Well, there are these words and expression sprinkled throughout your comment:
… promoting elitism and entitlement … and sexism … value the thoughts of other people who are more knowledgeable about sexism over yours … being offensive and harmful …
All of this seems to go deeper than “mannerisms”.
Your basic beef with the post seems to be that it is mean and insensitive and I think such an approach missed the post’s main point. It seems that you think the main point is to stigmatize stupid people, label them sub-human, and, possibly, subject them to mandatory treatments with drugs and such. I think the main point is to stress that stupidity is not an unchanging natural condition (“sky is blue, water is wet, some people are stupid”) but something that could be changed.
No, I fully acknowledge that the post tries to do those things, see the second half of my reply. I argue that it fails at doing so but is harmful for our reputation etc.
So if both you and me clearly understand the main point, and if the main point seems reasonably uncontroversial (everyone agrees that it’s better to be smart than to be dumb, right?), then why do you describe this post as an epic fail? I’m sure that it makes some people’s undergarments undergo interesting topological transformations, but that’s hardly unusual or cause for such a.. forceful rejection.
I feel like I am repeating myself. Here is the chain of arguments
1) A normal person seeing this article and its upvote count will walk away having a very negative view of LessWrong (reasons in my original reply)
2) Making the valid points of this article is in no way dependent on the negative consequences of 1). You could do the same (in fact, a better job at the same) without offending anyone.
3) LessWrong can be a gateway for people to care about existential risk and AI safety.
4) AI safety is arguably the biggest problem in the world right now and extremely low efforts go into solving it, globally speaking.
5) Due to 4) getting people to care about AI safety is extrmely important. Due to that and 3), harming the reputation of LessWrong is really bad
6) Therefore, this article is awful, harmful, and should be resented by everyone.
A normal person seeing this article and its upvote count will walk away having a very negative view of LessWrong
I feel it very much depends on your idea of a “normal person”.
Someone I consider a “normal person” would zone out after the first couple of paragraphs and go do something else. People who are sufficiently abnormal to finish that post (but still someone I’d consider “close to normal”) would NOT walk away with a very negative view of LW.
Clearly we have a different idea of what’s normal or close-to-normal.
LessWrong can be a gateway for people to care about existential risk and AI safety.
Citation needed. Especially in 2017. I think you’re mistaken about the direction of causality.
Due to 4) getting people to care about AI safety is extrmely important. Due to 3), harming the reputation of LessWrong is really bad
Oh, boy.
First let me point out that people who I would consider as close-to-normal, on hearing that chain of logic would make an rude gesture (physically or mentally, depending on how polite they are) and classify you as a crank they should probably keep away from. What did you call it? ah! “harming the reputation of LW”.
Second, do you really believe that the best way to attract people to LW is to be as… milquetoast as possible?
Third, let’s look at me. Here I am, snarking at everyone and generally unwilling to give out gold stars and express benevolence and empathy towards clueless newbies (and not only newbies). Doesn’t it follow that I’m a great threat to the safety of humanity? Something must be done! Think of the children!
I’m not sure where you’re from, or what the composition of your social circle is, Lumifer—but I think you should find as many people as you can (or use whatever reasonable metric you have for determining a “normal person”) and say: “Being stupid is a disease. The first step to destigmatizing this disease is to stop making fun of stupid people; I too am guilty of this,” and then observe the reaction you get.
Personally, I’m baffled as to how you could think that this wouldn’t engender a negative response from someone who’s never been on LW before.
That being said, simply changing the theme from “anti-stupidity” to “pro-intelligence” would change the post dramatically.
I expect most of my social circle to agree that stupidity is a pathological condition (“disease” is too much associated with infections and contagion for me), albeit very widespread. I don’t know why would you want to destigmatize is, though—incentives matter.
We can have the idea that something is changeable about people (e.g. fitness levels) without having to label its lack an illness.
I can see where silver is coming from. The language in this article is probably harmful. Imagine a bunch of body builders calling a nerds inability to bench press 50KG an illness, which can be fixed by steroids.
We can have the idea that something is changeable about people (e.g. fitness levels) without having to label its lack an illness.
True
The language in this article is probably harmful
I don’t understand what that means.
Imagine a bunch of body builders calling a nerds inability to bench press 50KG an illness, which can be fixed by steroids.
Not a very good metaphor, I think, because inability to bench press is, generally speaking, fixable by practice (that is, weightlifting). Low IQ is not fixable by practice. Moreover, I don’t think that the OP advocates specifically drugs—he advocates something-anything which works. At the moment we have nothing that works.
I don’t believe you, and I’m especially skeptical of IQ—and a lot of other fetishizations of overly confident attempts to exactly quantify hugely abstract and fluffy concepts like intelligence.
