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

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

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Article Navigation

Sort By: Best

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: wedrifid 06 August 2012 05:02:06AM 8 points [-]

It might be hard at first to tell the difference, so I'm going to have to use some examples. I'd ask that you try and suspend any emotional reactions you have to the examples I chose and just look at which approach seems more rational.

Bullshit. You aren't providing an example because it is "hard to tell the difference at first". You started with an intent to associate SIAI with self delusion and then tried to find a way to package it as some kind of rationality related general point.

Contrast this with the Singularity Institute. A skeptic might well ask whether the Singularity is actually going to occur. Well, the SIAI FAQ addresses this, but only to summarily dismiss a couple objections in a cursory paragraph (that evades most of the force of the objections). And that's the closest the FAQ gets to any sort of skepticism, the rest of it is just a straight and confident summary that tries to persuade you of SIAI beliefs.

The FAQ on the website is not the place to signal humility and argue against your own conclusions. All that would demonstrate is naivety and incompetence. You are demanding something that should not exist. This isn't to say that there aren't valid criticisms to be made of SIAI and their FAQ. You just haven't made them.

Which attitude seems more like a serious scientist? Which seems more like Uri Geller?

Am I the only person who is outright nauseated by the quality of reasoning in these recent mud-slinging posts by aaronsw? What I see is a hastily selected bottom line along the lines of "SingInst sux" or perhaps "SingInst folks are too arrogant" then whatever hastily conceived rhetoric he can think of to support it. The problem isn't in the conclusions---it is that the arguments used either don't support or outright undermine the conclusion.

Competent criticism is encouraged. But the mere fact that a post is intended to be critical or 'cynical' isn't sufficient. It needs to meet some kind of minimum intellectual standard too. If it did not represent an appeal to the second-order-contrarians and was evaluated based on actual content this post would probably end up mildly negative, even in the discussion section.

Comment author: MugaSofer comment score below threshold [+] (2 children)

Comment author: wedrifid 10 January 2013 02:18:22PM 0 points [-]

This is needlessly inflammatory, far to overconfident and, as it turned out, wrong. Making deductions about intent from their writing is not nearly as easy as you seem to think. Making wild accusations of nefarious attempts to insert subtext critical of you and your interests - indeed all our interests - makes you look hostile, paranoid and irrational, and for good reason.

To put it as politely as I can manage, this reply, being a reply to something so many months old, strikes me as odd. If my memory from that far back serves me (and I don't expect reliability of anyone's memory over that period) this post was one of a series of three within the space of a week by the author with a common theme.

The comment you are replying to is also in response to a post that has been fundamentally edited in response to this (and other) feedback. Apart from making judgement of the appropriateness of a reply difficult this is also a rare example of someone (aaronsw) being able to update and improve his contribution in response to feedback. Once again it is too long ago for me to remember whether I expressed appreciation and respect for aaronsw willingness to improve his post but I recall experiencing that and evaluating whether it aaronsw would consider such a comment to be positive or merely condescending.

as it turned out, wrong

That isn't something you demonstrated by making that link.

Making wild accusations of nefarious attempts to insert subtext critical of you and your interests

I don't seem to be talking about subtext critical of me of my interests at all. If you use Wei_Dai's user comments script and sort by top posts you might observe contributions that are a mix of support of SingInst and criticism of SingInst, depending on my evaluation of the object level issue in question. (The 'top contributions' sample is of course biased towards criticisms since such criticisms would be in response to, for example, Eliezer and so the conversations get more attention.) The point of this is that it is utterly absurd to be accusing me of making biased hysterical defenses of my personal interests when they aren't my interests at all.

I endorse the grandparent wholeheartedly as a response to the version of the post that it was made to and the temporal and hope that others will make similar contributions fighting against bullshit so that I can upvote them. However, since it is so long ago and especially since the post has since been improved I consider it rather counterproductive to draw attention to it.

Comment author: MugaSofer 10 January 2013 02:36:44PM -2 points [-]

I may have phrased that too strongly. However, I do think that your deduction regarding the original post - that it was written as an excuse to bash SI - is incompatible with the evidence as it stands and as it stood then, and should not have been presented in such a hostile manner. I appreciate this was some time ago, but it does seem like a good chance for calibration and so on. I know I have made similar mistakes.

To put it as politely as I can manage, this reply, being a reply to something so many months old, strikes me as odd. If my memory from that far back serves me (and I don't expect reliability of anyone's memory over that period) this post was one of a series of three within the space of a week by the author with a common theme.

I was, in fact, reading through old comments of his, in order to get a better idea of his positions, contributions, and, well, possible troll status. I do this pretty often, and indeed I regularly reply to comments made years ago. No-one else has objected. I know people sometimes change their minds, of course, but since you have not changed your mind (or so you claim) I see no reason not to criticize the position you held.

However, since it is so long ago and especially since the post has since been improved I consider it rather counterproductive to draw attention to it.

Why, are you worried that people will fail to realize this was in response to an earlier version and downvote you for misquoting the post?

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

Article Navigation

Comments (105)

Nearest Meetups

Virtual Study Room

Recent Comments

Recent Posts

Recent Rationality Quotes

Recent Wiki Edits

Top Contributors, 30 Days

Recent Karma Awards

Comments (105)

Top Contributors, 30 Days

You'll need to login or register to do that

(Don't worry, it only takes a few seconds)

Create

Login