To be honest, I had you pegged as being stuck in a partisan spiral. The fact that you are willing to do this is pretty cool. Have some utils on the house. I don’t know if officially responding to your blog is worth MIRI’s time; it would imply some sort of status equivalence.
Also, you published some very embarrassing quotes from Yudkowsky. I’m guessing you caused him quite a bit of distress, so he’s probably not inclined to do you any favors. Mining someone’s juvenilia for outrageous statements is not productive – I mean he was 16 when he wrote some of the stuff you quote. I would remove those pages. Same with the usenet stuff – I know it was posted publicly but it feels like furtively-recorded conversations to me all these years later. Stick to arguments against positions MIRI and Yudkowsky currently hold. Personally I’ve moved from highly-skeptical of MIRI to moderately approving. I made this comment a year ago:
...The fact that MIRI is finally publishing technical research has impressed me. A year ago it seemed, to put it bluntly, that your organization was stalling, spending its funds on the full-time development of Harry Potter fanfiction and popular science books. Perhaps my i
For the record, I genuinely object to being thought of as a "highly competent CEO." I think "non-natural CEO working hard and learning fast and picking up lots of low-hanging fruit but also making lots of mistakes along the way because he had no prior executive experience" is more accurate. The good news is that I've been learning even more quickly since Matt Fallshaw joined the Board, since he's able and willing to put in the time to transfer to me what he's learned from launching and running multiple startups.
For the record, I genuinely object to being thought of as a "highly competent CEO."
But that's exactly what the Dunning-Kruger effect would lead us to expect a highly-competent CEOs to say! s/
non-natural CEO working hard and learning fast and picking up lots of low-hanging fruit but also making lots of mistakes along the way because he had no prior executive experience
To be honest, I didn't mean much by it. Just that MIRI has been more impressive lately, and presumably a good portion of this is due to your leadership.
But that's exactly what the Dunning-Kruger effect would lead us to expect a highly-competent CEOs to say!
No. It would lead us to expect that the top quartile would rank themselves well above the median but below their actual scores.
(And then to ask why we're thinking in such coarse granularity as quartiles.)
I haven't figured out what to say yet. :)
The short version is that I'm not sure we want to make counterclaims at the top of Alexander's blog posts. I mostly just wish Alexander was more consistently constructive in his criticism, like many of our other critics are. I think I'm far from alone in the impression that his criticisms are an uneven mix of kinda fair criticisms, deliberate straw men ("the intelligence explosion hypothesis is a tautology"), largely irrelevant character assassination (digging up embarrassing things Eliezer wrote when he was 16), and more. But I was resisting saying even this much, because I worry about putting Alexander in a position where he again feels he's being misrepresented and needs to defend himself.
Well, I guess let's see what happens. But I can't promise I'll think it's wise for me to reply further.
To make the first step and show that this is not some kind of evil ploy, I now deleted the (1) Yudkowsky quotes page and (2) the post on his personality (explanation on how that post came about).
I realize that they were unnecessarily offending and apologize for that. If I could turn back the clock I would do a lot differently and probably stay completely silent about MIRI and LW.
As far as I can tell, Yudkowsky basically grew up on the internet. I think it is more like you went through all the copies of Palin's school newspaper, and picked up some notes she passed around in class, and then published the most outrageous things she said in such a way that you implied they were written recently. I think this goes against some notion of journalistic tact.
Those two quotes that are dated before 2004 are the least outrageous.
This is the most outrageous one to me:
I must warn my reader that my first allegiance is to the Singularity, not humanity. I don’t know what the Singularity will do with us. I don’t know whether Singularities upgrade mortal races, or disassemble us for spare atoms. While possible, I will balance the interests of mortality and Singularity. But if it comes down to Us or Them, I’m with Them. You have been warned.
And it's clearly the exact opposite of what present Eliezer belives.
The stuff that bothers me are Usenet and mailing list quotes (they are equivalent to passing notes and should be considered off the record) and anything written when he was a teenager. The rest, I suppose, should at least be labeled with the date they were written. And if he has explicitly disclaimed the statement, perhaps that should be mentioned, too.
Young Eliezer was a little crankish and has pretty much grown out of it. I feel like you're criticising someone who no longer exists.
Also, the page where you try to diagnose him with narsisism just seems mean.