You don’t have to believe me: there is a LOT of literature on the subject. IQ research—precisely because it’s so controversial—is one of the more robust parts of psychology. It does not suffer from a replication crisis and its basic conclusions have been re-confirmed over and over again.
It’s about a set of mannerisms which many people on LW have that are really bad. I don’t know what you mean by woke.
Well, there are these words and expression sprinkled throughout your comment:
All of this seems to go deeper than “mannerisms”.
Your basic beef with the post seems to be that it is mean and insensitive and I think such an approach missed the post’s main point. It seems that you think the main point is to stigmatize stupid people, label them sub-human, and, possibly, subject them to mandatory treatments with drugs and such. I think the main point is to stress that stupidity is not an unchanging natural condition (“sky is blue, water is wet, some people are stupid”) but something that could be changed.
No, I fully acknowledge that the post tries to do those things, see the second half of my reply. I argue that it fails at doing so but is harmful for our reputation etc.
So if both you and me clearly understand the main point, and if the main point seems reasonably uncontroversial (everyone agrees that it’s better to be smart than to be dumb, right?), then why do you describe this post as an epic fail? I’m sure that it makes some people’s undergarments undergo interesting topological transformations, but that’s hardly unusual or cause for such a.. forceful rejection.
I feel like I am repeating myself. Here is the chain of arguments
1) A normal person seeing this article and its upvote count will walk away having a very negative view of LessWrong (reasons in my original reply)
2) Making the valid points of this article is in no way dependent on the negative consequences of 1). You could do the same (in fact, a better job at the same) without offending anyone.
3) LessWrong can be a gateway for people to care about existential risk and AI safety.
4) AI safety is arguably the biggest problem in the world right now and extremely low efforts go into solving it, globally speaking.
5) Due to 4) getting people to care about AI safety is extrmely important. Due to that and 3), harming the reputation of LessWrong is really bad
6) Therefore, this article is awful, harmful, and should be resented by everyone.
I feel it very much depends on your idea of a “normal person”.
Someone I consider a “normal person” would zone out after the first couple of paragraphs and go do something else. People who are sufficiently abnormal to finish that post (but still someone I’d consider “close to normal”) would NOT walk away with a very negative view of LW.
Clearly we have a different idea of what’s normal or close-to-normal.
Citation needed. Especially in 2017. I think you’re mistaken about the direction of causality.
Oh, boy.
First let me point out that people who I would consider as close-to-normal, on hearing that chain of logic would make an rude gesture (physically or mentally, depending on how polite they are) and classify you as a crank they should probably keep away from. What did you call it? ah! “harming the reputation of LW”.
Second, do you really believe that the best way to attract people to LW is to be as… milquetoast as possible?
Third, let’s look at me. Here I am, snarking at everyone and generally unwilling to give out gold stars and express benevolence and empathy towards clueless newbies (and not only newbies). Doesn’t it follow that I’m a great threat to the safety of humanity? Something must be done! Think of the children!
I’m not sure where you’re from, or what the composition of your social circle is, Lumifer—but I think you should find as many people as you can (or use whatever reasonable metric you have for determining a “normal person”) and say: “Being stupid is a disease. The first step to destigmatizing this disease is to stop making fun of stupid people; I too am guilty of this,” and then observe the reaction you get.
Personally, I’m baffled as to how you could think that this wouldn’t engender a negative response from someone who’s never been on LW before.
That being said, simply changing the theme from “anti-stupidity” to “pro-intelligence” would change the post dramatically.
I expect most of my social circle to agree that stupidity is a pathological condition (“disease” is too much associated with infections and contagion for me), albeit very widespread. I don’t know why would you want to destigmatize is, though—incentives matter.
We can have the idea that something is changeable about people (e.g. fitness levels) without having to label its lack an illness.
I can see where silver is coming from. The language in this article is probably harmful. Imagine a bunch of body builders calling a nerds inability to bench press 50KG an illness, which can be fixed by steroids.
True
I don’t understand what that means.
Not a very good metaphor, I think, because inability to bench press is, generally speaking, fixable by practice (that is, weightlifting). Low IQ is not fixable by practice. Moreover, I don’t think that the OP advocates specifically drugs—he advocates something-anything which works. At the moment we have nothing that works.
I don’t believe you, and I’m especially skeptical of IQ—and a lot of other fetishizations of overly confident attempts to exactly quantify hugely abstract and fluffy concepts like intelligence.
You don’t have to believe me: there is a LOT of literature on the subject. IQ research—precisely because it’s so controversial—is one of the more robust parts of psychology. It does not suffer from a replication crisis and its basic conclusions have been re-confirmed over and over again.