Breaking the vicious cycle

XiXiDu

67 Breaking the vicious cycle

23rd Nov 2014

2 min read

67

You may know me as the guy who posts a lot of controversial stuff about LW and MIRI. I don't enjoy doing this and do not want to continue with it. One reason being that the debate is turning into a flame war. Another reason is that I noticed that it does affect my health negatively (e.g. my high blood pressure (I actually had a single-sided hearing loss over this xkcd comic on Friday)).

This all started in 2010 when I encountered something I perceived to be wrong. But the specifics are irrelevant for this post. The problem is that ever since that time there have been various reasons that made me feel forced to continue the controversy. Sometimes it was the urge to clarify what I wrote, other times I thought it was necessary to respond to a reply I got. What matters is that I couldn't stop. But I believe that this is now possible, given my health concerns.

One problem is that I don't want to leave possible misrepresentations behind. And there very likely exist misrepresentations. There are many reasons for this, but I can assure you that I never deliberately lied and that I never deliberately tried to misrepresent anyone. The main reason might be that I feel very easily overwhelmed and never had the ability to force myself to invest the time that is necessary to do something correctly if I don't really enjoy doing it (for the same reason I probably failed school). Which means that most comments and posts are written in a tearing hurry, akin to a reflexive retraction from the painful stimulus.

<tldr>

I hate this fight and want to end it once and for all. I don't expect you to take my word for it. So instead, here is an offer:

I am willing to post counterstatements, endorsed by MIRI, of any length and content[1] at the top of any of my blog posts. You can either post them in the comments below or send me an email (da [at] kruel.co).

</tldr>

I have no idea if MIRI believes this to be worthwhile. But I couldn't think of a better way to solve this dilemma in a way that everyone can live with happily. But I am open to suggestions that don't stress me too much (also about how to prove that I am trying to be honest).

You obviously don't need to read all my posts. It can also be a general statement.

I am also aware that LW and MIRI are bothered by RationalWiki. As you can easily check from the fossil record, I have at points tried to correct specific problems. But, for the reasons given above, I have problems investing the time to go through every sentence to find possible errors and attempt to correct it in such a way that the edit is not reverted and that people who feel offended are satisfied.

[1] There are obviously some caveats regarding the content, such as no nude photos of Yudkowsky ;-)

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67 Breaking the vicious cycle

by XiXiDu

23rd Nov 2014

2 min read

131

67

<tldr>

I hate this fight and want to end it once and for all. I don't expect you to take my word for it. So instead, here is an offer:

</tldr>

You obviously don't need to read all my posts. It can also be a general statement.

[1] There are obviously some caveats regarding the content, such as no nude photos of Yudkowsky ;-)

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XiXiDu12y70

We don't have, nor ever had, a "Why Alexander Kruel/Xixidu sucks" page that we can take down.

That's implying a false equivalence. If I make a quotes page of a public person, a person with far-reaching goals, in order to highlight problematic beliefs this person holds, beliefs that would otherwise be lost in a vast amount of other statements, then this is not the same as making a "random stranger X sucks" page.

So you getting health related issues as a result of the viciousness you perpetrate...

Stressful fights adversely affect an existing condition.

Unlike you have done with EY, I haven't even screenshotted the comments by you that you've later chosen to take down because you found them embarrassing to yourself.

I have maybe deleted 5 comments and edited another 5. If I detect other mistakes I will fix them. You make it sound like doing so is somehow bad.

LessWrongers always treated you (and Rationalwiki too), and is still treating you and any of your different opinions, much more civilly than you (or Rationalwiki) ever did us and any of ours.

You are one of the people spouting comments such as this one for a long time. I reckon you might not see that such comments are a cause of what I wrote in the past.

dxu12y120

That's implying a false equivalence. If I make a quotes page of a public person, a person with far-reaching goals, in order to highlight problematic beliefs this person holds, beliefs that would otherwise be lost in a vast amount of other statements, then this is not the same as making a "random stranger X sucks" page.

Then again, LW does not have a "Why Anything Sucks" page as far as I'm aware. There are plenty of people/organizations out there with whom LW/MIRI disagree, and who are more visible than you, but I don't think LW has ev... (read more)

14ArisKatsaris12y

Yes, my first encounter with you was when I bashed you for your unfair criticism of Rationalwiki and your unfair support of Eliezer Yudkowsky, yet somehow you failed to call me a brainwashed cultist of Rationalwiki, and you failed to launch a website devoted on how much your bashing of Rationalwiki is justified because they're horrible cultist people out to brainwash you. [...] Oh, I've actually wondered occassionally whether me bashing you for an Eliezer fanboy drove you to try to prove how much of an Eliezer fanboy you weren't, and so decided to launch your rabid obsession against him. But even if that's the case, I don't confuse causality with moral blame; reasonable people wouldn't attack third parties for any injustice I performed against them, they'd be angry against me alone -- and you never mentioned me once in all your absurd unjust diatribes against Lesswrong and MIRI. So I think that this is just justification after the fact to blame your attack on someone acting in defense. I've only started commenting against you (in support of LessWrong/MIRI, as opposed to in my defense of Rationalwiki) after dozens of mockeries and other attacks by you against the forum, so I don't think you can believably claim me as a significant 'cause' in the manner you imply.

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