So let me get this straight - you did a psychiatric diagnosis over the internet, and instead of saying, 'obviously I'm using the term colloquially' you provided evidence.
...
and then you are surprised when you get attacked, and even now characterize these attacks by like as coming from a mindless horde...
when the horde was actually 4 people, only one post was against you personally as opposed to being against that one thing you said, and there were roughly 2 others on your side. And your comments there are upvoted.
Yes, it was a huge overreaction on my side and I shouldn't have written such a comment in the first place. It was meant as an explanation of how that post came about, it was not meant as an excuse. It was still wrong. The point I want to communicate is that I didn't do it out of some general interest to cause MIRI distress.
I apologize for offending people and overreacting to what I perceived the way I described it but which was, as you wrote, not that way. I already deleted that post yesterday.
Upvoted for the reflection and change of strategy. Congratulations for using the skills we admire, in very difficult circumstances. On meta level, I admire this article. (EDIT: Although your further comments in this thread kinda undermine it.)
On the object level, uhm, your proposal is between you and MIRI, none of my business. (EDIT: But I think it would be wiser for MIRI to not respond to you officially.)
The health effects you describe are scary. I never had anything this intense, but I think the closest approximation were some political debates (not on LW) which made my heart beat faster, and I felt I have to scream or jump, preferably both. Nice adaptation for a chimp, very unhealthy for a human with a sedentary lifestyle.
Please take care about your health!
I don't enjoy doing this and do not want to continue with it.
The easiest way to not continue with something is to not continue with it.
I respect both updates and hostile ceasefires.
You can update by posting a header to all of your blog posts saying, "I wrote this blog during a dark period of my life. I now realize that Eliezer Yudkowsky is a decent and honest person with no ill intent, and that anybody can be made to look terrible by selectively collecting all of his quotes one-sidedly as I did. I regret this page, and leave it here as an archive to that regret." If that is how you feel and that is what you do, I will treat with you starting from scratch in any future endeavors. I've been stupid too, in my life. (If you then revert to pattern, you do not get a second second chance.)
I have not found it important to say very much at all about you so far, unless you show up to a thread in which I am participating. If carrying on your one-sided vendetta is affecting your health and you want to declare a one-sided ceasefire for instrumental reasons, and you feel afraid that your brain will helplessly drag you back in if anyone mentions your name, then I state that: if you delete your site, withdraw entirely from all related online discussions, and do not say anything about MIRI or Eliezer Yudkowsky
I apologize for any possible misunderstanding in this comment. My reading comprehension is often bad.
I know that in the original post I offered to add a statement of your choice to any of my posts. I stand by this, although I would have phrased this differently now. I would like to ask you to consider that there are also personal posts which are completely unrelated to you, MIRI, or LW. Such as photography posts and math posts. It would be really weird and confusing to readers to add your suggested header to those posts. If that is what you want, I will do it.
You also mention that I could delete my site (I already deleted a bunch of posts related to you and MIRI). I am not going to do that, as it is my homepage and contains completely unrelated material. I am sorry if I possibly gave a false impression here.
You further talk about withdrawing entirely from all related online discussions. I am willing to entirely stop to add anything negative to any related discussion. But I will still use social media to link to material produced by MIRI or LW (such as MIRI blog posts) and professional third party critiques (such as a possible evaluation of MIRI by GiveWell) without adding my own co...
Since you have not yet replied to my other comment, here is what I have done so far:
(1) I removed many more posts and edited others in such a way that no mention of you, MIRI or LW can be found anymore (except an occasional link to a LW post).[1]
(2) I slightly changed your given disclaimer and added it to my about page:
Note that I wrote some posts, posts that could previously be found on this blog, during a dark period of my life. Eliezer Yudkowsky is a decent and honest person with no ill intent, and anybody can be made to look terrible by selectively collecting all of his quotes one-sidedly as I did. I regret those posts, and leave this note here as an archive to that regret.
The reason for this alteration is that my blog has been around since 2001, and for most of the time it did not contain any mention of you, MIRI, or LW. For a few years it even contained positive referrals to you and MIRI. This can all be checked by looking at e.g. archive.org for domains such as xixidu.com. I estimate that much less than 1% of all content over those years has been related to you or MIRI, and even less was negative.
But my previous comment, in which I asked you to consider that your sugges...
