David_Gerard comments on Self-skepticism: the first principle of rationality - Less Wrong

36 Post author: aaronsw 06 August 2012 12:51AM

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Comment author: gwern 06 August 2012 08:39:37PM 11 points [-]

Some of which are quite dangerous. Either the JSTOR or PACER incidents could have killed any associated small nonprofit with legal bills. (JSTOR's annual revenue is something like 53x that of SIAI.)

As fun as it is to watch Swartz's activities (from a safe distance), I would not want such antics conducted on a website I enjoy reading and would like to see continue.

Comment author: David_Gerard 07 August 2012 11:54:03AM 0 points [-]

Did you really just assert that having Swartz post to LessWrong puts SIAI at serious legal and financial risk?

Comment author: gwern 07 August 2012 03:02:16PM *  3 points [-]

Good grief. You said, 'Aaron's achievements of type X are really awesome and we could use more achivements on LW!' Me: 'But type X stuff is incredibly dangerous and could kill the website or SIAI, and it's a little amazing Swartz has escaped both past X incidents with as apparently little damage as he has*.' You: 'zomg did you just seriously say Swartz posting to LW endangers SIAI?!'

Er, no, I didn't, unless Swartz posting to LW is now the 'actual track record of achievement' that you are vaunting, which seems unlikely. I said his accomplishments like JSTOR or PACER (to name 2 specific examples, again, to make it impossible to misunderstand me, again) endanger any organization or website they are associated with.

EDIT: * Note that I wrote this comment several months before Aaron Swartz committed suicide due to the prosecution over the JSTOR incident.