Qiaochu_Yuan comments on New censorship: against hypothetical violence against identifiable people - Less Wrong

22 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 23 December 2012 09:00PM

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Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 24 December 2012 11:13:53AM *  2 points [-]

I wouldn't have posted the following except that I share Esar's concerns about representativeness:

I think this is a good idea. I think using the word "censorship" primes a large segment of the LW population in an unproductive direction. I think various people are interpreting "may be deleted" to mean "must be deleted." I think various people are blithely ignoring this part of the OP (emphasis added):

In other words, the form of this discussion is not 'Do you like this?' - you probably have a different cost function from people who are held responsible for how LW looks as a whole

In particular, I think people are underestimating how important it is for LW not to look too bad, and also underestimating how bad LW could be made to look by discussions of the type under consideration.

Finally, I strongly agree that

anyone talking about a proposed crime on the Internet fails forever as a criminal[.]

Comment author: kodos96 24 December 2012 05:34:33PM 0 points [-]

In particular, I think people are underestimating how important it is for LW not to look too bad

I'm not underestimating that at all... I'm saying that this policy makes us look bad... WAY worse than the disease it's intended to cure, especially in light of the fact that that disease cleared itself up in a few hours with no intervention necessary.