I don't have time to evaluate what you did, so I'll take this as a possible earnest of a good-faith attempt at something, and not speak ill of you until I get some other piece of positive evidence that something has gone wrong. A header statement only on relevant posts seems fine by me, if you have the time to add it to items individually.
I very strongly advise you, on a personal level, not to talk about these things online at all. No, not even posting links without discussion, especially if your old audience is commenting on them. The probability I estimate of your brain helplessly dragging you back in is very high.
I don't have time to evaluate what you did, so I'll take this as a possible earnest of a good-faith attempt at something, and not speak ill of you until I get some other piece of positive evidence that something has gone wrong.
This will be my last comment and I am going to log out after it. If you or MIRI change your mind, or discover any evidence "that something has gone wrong", please let me know by email or via a private message on e.g. Facebook or some other social network that's available at that point in time.
A header statement only on relevant posts seems fine by me, if you have the time to add it to items individually.
Thanks.
I noticed that there is still a post mentioning MIRI. It is not at all judgemental or negative but rather highlights a video that I captured of a media appearance of MIRI on German/French TV. I understand this sort of posts not to be relevant posts for either deletion or any sort of header.
Then there is also an interview with Dr. Laurent Orseau about something you wrote. I added the following header to this post:
...Note: I might have misquoted, misrepresented, or otherwise misunderstood what Eliezer Yudkowsky wrote. If this is the cas
At least now when I cite Eliezer's stuff on my doctoral thesis people who don't know him - there are a lot of them in philosophy - will not say to me "I've googled him and some crazy quotes came up eventually, so maybe you should avoid mentioning his name altogether". This was a much bigger problem to me than what is sounds. I had to do all sort of workarounds to use Eliezer's ideas as if someone else said it because I was advised not to cite him (and the main, often the only, argument was in fact the crazy quote things).
There might be some very small level of uncertainty as whether Alex's behaviour had a positive or negative overall impact(maybe it made MIRI slightly update in the right direction, somehow). But I can say with near certainty it made my life objectively worse in very quantifiable measures (i.e. I lost a month or two with the workarounds, and would continue to lose time with this).
We know that the sparring between Kruel and MIRI has caused a great deal of harm but it still should be possible in a less antagonistic fashion.
I am not about to mention you just to make your health problems worse, nor avoid mentioning you if I find that a net positive while I happen to be writing; your conduct has placed you outside of my circle of concern.
Not even as a tie-breaker? There are nicer ways to say this.
I urge you to see a competent cognitive-behavioral therapist and talk to them about the reason why your brain is making you do this even as it destroys your health.
This advice seems unsolicited and getting psychological advice from your past competitor seems unlikely to be helpful on an outside view.
I might bring up the name of Alexander Kruel as that guy who follows me around the 'Net looking for sentences that can be taken out of context to add to his hateblog, and mention with some bemusement that you didn't stop even after you posted that all the one-sided hate was causing you health problems.
This seems to be written to make Alexander aware of his risk of later embarassing himself. Telling someone who announces that they have mental health difficulties ...
To those who seem to not like the manner in which XiXiDu is apologizing: If someone who genuinely thinks the sky is falling apologizes to you while still wearing their metal hat—then that's the best you can possibly expect. To reject the apology until the hat is removed is...
I'm not MIRI affiliated, but as a member of the LessWrong forum, and talking for myself alone, I'll just repeat what I've said before: There's only so many times someone can call me a brainwashed cultist, before I stop forgiving them.
You've spent the past few years insulting and mocking people for having different opinions tha8n you. That's it. That's the entirety of the crime of LessWrong/MIRI: you've not produced a hint of unethicality or dishonesty in regards to any of MIRI and/or LessWrong's doings, but you bash them viciously for having different opinions.
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. So you getting health related issues as a result of the viciousness you perpetrate -- okay, that's like repeatedly punching someone and then complaining that your fist has started to hurt.
We don't have, nor ever had, a "Why Alexander Kruel/Xixidu sucks" page that we can take down. You are the one with the bazillion "Why LessWrong/MIRI sucks" pages. 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. Gee, it must be nice NOT having someone devoted to mocking you.
I wish you good health, as a general moral principle of my humanism. But I also care about the problems you caused on the targets of your viciousness.
You are one of the people spouting comments such as this one for a long time
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.
