XiXiDu

• XiXiDu 27 Nov 2014 10:51 UTC

  25 points

  in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: Break­ing the vi­cious cycle

  I don’t have time to evaluate what you did, so I’ll take this as a possible earnest of a good-faith attempt at something, and not speak ill of you until I get some other piece of positive evidence that something has gone wrong.

  This will be my last comment and I am going to log out after it. If you or MIRI change your mind, or discover any evidence “that something has gone wrong”, please let me know by email or via a private message on e.g. Facebook or some other social network that’s available at that point in time.

  A header statement only on relevant posts seems fine by me, if you have the time to add it to items individually.

  Thanks.

  I noticed that there is still a post mentioning MIRI. It is not at all judgemental or negative but rather highlights a video that I captured of a media appearance of MIRI on German/​French TV. I understand this sort of posts not to be relevant posts for either deletion or any sort of header.

  Then there is also an interview with Dr. Laurent Orseau about something you wrote. I added the following header to this post:

  Note: I might have misquoted, misrepresented, or otherwise misunderstood what Eliezer Yudkowsky wrote. If this is the case I apologize for it. I urge you to read the full context of the quote.

• XiXiDu 26 Nov 2014 12:23 UTC

  29 points

  in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: Break­ing the vi­cious cycle

  Since you have not yet replied to my other comment, here is what I have done so far:

  (1) I removed many more posts and edited others in such a way that no mention of you, MIRI or LW can be found anymore (except an occasional link to a LW post).[1]

  (2) I slightly changed your given disclaimer and added it to my about page:

  Note that I wrote some posts, posts that could previously be found on this blog, during a dark period of my life. Eliezer Yudkowsky is a decent and honest person with no ill intent, and anybody can be made to look terrible by selectively collecting all of his quotes one-sidedly as I did. I regret those posts, and leave this note here as an archive to that regret.

  The reason for this alteration is that my blog has been around since 2001, and for most of the time it did not contain any mention of you, MIRI, or LW. For a few years it even contained positive referrals to you and MIRI. This can all be checked by looking at e.g. archive.org for domains such as xixidu.com. I estimate that much less than 1% of all content over those years has been related to you or MIRI, and even less was negative.

  But my previous comment, in which I asked you to consider that your suggested header would look really weird and confusing if added to completely unrelated posts, still stands. If that’s what you desire, let me know. But I hope you are satisfied with the actions I took so far.

  [1] If I missed something, let me know.

  What links here?

  • lukeprog's comment on Break­ing the vi­cious cycle by XiXiDu (1 Dec 2014 4:07 UTC; 6 points)

• XiXiDu 25 Nov 2014 11:24 UTC

  30 points

  in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: Break­ing the vi­cious cycle

  I apologize for any possible misunderstanding in this comment. My reading comprehension is often bad.

  I know that in the original post I offered to add a statement of your choice to any of my posts. I stand by this, although I would have phrased this differently now. I would like to ask you to consider that there are also personal posts which are completely unrelated to you, MIRI, or LW. Such as photography posts and math posts. It would be really weird and confusing to readers to add your suggested header to those posts. If that is what you want, I will do it.

  You also mention that I could delete my site (I already deleted a bunch of posts related to you and MIRI). I am not going to do that, as it is my homepage and contains completely unrelated material. I am sorry if I possibly gave a false impression here.

  You further talk about withdrawing entirely from all related online discussions. I am willing to entirely stop to add anything negative to any related discussion. But I will still use social media to link to material produced by MIRI or LW (such as MIRI blog posts) and professional third party critiques (such as a possible evaluation of MIRI by GiveWell) without adding my own commentary.

  I stand by what I wrote above, irrespective of your future actions. But I would be pleased if you maintain a charitable portrayal of me. I have no problem if you in future write that my arguments are wrong, that I have been offending, or that I only have an average IQ etc. But I would be pleased if you abstain from portraying me as an evil person, or that I deliberately lie. Stating that I misrepresented you is fine. But suggesting that I am a malicious troll who hates you is what I strongly disagree with.

  As evidence that I mean what I write I now deleted my recent comments made on reddit.

• XiXiDu 25 Nov 2014 9:10 UTC

  18 points

  in reply to: ArisKatsaris’s comment on: Break­ing the vi­cious cycle

  I already deleted the ‘mockery index’ (which had included a disclaimer for some months that read that I distant myself from those outsourced posts). I also deleted the second post you mentioned.

