I think many users do not think it’s a serious danger, but it’s still banned here. It is IMO reasonable for outsiders to judge the community as a whole by our declared policies.
Coming up with absurd ideas is not a problem. Plenty of absurd things are posted on LW all the time. The problem is that the community took it as a genuine danger.
If EY made a bad decision at the time that he now disagreed with, surely he would have reversed it or at least dropped the ban for future posts. A huge part of what this site is all about is being able to recognize when you’ve made a mistake and respond appropriately. If EY is incapable of doing that then that says very bad things about everything we do here.
What’s cultish as hell to me is having leaders that would wilfully deceive us. If there are some nonpublic rules under which the basilisk is being censored, what else might also be being censored?
Well, nobody in LW community is without flaws. People often fail (or sometimes not even try) to live up to the high standards of being a good rationalist. The problem is that in some internet forums “judging the community” somehow becomes something like “this is what LW makes you to believe, and even if they deny it, they do it only because not doing it would give them a bad image” or “they are a cult that wants you to believe in their robot god” which are such gross misrepresentations of LW (or even thedrama surrounding the basilisk stuff) that even after considering Hanlon’s razor one is left wondering whether that level of misinterpretation is possible without at least some amount of intentional hostility. I would guess that nowadays a large part of annoyance at somebody even bringing this topic up is a reaction to this perceived hostility.
If EY is incapable of doing that then that says very bad things about everything we do here.
No, neither it says very bad things about everything we do here, nor about everything we do here. Whenever EY makes a mistake and fails to recognize and admit it, it is his personal failing to live up to the standards he wrote about so much. You may object that not enough people called him out on that on LW itself, but it was my impression that many of those that do e.g. on reddit seem to be LW users (as currently there are few related discussions here on LW, there is no context to do that here, besides, EY rarely comments here anymore). In addition to that on this thread there seems to be several LW users who agree with you, thus definitely you are not a lone voice, among LWers there seem to be many different opinions. Besides, on that reddit thread he seems to basically admit that, in fact, he did make a lot of mistakes in handling this situation.
It has just dawned to me that while we are talking about censorship, at the same time we are having this discussion. And frankly, I do not remember when was the last time a comment was deleted solely for bringing this topic up. Maybe the ban has been silently lifted or at least is no longer ever enforced (even though there were no public announcement about this), leaving everything to the local social norm? However, I would guess that due to the said social norm one could predict that if one posted about this topic, unless one made really clear that one is bringing this topic up due to the genuine curiosity (and having a genuinely interesting question) and not for the sake of trolling or “let’s see what will happen”, o trying to make fun of people and their identity, one would receive a lot of downvotes (due to being pattern matched, which sustains the social norm of not touching this topic). I feel that I should add, that I wouldn’t advice you to test this hypothesis, because that would probably be considered as bringing the topic up for the sake of bringing it up. I’m not claiming the situation is perfect, and I would agree that in the ideal case, the free marketplace of ideas should prevail and this discrepancy between the current situation and the ideal case should be solved somehow.
I think many users do not think it’s a serious danger, but it’s still banned here. It is IMO reasonable for outsiders to judge the community as a whole by our declared policies.
Coming up with absurd ideas is not a problem. Plenty of absurd things are posted on LW all the time. The problem is that the community took it as a genuine danger.
If EY made a bad decision at the time that he now disagreed with, surely he would have reversed it or at least dropped the ban for future posts. A huge part of what this site is all about is being able to recognize when you’ve made a mistake and respond appropriately. If EY is incapable of doing that then that says very bad things about everything we do here.
What’s cultish as hell to me is having leaders that would wilfully deceive us. If there are some nonpublic rules under which the basilisk is being censored, what else might also be being censored?
Well, nobody in LW community is without flaws. People often fail (or sometimes not even try) to live up to the high standards of being a good rationalist. The problem is that in some internet forums “judging the community” somehow becomes something like “this is what LW makes you to believe, and even if they deny it, they do it only because not doing it would give them a bad image” or “they are a cult that wants you to believe in their robot god” which are such gross misrepresentations of LW (or even thedrama surrounding the basilisk stuff) that even after considering Hanlon’s razor one is left wondering whether that level of misinterpretation is possible without at least some amount of intentional hostility. I would guess that nowadays a large part of annoyance at somebody even bringing this topic up is a reaction to this perceived hostility.
No, neither it says very bad things about everything we do here, nor about everything we do here. Whenever EY makes a mistake and fails to recognize and admit it, it is his personal failing to live up to the standards he wrote about so much. You may object that not enough people called him out on that on LW itself, but it was my impression that many of those that do e.g. on reddit seem to be LW users (as currently there are few related discussions here on LW, there is no context to do that here, besides, EY rarely comments here anymore). In addition to that on this thread there seems to be several LW users who agree with you, thus definitely you are not a lone voice, among LWers there seem to be many different opinions. Besides, on that reddit thread he seems to basically admit that, in fact, he did make a lot of mistakes in handling this situation.
It has just dawned to me that while we are talking about censorship, at the same time we are having this discussion. And frankly, I do not remember when was the last time a comment was deleted solely for bringing this topic up. Maybe the ban has been silently lifted or at least is no longer ever enforced (even though there were no public announcement about this), leaving everything to the local social norm? However, I would guess that due to the said social norm one could predict that if one posted about this topic, unless one made really clear that one is bringing this topic up due to the genuine curiosity (and having a genuinely interesting question) and not for the sake of trolling or “let’s see what will happen”, o trying to make fun of people and their identity, one would receive a lot of downvotes (due to being pattern matched, which sustains the social norm of not touching this topic). I feel that I should add, that I wouldn’t advice you to test this hypothesis, because that would probably be considered as bringing the topic up for the sake of bringing it up. I’m not claiming the situation is perfect, and I would agree that in the ideal case, the free marketplace of ideas should prevail and this discrepancy between the current situation and the ideal case should be solved somehow.