I reckon you might not see that such comments are a cause of what I wrote in the past.
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.
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 ever gone out of its way to make posts on why those people/organizations are bad. The fact is that in order to promote good discussion, you just don't want to have a page saying that the members of website/organization with whom you're having the discussion suck. (And while you might call it "highlighting problematic beliefs", the simple fact is that much of what you've posted about LW/MIRI is mean-spirited and hurtful, both of which are qualities that I don't think most "highlighting problematic beliefs" pages have.)
To be clear: much of your criticism is constructive criticism, possibly valid. Another significan...
LW does not have a "Why Anything Sucks" page as far as I'm aware.
There is one about Stephen J. Gould, but I don't remember any other.
I'm not sure he updated on any factual point. I read this as wanting to tap out. [ETA: In a somewhat more formalized way than usual]
I am usually in favor of tapping out of intractable arguments.
I'm approaching the situation solution-oriented. Updating on the method of dealing with the issue is a lot.
The amount of criticism does not reflect the amount of extraordinary statements being made here.
This is an important point brought up in a comment. Even though XiXiDu isn't a true outside perspective by any means, that's how I would imagine many newcomers to react, at first glance.
What we need to keep in mind is that the inferential gap between LW's claims and the general populace is gargantuan. We're dealing with people who often still believe in a man in the sky. Even if we restricted the target audience to the "decision makers", who are generally better at compartmentalizing their unreasonable beliefs away, the inferential gap is still very large. Especially because we're not talking about an unbiased audience. There are strong economic and reputational incentives to pumping out the most intelligent artificial agent, and very weak incentives (who wants to anonymously potentially save the planet if you can get rich instead?) to curtail one's efforts due to friendliness considerations. Even in a best case scenario, the world is largely doomed if this goes the same way that Tragedies of the Commons usually go.
Yeah, people at MIRI know about the enormity of the task, an...
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
I think the thing to remember is that, when you've run into contexts where you feel like someone might not care that they're setting you up to be judged unfairly, you've been too overwhelmed to keep track of whether or not your self-defense involves doing things that you'd normally be able to see would set them up to be judged unfairly.
You've been trying to defend a truth about a question -- about what actions you could reasonably be expected to have been sure you should have taken, after having been exposed to existential-risk arguments -- that's made up of many complex implicit emotional and social associations, like the sort of "is X vs. Y the side everyone should be on?" that Scott Alexander discusses in "Ethnic Tension and Meaningless Arguments". But you've never really developed the necessary emotional perspective to fully realize that the only language you've had access to, to do that with, is a different l...
So you getting health related issues as a cause of the viciousness you perpetrate -- okay, that's like repeatedly punching someone and then complaining that your fist has started to hurt.
I read this (from here), smiled and thought, "there's some karma for you. In no way metaphysical."
Then, I thought, "we have a literal karma system on this site." I checked. He has karma in the quadrupedal digits, 75 percent positive. I don't understand. If XiXiDu was so abusive, why is does he so upvoted? It seems like he must of said things worth saying, perhaps useful critiques. Is the karma system broken (or at least not designed to deal with this sort of thing) or are the accusations not as bad as they seem? Someone explain my confusion.
XiXiDu is generally a smart person and most of his comments are very good. He has this one pet peeve though.
LW karma is not a vote on the person, it's a collection of the votes on their individual comments. Most of his comments are good. Some of them are... controversial, to put it mildly.
75 percent positive means 25 percent negative. To get a worse outcome, a person would have to be unable to post good comments, or unable to stop bringing the controversial topic everywhere, or unwilling to participate in debates unrelated to the controversial topic. In some situations XiXiDu seems unable to resist, but he usually contributes productively in completely unrelated articles.
Explained by how most of his abuse is not occurring in comments here. Here he often plays at politeness. Then goes to his own blog or other forums, and there we are all a mass of creepy dangerous brainwashed naive cultists.
(...) getting health related issues as a cause of the viciousness (...)
I read this, smiled (...)
Now that's a shitty thing to say, regardless of where one stands on the issue. Wouldn't you say* that life is too short to be happy about other people's lives getting shorter? "Haha, my ideological opponent will lose our argument, by ways of dying first!" (Not to slippery slope you.) Also, let's not do the whole "abusive" reference class. That term has been so dragged through the mud via cultural appropriation by the malcontent that its use is triggering me.