  I changed the brainwash post to ‘The Singularity Institute: How They Convince You’ and added the following disclaimer suggested by user Anatoly Vorobey:

  I wrote the post below during years in which, I now recognize, I was locked in a venom-filled flamewar against a community which I actually like and appreciate, despite what I perceive as its faults. I do not automatically repudiate my arguments and factual points, but if you read the below, please note that I regret the venom and the personal attacks and that I may well have quote-mined and misrepresented persons and communities. I now wish I wrote it all in a kinder spirit.

  I also completely deleted the post ‘Why you should be wary of the Singularity Institute’.

  Yesterday I also deleted the Yudkowsky quotes page and the personality page.

• XiXiDu 25 Nov 2014 8:53 UTC

  30 points

  in reply to: Luke_A_Somers’s comment on: Break­ing the vi­cious cycle

  Yes, it was a huge overreaction on my side and I shouldn’t have written such a comment in the first place. It was meant as an explanation of how that post came about, it was not meant as an excuse. It was still wrong. The point I want to communicate is that I didn’t do it out of some general interest to cause MIRI distress.

  I apologize for offending people and overreacting to what I perceived the way I described it but which was, as you wrote, not that way. I already deleted that post yesterday.

• XiXiDu 24 Nov 2014 18:48 UTC

  53 points

  in reply to: lukeprog’s comment on: Break­ing the vi­cious cycle

  To make the first step and show that this is not some kind of evil ploy, I now deleted the (1) Yudkowsky quotes page and (2) the post on his personality (explanation on how that post came about).

  I realize that they were unnecessarily offending and apologize for that. If I could turn back the clock I would do a lot differently and probably stay completely silent about MIRI and LW.

• XiXiDu 24 Nov 2014 18:32 UTC

  −1 points

  in reply to: Halfwitz’s comment on: Break­ing the vi­cious cycle

  Also, the page where you try to diagnos him with narsisism just seems mean.

  I can clarify this. I never intended to write that post but was forced to do so out of self-defense.

  I replied to this comment whose author was wondering why Yudkowsky is using Facebook more than LessWrong these days. To which I replied with an on-topic speculation based on evidence.

  Then people started viciously attacking me, to which I had to respond. In one of those replies I unfortunately used the term “narcissistic tendencies”. I was then again attacked for using that term. I defended my use of that term with evidence, the result of which is that post.

  What do you expect that I do when I am mindlessly attacked by a horde of people? That I just leave it at that and let my name being dragged into dirt?

  Many of my posts and comments are direct responses to personal attacks on me from LessWrong members.

• XiXiDu 24 Nov 2014 16:27 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: Halfwitz’s comment on: Break­ing the vi­cious cycle

  I think it is more like you went through all the copies of Palin’s school newspaper, and picked up some notes she passed around in class, and then published the most outrageous things she said in such a way that you implied they were written recently.

  This is exactly the kind of misrepresentation that make me avoid deleting my posts. Most of the most outrageous things he said have been written in the past ten years.

  I suppose you are partly referring to the quotes page? Please take a look, there are only two quotes that are older than 2004, for one of which I explicitly note that he doesn’t agree with it anymore, and a second which I believe he still agrees with.

  Those two quotes that are dated before 2004 are the least outrageous. They are there mainly to show that he has long been believing into singularitarian ideas and that he can save the world. This is important in evaluating how much of the later arguments are rationalizations of those early beliefs. Which is in turn important because he’s actually asking people for money and giving a whole research field a bad name with his predictions about AI.

• XiXiDu 24 Nov 2014 15:25 UTC

  7 points

  in reply to: Viliam_Bur’s comment on: Break­ing the vi­cious cycle

  If you feel there was something wrong about your articles, why can’t you write it there, using your own words?

  I made bad experiences with admitting something like that. I once wrote on Facebook that I am not a high IQ individual and got responses suggesting that now everyone can completely ignore me and everything I say is garbage. If I look at the comments to this post, my perception is that many people understood it as some kind of confession that everything I ever wrote is just wrong and that they can subsequently ignore everything else I might ever write. If the disclaimer was written by a third independent party, then I thought that this would show that I am willing to let the opponents voice their disagreement, and that I concede the possibility of being wrong.

