
Thanks. I agree that those examples are problematic. Do you have the link for Trump being the most significant current existential risk? I think he’s a major risk, but relatively less important than many other things.
The biggest risk from him is starting a major war and/or using nuclear weapons, but as I recall from speaking with Vaniver, not everyone thinks he’s a higher risk than Clinton would be in that area.
Outside of Trump’s family the person who knows Trump best said “I genuinely believe that if Trump wins and gets the nuclear codes there is an excellent possibility it will lead to the end of civilization”, as a significant X-risk makes sense.
In contrast to an X-risk like UFAI, it was a lot of tractable and thus there were rational arguments to exert more resources on it.
The political aspect can as well mean that you misjudge the risk posed.
A statement made by a lifelong liberal writer, who was offended by Trump’s lifestyle. Trump has short attention span, and doesn’t read books—therefore he will use nukes!
Predicting one person’s proclivity to cause nuclear war is an incredibly complicated prediction problem, and one flimsy and tribally motivated statement has almost zero predictive power. If I see a reasonable analysis, which considers both candidates and what kind of scenarios could actually lead to nuclear war; I’m ready to change my beliefs.
Why do you call a statement made in a long article and based on spending over a year studying Trump while listing in to his calls ‘flimsy’?
On his facebook EY describes having taken part in a scenario planning exercise that ended up with nuclear war simply because the players miscalculated their moves. Having a short attention span and not listening to experts who study the possible moves leads to miscalculated moves. Nuclear war happens when other wars escalate because no side is willing to make move that look like a local loss or concessions to the other side.
The US basically has undeclared wars with most countries including Nato countries like Germany that are under cyber attacks by the US (the US considers cyber attacks to be acts of war). At the same time the NSA doesn’t use their powers to the maximum.
When the Obama administration or Clinton administration runs cyber attacks against German targets there’s less pressure on German political leaders to retaliate then when a Trump administration does so.
You also forget the lying. Lying to his ghostwriter about the size of his business deal is illustrative. Trump is going to lie to various people inside his administration. That’s going to make it a lot harder for that administration to make effective moves.
Clinton on the other hand listens to experts when making geopolitical calcuations and that matters.
Trump already said that he’s okay with Saudi Arabia getting nukes. That move alone might produce nuclear war but it would be a mistake to focus at the moment on any specific scenario, because the problem is the decision making.
Can you point to examples? Genuinely curious.
I’m very pessimistic about this. Basically, a single person, with very few exceptions, cannot influence politics in any meaningful way. Therefore there is no motivation, no utility to be gained from actions themselves. The only way to extract any utility from a political discussion is by bonding with similarly minded people, making new friends and having fun. And for that purpose, the more echo-chamber-y your environment is, the better. And most people use political discussion that way—very few are interested in small scale local politics, where they could have some influence, and most attention is being paid to the presidential elections because they are the most entertaining, even though their influence on them is negligible.
I agree completely here, and Bernies supporters are likely to stay highly motivated, and actually try and get elected to local positions.
But the most useful political structure i have seen is actually from the Occupy movement. Their participatory democracy is a pretty useful model.
https://theconversation.com/anarchy-in-the-usa-five-years-on-the-legacy-of-occupy-wall-street-and-what-it-can-teach-us-in-the-age-of-trump-68452
Why do you think it’s useful? How many congressman have they elected? I think the tea party was much more successful.
As a local decision making model, they figured out how to get everyone involved, but still not get logjammed.
A well structured town hall model.
I am not too enamored of the single vote method anyway, the “pick 1,2,3” model has been shown to work, I think Australia is going to try that model soon.
http://sciencebulletin.org/archives/7487.html
Hate, fear, and prejudice is always effective in making people act as if in mob mode, but I havn’t seen the Tea Party folks accomplish anything other than obstruction. But they did get elected, and in a large enough block to make an impact, they just havn’t.
Let’s see if those Bernie folks stay engaged, they may yet get involved in local, if not national politics.
They frequently did get logjammed. They lost power compared to a year ago. They didn’t get policy changes.
I don’t think they even got them via state legislatures.
Public spending would be less without the sequester the caused. They also prevent tax increases.
They are likely to get more laws passed with Trump in the White House.
I only have third-hand information, but I heard that in Occupy the constant “privilege checking” and “you came here to fight the rich 1%, but now we will educate you that the true enemy is patriarchy, and the first step is that the white cis het males must shut up” actually drove away many participants.
Do you think that everybody who takes a political stance is automatically mindkilled? Do you have more complains than just that certain people found it important that Hillary wins?
No, of course not. There are many situations where one can be reasonably certain that one political stance is better than another. My feeling of disgust was not caused by them supporting Hillary, but by the fervor and conviction displayed. It felt like at some point they had good reasons to choose a political stance, but then took it to the extreme and forgot all caution.
Signaling caution might not be effective if the goal is to motivate people to vote.
The goal of motivating people, as opposed to truth-seeking, is exactly the objection. They may or may not be mind-killed, but seeing them turn so easily toward the dark arts makes me value them a lot less as allies in rationality.
In my case, not signaling any caution was enough to make me think that they’re mind-killed. I also understand well what kind of strategies may be more effective in influencing the general public; which is part of the problem. I doubt their behavior and writings convinced anyone who hadn’t already decided.
There were other writings which were much more persuasive, Scott’s writings for example. The people I’m referring to, just spent the last year doing tribal screaming. And they’re still doing it. Freaking out because their foretold doomsday came (and went).