* That being said, upvoted for how actual human beings think and feel, as opposed to what we're publicly supposed to portray.
75% positive is not a high ratio of positive karma. It's also not like every single comment he wrote on LW is flawed. Most of the problematic posts are also written outside of LW.
I am also aware that LW and MIRI are bothered by RationalWiki.
I was a little bit at first, but then I tried clicking "random page" a few times to get a sense of what RationalWiki is like as a whole. Other than stubs, every page I landed on contained an attack of some sort. Being upset about a RationalWiki entry being unfair and negative is... like being upset about Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary being linguistically inaccurate. It doesn't really matter and that's not really what they do.
I'm bothered by it more than you are I guess. I mean, for people already involved in the rationality community maybe RationalWiki can just be seen as some silly vindictive website dressed up as a place to learn. But I feel like RationalWiki has decent pagerank and random people do get sent there in google searches. To have that site be the first or one of the first introductions a person has to a given rationality topic seems pretty destructive.
There's no "fight". You've been a very aggressive and mean-spirited critic of LW/MIRI/EY for a few years. Doesn't mean that there's a fight. Doesn't mean anyone "wins" if, say, you shut up and go away.
Your suggestion is not constructive, because coming up with retorts to mean-spirited past posts and endorsing them would be a poor use of MIRI's time, and would only add to drama rather than reduce it. Here's what you should do instead:
First, consider just going away. It may be best for your physical and mental health to stay away from LW and LW-related topics. Delete your old posts, forget you ever cared about this stuff, take up some other hobbies, etc. If you feel you can't, presumably because you think these issues are really important, read on.
Come up with a generously-sized kindly-worded update that negates the meanness and stick it on top of your relevant past posts. E.g. if I were in your position I would write something like "I wrote the post below during years in which, I now recognize, I was locked in a venom-filled flamewar against a community which I actually like and appreciate, despite what I perceive as its faults. I do not automatically rep
I wrote the post below during years in which, I now recognize, I was locked in a venom-filled flamewar against a community which I actually like and appreciate, despite what I perceive as its faults. I do not automatically repudiate my arguments and factual points, but if you read the below, please note that I regret the venom and the personal attacks and that I may well have quote-mined and misrepresented persons and communities. I now wish I wrote it all in a kinder spirit.
Sounds good. Thanks.
Plenty of people manage to be skeptical of MIRI/EY and criticize them here without being you.
Hmm...the state of criticism leaves a lot to be desired currently. The amount of criticism does not reflect the amount of extraordinary statements being made here. I think there are a lot of people who shy away from open criticism.
Some stuff that is claimed here is just very very (self-censored).
I have recently attempted to voice a minimum of criticism when I said something along the lines of "an intelligence explosion happening within minutes is an extraordinary claim". I actually believe that the whole concept is...I can't say this in a way that doesn't offend people here. It's hard to recount what happened then, but my perception was that even that was already too much criticism. In a diverse community with healthy disagreement I would expect a different reaction.
Please take the above as my general perception and not a precise recount of a situation.
It's really difficult to write about this in a way that doesn't seem motivated. When I wrote my reply, I rewrote the ending three times, because I always had a feeling that it will seem like a different thing than I want it to be.
The fact is, if I had a magical pill that would make XiXiDu's health problems go away permanently, I would give it to him, even if I knew that as a consequence he will just continue in his attacks with restored strength. It might not be a wise thing to do, but it's what I would do anyway. But another fact is that I don't have such pill.
I was aware that suggesting to XiXiDu to make his health a priority will seem motivated. Adding a disclaimer that I don't mean it that way, seemed to only make things worse, because mentioning things, even in negative, makes them more visible. At the end I decided for the "virtue of silence".
The situation is such that what is good for XiXiDu's health also happens to be good for MIRI's PR. In theory, this should be a good news, because it allows a "win/win" solution. It doesn't feel so, though. There is already a criticism of XiXiDu online, and he feels that if he removes his attacks, but the criticism of ...
I've had to deal with the stress you are contributing to putting on the broader perception of transhumanism for the weekend, and that is on top of preexisting mental problems. (Whether MIRI/LW is actually representative to this is entirely orthogonal to the point; public perception has and is shifting towards viewing the broader context of futurism as run by neoreactionaries and beige-os with parareligious delusions.)