  I noticed that many people who read my blog take it much too seriously. I got emails praising me for what I have written. Which made me feel very uncomfortable, since I have not invested the necessary thoughtfulness in wirting those posts. They were never meant for other people to form a definitive opinion about MIRI, like some rigorous review by GiveWell. But this does not mean that they are random bullshit as people like to conclude when I admit this.

  Sorry for using this analogy, but once I had a stalker, and she couldn’t resist sending me e-mails, a few of them every day. And anything I did, or didn’t do, was just a pretext for sending another e-mail. Like, she wrote ten e-mails about how she wants to talk with me, or asking me what am I doing right now, or whether I have seen this or that article on the web.

  Hmm...I think my problems would be analog to loving you but wanting to correct some character mistakes you have. Noticing that you perceive this to be stalking would make me try to communicate that I really don’t want to harass you, since I actually like you very much, but that I think you should stop farting in public.

  The point I want to make here is that while you believe your offer to MIRI is generous, to MIRI it may seem like yet another step in an endless unproductive debate they want to avoid completely.

  This seems obvious when it comes to your stalker scenario. But everything that involves MIRI involves a lot of low probability high utility considerations which really break my mind. I thought years about whether I should stop criticizing MIRI because I might endanger a future galactic civilization if the wrong person reads my posts and amplifies their effect. But I know that fully embracing this line of reasoning would completely break my mind.

  I am not joking here. I find a lot of MIRI’s beliefs to be absurd, yet I have always been susceptible to their line of argumentation. I believe that it is very important to solve this meta-issue of how to decide such things rationally. And the issues surrounding MIRI seem to be perfectly suited to highlight this problematic issue.

• XiXiDu 24 Nov 2014 14:46 UTC

  12 points

  in reply to: ArisKatsaris’s comment on: Break­ing the vi­cious cycle

  You don’t need to delete any of your posts or comments. What I mainly fear is that if I was to delete posts, without linking to archived versions, then you would forever go around implying that all kinds of horrible things could have been found on those pages, and that me deleting them is evidence of this.

  If you promise not to do anything like that, and stop portraying me as somehow being the worst person on Earth, then I’ll delete the comments, passages or posts that you deem offending.

  But if there is nothing reasonable I could do to ever improve your opinion of me (i.e. other than donating all my money to MIRI), as if I committed some deadly sin, then this is a waste of time.

  I would be willing to delete them because they offend certain people and could have been written much more benignly, with more rigor, and also because some of them might actually be misrepresentations which I accidentally made. Another reason for deletion would be that they have negative expected value, not because the arguments are necessarily wrong.

  And if you agree, then please think about the Streisand effect. And if you e.g. ask me to delete my basilisk page, think about whether people could start believing that I take it seriously and as a result take it more seriously themselves. I have thought about this before and couldn’t reach a conclusive answer.

  This is obviously not an agreement to delete everything you might want, such as my interview series.

• XiXiDu 24 Nov 2014 13:32 UTC

  23 points

  in reply to: Anatoly_Vorobey’s comment on: Break­ing the vi­cious cycle

  I wrote the post below during years in which, I now recognize, I was locked in a venom-filled flamewar against a community which I actually like and appreciate, despite what I perceive as its faults. I do not automatically repudiate my arguments and factual points, but if you read the below, please note that I regret the venom and the personal attacks and that I may well have quote-mined and misrepresented persons and communities. I now wish I wrote it all in a kinder spirit.

  Sounds good. Thanks.

  Plenty of people manage to be skeptical of MIRI/​EY and criticize them here without being you.

  Hmm...the state of criticism leaves a lot to be desired currently. The amount of criticism does not reflect the amount of extraordinary statements being made here. I think there are a lot of people who shy away from open criticism.

  Some stuff that is claimed here is just very very (self-censored).

  I have recently attempted to voice a minimum of criticism when I said something along the lines of “an intelligence explosion happening within minutes is an extraordinary claim”. I actually believe that the whole concept is...I can’t say this in a way that doesn’t offend people here. It’s hard to recount what happened then, but my perception was that even that was already too much criticism. In a diverse community with healthy disagreement I would expect a different reaction.

  Please take the above as my general perception and not a precise recount of a situation.

• XiXiDu 24 Nov 2014 12:17 UTC

  −2 points

  in reply to: Halfwitz’s comment on: Break­ing the vi­cious cycle

  Also, you published some very embarrassing quotes from Yudkowsky. I’m guessing you caused him quite a bit of distress, so he’s probably not inclined to do you any favors.

