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Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on How To Lose 100 Karma In 6 Hours -- What Just Happened - Less Wrong
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Comments (214)
You're participating in a flamewar here, though it's a credit to you, EY, and LessWrong that nobody has yet posted in all caps. Tempers are running high all around; I recommend that one or all parties involved stop fighting before someone gets hurt. (read: is banned, has their reputation irrevocably damaged, or otherwise has their ability to argue compromised).
0.0001% is a huge amount of risk, enough that if one person in six thousand did what you just did, humanity should be doomed to certain extinction. Even murder doesn't have such a huge effect. I think you overestimate the impact of your actions. Sending a few emails to a blogger has an impact I would estimate to be 10^(-15) or less.
Certainly making this post has little purpose beyond inciting an argument. All you'll do is polarise LessWrong and turn us against each other.
I invite anyone who still sides with WaitingForGodel at this point to leave and find a site more suited to their intellects. I am sure it will only frustrate them and us to have them stick around.
Reversed stupidity not being intelligence, I'll point out that I "side with" waitingforgodel to the extent of disapproving of the censorship that occurred yesterday (though I haven't complained about the original censorship from July).
Needless to say, of course, I also think this post is silly.
I haven't followed the whole thing, because I couldn't. How can I decide wether he is right or not. I don't know what was censored, and why. Reading the thread on academic careers just had some big holes where, presumably, things were deleted, and I couldn't reconstruct why.
Other forums have some kind of policy, where they explicitly say what kind of post will be censored. I'm not against censoring stuff, but knowing what is worthy of being censored and what isn't would be nice.
With the knowledge I currently have about this whole thing, I still feel slightly sympathetic for WaitingForGoedel's cause. The "Free Speech is important" heuristic that Vladimir Nesov mentioned in the other thread is pretty useful, in my opinion, and without knowing the reason for posts being deleted, I can't decide for myself wether it made sense or not.
I intend to stick around, anyway, because I don't feel very strongly about this issue, so I won't frustrate anybody, I hope. But an answer would still be nice.
I do know what was censored and why, and I think Eliezer was wrong to delete the material in question.
That's a separate issue from whether waitingforgodel's method of expressing his (correct) disagreement with the censorship is sane or reasonable -- of course it isn't.
Though, I can see a strong argument for "blow up whenever your rights are threatened," especially if you expect that you will only be able to raise awareness, not effect change. It also means those of us who internalized the sequences have our evaporative cooling alarms triggering. Is disagreeing with the existence of Langford basilisks, and caring enough to make a stink about it instead of just scoff, really enough to show someone the door?
It's true that the basilisk in question is a wild fantasy even by Singularitarian standards, and that people took it seriously enough to get upset about it, could well be considered cause for alarm.
But that's not why people are telling waitingforgodel they'd rather he left. People are telling him that because he took action he sincerely (perhaps wrongly, but sincerely) believed would reduce humanity's chances of survival. That's a lot crazier than believing in basilisks!
And the pity is, it's not true he couldn't effect change. The right thing to do in a scenario like this is propose reasonable compromises (like the idea of rot13'ing posts on topics people find upsetting) and if those fail then, with the moral high ground under your feet, find or create an alternative site for discussion of the banned topics. Not only would that be morally better than this nutty blackmail scheme, it would also be more effective.
This is a great example of the general rule that if you think you need to do something crazy or evil for the greater good, you are probably wrong -- keep looking for a better solution instead.
I am not entirely clear on the timeline- I haven't researched his precommitment and whether or not EY saw it- but at some point EY commented in his Mod Voice that undeleting comments was subject to banning, and so that is the part where most people seem to agree that wfg went crazy.
So it's not "wow, you're murdering people to make a point?" that started people saying "maybe you ought not be here," but it certainly is what made that idea catch on.
I agree with the desirability of this hypothetical. I have no data on the probability of this hypothetical.
No, WFG committed to that before I said anything in Mod Voice.
Clarification: I meant that his response to the Mod Voice comment was where he started losing supporters. (For example, here.)
No. Threatening to kill 6790 people and then claiming to actually gone through with it, however, is.