= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Will_Newsome comments on How can we get more and better LW contrarians? - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (328)
Most of the machine intelligence folk don't seem to be on "your" side. I think they see you as potential competitors who don't share their values.
I tend to be more sympathetic to their position than yours. In particular I don't seem to share your values, and don't much like your PR - or your "end of the world" propaganda. I think that developing in secret is a pretty dubious plan - and that the precautionary principle sucks
Probably the best thing about you is that you have Eliezer on your side - and he's a smart cookie. However, that aspect also appears to have its downsides.
It took me much longer than it should have to mentally move you from the "troll" category to the "contrarian" one. That's my fault, but it makes for an interesting case study:
I quickly got irritated that you made the same criticisms again and again, without acknowledging the points people had argued against you each time. To a reader who disagrees with you, that style looks like the work of a troll or crank; to a reader who agrees with you, it's the best that you can do when arguing against someone more eloquent, with a bigger platform, who's gone wrong at some key step.
It should be noted that I don't instinctively think any more highly of contrarians who constantly change their line of attack; it seems to be a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" tribal response.
The way I changed my mind was that you made an incisive comment about something that wasn't part of your big disagreement with the Less Wrong community, and I was forced to update. For any would-be respected contrarians out there, this might be a good tactic to circumvent our natural impulse towards closing ranks.
I still find it tricky to distinguish if timtyler realizes what he's saying is going to be misinterpreted but just doesn't care (e.g. doesn't want to cave into the general resource-intensive norm of rephrasing things so as not to set off politics detectors), or if he doesn't realize what he's saying is going to be misinterpreted. E.g. he makes a lot of descriptive claims that look suspiciously like political claims and thus gets downvoted even when upon being queried he says they were intended purely as descriptive claims. I've started to think he generally just doesn't notice when he's making claims that could easily be interpreted as unnecessarily political.
Politics? This might, perhaps, be to do with the whole plan of unilaterally taking over the world? If so, that is a plan with a few politicical implications, and maybe it's hard to discuss it while avoiding seeming political.
Yes, and because the Eliezerian doom/world-takeover position is somewhat marginalized by the mainstream, people around here are quick to assume that stating simple facts or predictions about it, unless the facts are implicitly in favor of the marginalized position, is instead implicitly a vote in favor of further marginalization, and thus readers react politically even to simple observations or predictions. E.g., your anti-doom predictions are taken as a political move with the intent of further marginalizing the fund-us-to-help-fight-doom political position, even in the absence of explicit evidence that that's your intent, and so people downvote you. That's my model anyway.
Of course, from my point of view, the "doom exaggeration" looks like a crude funding move based on exploiting people by using superstimulii - or, at best, a source of low-relevance noise from a bunch of self-selected doom enthusiasts who have clubbed together.
You do have a valid point about my intentions. I derive some value from the existence of the SI, but the overall effect seems to be negative. I'm not on "your side". I think "your side" currently sucks - and I don't see much sign of reform. I plan to join another group.
Me too. Probably the Catholics.
Is there a Dominican community blog I should watch? Also, would you surreptitiously palm some small dry ice granules right before you dip your fingers in the water during confirmation? I've always wanted to see that.
I know basically nothing about modern Catholics, actually, which is a big reason why I haven't yet converted. E.g. I have serious doubts about the goodness of the Second Vatican Council. If the Devil has seriously tainted the temporal Church then I want no part in it.
That would be really cool. But I think God would be displeased. ...I'm not sure about that, I'll ask Him. (FWIW I rather doubt He'll give an unambiguous answer.)
If you had to specify a historical year in which Catholicism seems most correct to you which would it be?
How do you go about asking God, and how do you experience His answers?
Why do you think the Devil might have tainted the temporal Church through the Second Vatican Council?
There is no such thing as "modern Catholics". There are a number of subgroups, but I don't know enough to be usefully more specific.