  If I post an embarrassing quote by Sarah Palin, then I am not some kind of school bully who likes causing people distress. Instead I highlight an important shortcoming of an influential person. I have posted quotes of various people other than Yudkowsky. I admire all of them for their achievements and wish them all the best. But as influential people they have to expect that someone might highlight something they said. This is not a smear campaign.

• XiXiDu 24 Nov 2014 12:02 UTC

  7 points

  in reply to: ArisKatsaris’s comment on: Break­ing the vi­cious cycle

  We don’t have, nor ever had, a “Why Alexander Kruel/​Xixidu sucks” page that we can take down.

  That’s implying a false equivalence. If I make a quotes page of a public person, a person with far-reaching goals, in order to highlight problematic beliefs this person holds, beliefs that would otherwise be lost in a vast amount of other statements, then this is not the same as making a “random stranger X sucks” page.

  So you getting health related issues as a result of the viciousness you perpetrate...

  Stressful fights adversely affect an existing condition.

  Unlike you have done with EY, I haven’t even screenshotted the comments by you that you’ve later chosen to take down because you found them embarrassing to yourself.

  I have maybe deleted 5 comments and edited another 5. If I detect other mistakes I will fix them. You make it sound like doing so is somehow bad.

  LessWrongers always treated you (and Rationalwiki too), and is still treating you and any of your different opinions, much more civilly than you (or Rationalwiki) ever did us and any of ours.

  You are one of the people spouting comments such as this one for a long time. I reckon you might not see that such comments are a cause of what I wrote in the past.

• XiXiDu 24 Nov 2014 11:46 UTC

  14 points

  in reply to: Dias’s comment on: Break­ing the vi­cious cycle

  I don’t think MIRI has any reason to take you up on this offer, as responding in this way would elevate the status of your writings.

  Yudkowsky has a number of times recently found it necessary to openly attack RationalWiki, rather than ignoring it and clarifying the problem on LessWrong or his website in a polite manner. He also voiced his displeasure over the increasing contrarian attitude on LessWrong. This made me think that there is a small chance that they might desire to mitigate one of only a handful sources who perceive MIRI to be important enough to criticize them.

  Given this, either you have failed to understand what apologizing actually consists in, or are still (perhaps subconsciously) trying to undermine MIRI.

  I will apologize for mistakes I make and try to fix them. The above post was the confession that there very well could be mistakes, and a clarification that the reasons are not malicious.

• XiXiDu 24 Nov 2014 11:13 UTC

  6 points

  in reply to: Dallas’s comment on: Break­ing the vi­cious cycle

  If you want to stop accusations of lying and bad faith, stop spreading the “LW believes in Roko’s Basilisk” meme...

  How often and for how long did I spread this, and what do you mean by “spread”?

  Imagine yourself in my situation back in 2010: After the leader of a community completely freaked out over a crazy post (calling the author an idiot in all bold and caps etc.) he went on to massively nuke any thread mentioning the topic. In addition there are mentions of people having horrible nightmares over it while others are actively trying to dissuade you from mentioning a thought experiment they believe to be dangerous, in private messages and emails, by referring to the leaders superior insight.

  This made a lot of alarm bells ring for me.

  But you are expecting an entity which you have devoted most of blog to criticizing to be caring enough about your psychological state that they take time out to write header statements for each of your posts?

  No. I made an unilateral offer.

• XiXiDu 24 Nov 2014 10:13 UTC

  7 points

  on: Break­ing the vi­cious cycle

  If you believe that I am, or was, a troll then check out this screenshot from 2009 (this was a year before my first criticism). And also check out this capture of my homepage from 2005, on which I link to MIRI’s and Bostrom’s homepage (I have been a fan).

  If you believe that I am now doing this because of my health, then check out this screenshot of a very similar offer I made in 2011.

  In summary: (a) None of my criticisms were ever made with the intent of giving MIRI or LW a bad name, but were instead meant to highlight or clarify problematic issues (b) I believe that my health issues allow me to quit caring about the problems I see, but they are not the crucial reason for wanting to quit. The main reason is that I hate fights and want people to be happy rather than being constantly engaged in emotional battles.

