magfrump comments on Thoughts on the Singularity Institute (SI) - Less Wrong

256 Post author: HoldenKarnofsky 11 May 2012 04:31AM

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Comment author: Wei_Dai 11 May 2012 02:45:15AM 50 points [-]

Is it just me, or do Luke and Eliezer's initial responses appear to send the wrong signals? From the perspective of an SI critic, Luke's comment could be interpreted as saying "for us, not being completely incompetent is worth bragging about", and Eliezer's as "we're so arrogant that we've only taken two critics (including Holden) seriously in our entire history". These responses seem suboptimal, given that Holden just complained about SI's lack of impressive accomplishments, and being too selective about whose feedback to take seriously.

Comment author: magfrump 11 May 2012 04:50:01AM 7 points [-]

Luke's comment addresses the specific point that Holden made about changes in the organization given the change in leadership.

Holden said:

I'm aware that SI has relatively new leadership that is attempting to address the issues behind some of my complaints. I have a generally positive impression of the new leadership; I believe the Executive Director and Development Director, in particular, to represent a step forward in terms of being interested in transparency and in testing their own general rationality. So I will not be surprised if there is some improvement in the coming years, particularly regarding the last couple of statements listed above. That said, SI is an organization and it seems reasonable to judge it by its organizational track record, especially when its new leadership is so new that I have little basis on which to judge these staff.

Luke attempted to provide (for the reader) a basis on which to judge these staff members.

Eliezer's response was... characteristic of Eliezer? And also very short and coming at a busy time for him.

Comment author: Nebu 31 December 2012 12:15:42PM 0 points [-]

Eliezer's response was... characteristic of Eliezer? And also very short and coming at a busy time for him.

I think that's Wei_Dai's point, that these "characteristic" replies are fine if you're used to him, but are bad if you don't.

Comment author: magfrump 31 December 2012 07:26:19PM 1 point [-]

Yeah I mean, as time goes on I think more and more of Eliezer as being kind of a jerk. I thought Luke's post was good, and Eliezer's wasn't, but I also expected longer posts to be forthcoming (which they were).

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