We know what the root cause is, you don’t have to act like it’s totally mysterious. So the question is, was this root cause (pushback against Eliezer’s Bayesianism):
An important insight that Eliezer was missing (alarming!)
Worthless pedantry that he might as well block (nbd/pathetic)
Antisocial trolling that ought to be gotten rid of (reassuring that he blocked)
… or something else
Regardless of which of these is the true one, it seems informative to highlight for anyone who is keeping track of what is happening around me. And if the first one is the true one, it seems like people who are keeping track of what is happening around Eliezer would also want to know it.
Especially since it only takes a very brief moment to post and link about getting blocked. Low cost action, potentially high reward.
MIRI full-time employed many critics of bayesianism for 5+ years and MIRI researchers themselves argued most of the points you made in these arguments. It is obviously not the case that critiquing bayesianism is the reason why you got blocked.
Idk, maybe you’ve got a point, but Eliezer was very quick to insist what I said was not the mainstream view and disengage. And MIRI was full of internal distrust. I don’t know enough of the situation to know if this explains it, but it seems plausible to me that the way MIRI kept stuff together was by insisting on a Bayesian approach, and that some generators of internal dissent was from people whose intuition aligned more with non-Bayesian approach.
For that matter, an important split in rationalism is MIRI/CFAR vs the Vassarites, and while I wouldn’t really say the Vassarites formed a major inspiration for LDSL, after coming up with LDSL I’ve totally reevaluated my interpretation of that conflict as being about MIRI/CFAR using a Bayesian approach and the Vassarites using an LDSL approach. (Not absolutely of course, everyone has a mixture of both, but in terms of relative differences.)
We know what the root cause is, you don’t have to act like it’s totally mysterious. So the question is, was this root cause (pushback against Eliezer’s Bayesianism):
An important insight that Eliezer was missing (alarming!)
Worthless pedantry that he might as well block (nbd/pathetic)
Antisocial trolling that ought to be gotten rid of (reassuring that he blocked)
… or something else
Regardless of which of these is the true one, it seems informative to highlight for anyone who is keeping track of what is happening around me. And if the first one is the true one, it seems like people who are keeping track of what is happening around Eliezer would also want to know it.
Especially since it only takes a very brief moment to post and link about getting blocked. Low cost action, potentially high reward.
MIRI full-time employed many critics of bayesianism for 5+ years and MIRI researchers themselves argued most of the points you made in these arguments. It is obviously not the case that critiquing bayesianism is the reason why you got blocked.
Idk, maybe you’ve got a point, but Eliezer was very quick to insist what I said was not the mainstream view and disengage. And MIRI was full of internal distrust. I don’t know enough of the situation to know if this explains it, but it seems plausible to me that the way MIRI kept stuff together was by insisting on a Bayesian approach, and that some generators of internal dissent was from people whose intuition aligned more with non-Bayesian approach.
For that matter, an important split in rationalism is MIRI/CFAR vs the Vassarites, and while I wouldn’t really say the Vassarites formed a major inspiration for LDSL, after coming up with LDSL I’ve totally reevaluated my interpretation of that conflict as being about MIRI/CFAR using a Bayesian approach and the Vassarites using an LDSL approach. (Not absolutely of course, everyone has a mixture of both, but in terms of relative differences.)