  That said, many of the replies to this post perfectly resemble the reason for why I kept going on for so long: lots of misunderstandings combined with smug personal attacks against me. Anyway, I made the above offer expecting that this would continue, so it still stands. And if this isn’t worthwhile for MIRI, fine. But because of people like ArisKatsaris, paper-machine, wedrifid and others with a history of vicious personal attacks against me, I am unable to just delete everything, because that would only leave their misrepresentations of my motives and actions behind. Yes, you understand that correctly. I believe myself to be the one who has been constantly mishandled and forced to strike back (if you constantly call someone a troll and liar then you shouldn’t be surprised if they call you brainwashed). And yet I offer you the chance to leave this battle as the winner by posting counterstatements to my blog.

Break­ing the vi­cious cycle

• XiXiDu 21 Nov 2014 16:13 UTC

  19 points

  in reply to: Rain’s comment on: xkcd on the AI box experiment

  Note XiXiDu preserves every potential negative aspect of the MIRI and LW community and is a biased source lacking context and positive examples.

  I am a member for more than 5 years now. So I am probably as much part of LW as most people. I have repeatedly said that LessWrong is the most intelligent and rational community I know of.

  To quote one of my posts:

  I estimate that the vast majority of all statements that can be found in the sequences are true, or definitively less wrong. Which generally makes them worth reading.

  I even defended LessWrong against RationalWiki previously.

  The difference is that I also highlight the crazy and outrageous stuff that can be found on LessWrong. And I also don’t bother offending the many fanboys who have a problem with this.

• XiXiDu 21 Nov 2014 16:11 UTC

  5 points

  in reply to: Rain’s comment on: xkcd on the AI box experiment

  Note XiXiDu preserves every potential negative aspect of the MIRI and LW community and is a biased source lacking context and positive examples.

  I am a member for more than 5 years now. So I am probably as much part of LW as most people. I have repeatedly said that LessWrong is the most intelligent and rational community I know of.

  To quote one of my posts:

  I estimate that the vast majority of all statements that can be found in the sequences are true, or definitively less wrong. Which generally makes them worth reading.

  I even defended LessWrong against RationalWiki previously.

  The difference is that I also highlight the crazy and outrageous stuff that can be found on LessWrong. And I also don’t bother offending the many fanboys who have a problem with this.

• XiXiDu 21 Nov 2014 12:05 UTC

  8 points

  on: xkcd on the AI box experiment

  Regarding Yudkowsky’s accusations against RationalWiki. Yudkowsky writes:

  First false statement that seems either malicious or willfully ignorant:

  In LessWrong’s Timeless Decision Theory (TDT),[3] punishment of a copy or simulation of oneself is taken to be punishment of your own actual self

  TDT is a decision theory and is completely agnostic about anthropics, simulation arguments, pattern identity of consciousness, or utility.

  Calling this malicious is a huge exaggeration. Here is a quote from the LessWrong Wiki entry on Timeless Decision Theory:

  When Omega predicts your behavior, it carries out the same abstract computation as you do when you decide whether to one-box or two-box. To make this point clear, we can imagine that Omega makes this prediction by creating a simulation of you and observing its behavior in Newcomb’s problem. [...] TDT says to act as if deciding the output of this computation...

  RationalWiki explains this in the way that you should act as if it is you that is being simulated and who possibly faces punishment. This is very close to what the LessWrong Wiki says, phrased in a language that people with a larger inferential distance can understand.

  Yudkowsky further writes:

  The first malicious lie is here:

  an argument used to try and suggest people should subscribe to particular singularitarian ideas, or even donate money to them, by weighing up the prospect of punishment versus reward

  Neither Roko, nor anyone else I know about, ever tried to use this as an argument to persuade anyone that they should donate money.

  This is not a malicious lie. Here is a quote from Roko’s original post (emphasis mine):

  ...there is the ominous possibility that if a positive singularity does occur, the resultant singleton may have precommitted to punish all potential donors who knew about existential risks but who didn’t give 100% of their disposable incomes to x-risk motivation. This would act as an incentive to get people to donate more to reducing existential risk, and thereby increase the chances of a positive singularity. This seems to be what CEV (coherent extrapolated volition of humanity) might do if it were an acausal decision-maker.1 So a post-singularity world may be a world of fun and plenty for the people who are currently ignoring the problem, whilst being a living hell for a significant fraction of current existential risk reducers (say, the least generous half). You could take this possibility into account and give even more to x-risk in an effort to avoid being punished.

  This is like a robber walking up to you and explaining that you could take into account that he could shoot you if you don’t give him your money.

  Also notice that Roko talks about trading with uFAIs as well.