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pslunch comments on The genie knows, but doesn't care - Less Wrong
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XiXiDu wasn't attempting or requesting anonymity - his LW profile openly lists his true name - and Alexander Kruel is someone with known problems (and a blog openly run under his true name) whom RobbBB might not know offhand was the same person as "XiXiDu" although this is public knowledge, nor might RobbBB realize that XiXiDu had the same irredeemable status as Loosemore.
I would not randomly out an LW poster for purposes of intimidation - I don't think I've ever looked at a username's associated private email address. Ever. Actually I'm not even sure offhand if our registration process requires/verifies that or not, since I was created as a pre-existing user at the dawn of time.
I do consider RobbBB's work highly valuable and I don't want him to feel disheartened by mistakenly thinking that a couple of eternal and irredeemable semitrolls are representative samples. Due to Civilizational Inadequacy, I don't think it's possible to ever convince the field of AI or philosophy of anything even as basic as the Orthogonality Thesis, but even I am not cynical enough to think that Loosemore or Kruel are representative samples.
Thank you for the clarification. While I have a certain hesitance to throw around terms like "irredeemable", I do understand the frustration with a certain, let's say, overconfident and persistent brand of misunderstanding and how difficult it can be to maintain a public forum in its presence.
My one suggestion is that, if the goal was to avoid RobbBB's (wonderfully high-quality comments, by the way) confusion, a private message might have been better. If the goal was more generally to minimize the confusion for those of us who are newer or less versed in LessWrong lore, more description might have been useful ("a known and persistent troll" or whatever) rather than just providing a name from the enemies list.
Agreed.
Though actually, Eliezer used similar phrasing regarding Richard Loosemore and got downvoted for it (not just by me). Admittedly, "persistent troll" is less extreme than "permanent idiot," but even so, the statement could be phrased to be more useful.
I'd suggest, "We've presented similar arguments to [person] already, and [he or she] remained unconvinced. Ponder carefully before deciding to spend much time arguing with [him or her]."
Not only is it less offensive this way, it does a better job of explaining itself. (Note: the "ponder carefully" section is quoting Eliezer; that part of his post was fine.)