Of course, that's no reason to stop anything. People are going to be stressed by things independent of their content.
But you are expecting an entity which you have devoted most of blog to criticizing to be caring enough about your psychological state that they take time out to write header statements for each of your posts?
If you want to stop accusations of lying and bad faith, stop spreading the "LW believes in Roko's Basilisk" meme, and do something less directly reputation-warfare escalatory, and more productive-- like hunting down Nazis and creating alternatives to the current decision-theoretic paradigm. (I don't think anybody's going to get that upset over abstract discussions of Newcomb's Problem. At least, I hope.)
I don't think MIRI has any reason to take you up on this offer, as responding in this way would elevate the status of your writings. High status entities do not need to respond specifically to low status entities, and when they do, it will be obliquely and non-specifically addressed to the broader class which contains the specific low-status entity. Additionally, it would look mean-spirited to try to 'kick someone while their down', especially as this post in some ways resembles a call for a truce. As such, it would be a mistake for MIRI to accept your offer, even before taking into account the resources that would be required. If I was MIRI I would totally ignore this.
Given this, either you have failed to understand what apologizing actually consists in, or are still (perhaps subconsciously) trying to undermine MIRI. At the moment all you offer is the implication that you would continue your disruption were it not for the toll it has taken on your health. Contrition would demand at least a genuine apology - something like "I am sorry for acting badly" - if not actively working to undo the harm you have done.
Fortunately, I think you overestimate the impact you had. Probably your biggest effect was wasting everyone's time.
I don't think MIRI has any reason to take you up on this offer, as responding in this way would elevate the status of your writings.
Yudkowsky has a number of times recently found it necessary to openly attack RationalWiki, rather than ignoring it and clarifying the problem on LessWrong or his website in a polite manner. He also voiced his displeasure over the increasing contrarian attitude on LessWrong. This made me think that there is a small chance that they might desire to mitigate one of only a handful sources who perceive MIRI to be important enough to criticize them.
Given this, either you have failed to understand what apologizing actually consists in, or are still (perhaps subconsciously) trying to undermine MIRI.
I will apologize for mistakes I make and try to fix them. The above post was the confession that there very well could be mistakes, and a clarification that the reasons are not malicious.
I don't really have much to say here, since I'm not affiliated with MIRI, but I'd just like to say that I am genuinely impressed by this attempt at reconciliation. I do think that much of what you have previously written is/was uncharitable toward MIRI and EY, especially some of the more egregious quote-mining you've done, but this post has caused me to significantly revise my probability estimate of you deliberately engaging in character assassination downward. Now I think it's more likely that you simply mentioned some (perceived) shortcomings of MIRI/LW...
I think Toggle's observations are very good, and that you should consider everything said there. I started writing up my own response before I realised I was essentially repeating it.
I would like to add something, though - I think that it would be fair to characterize some of what you were doing as informed, insightful criticism, and some of what you were doing as unproductive and possibly hurtful. I don't think it is an all-or-nothing situation. In which case, as well-reasoned constructive criticism is very valuable, you should definitely continue to do t...
If you believe that I am, or was, a troll then check out this screenshot from 2009 (this was a year before my first criticism). And also check out this capture of my homepage from 2005, on which I link to MIRI's and Bostrom's homepage (I have been a fan).
If you believe that I am now doing this because of my health, then check out this screenshot of a very similar offer I made in 2011.
In summary: (a) None of my criticisms were ever made with the intent of giving MIRI or LW a bad name, but were instead meant to highlight or clarify problematic issues (b) I b...
This comment ruined my (initially very high) impression from your article. I appreciate that you are trying, and I believe in your good intentions, it's just... you are doing it somewhat wrong. Not sure if I can explain it or provide a better advice.
Probably the essence is that you were strongly emotionally driven in your critique, but you seem to be also strongly emotionally driven in negotiating peace, and your offers are not well calibrated. You want to stop an unproductive debate, but your offer to MIRI to publish something on your blog seems like another round of the same debate. If you feel there was something wrong about your articles, why can't you write it there, using your own words? (If I happen to step on someone's toe, I apologize to them using my own words, instead of inviting them to post something on my facebook page.)
Even if you want to tap out of the debate instead of apologizing, you could do it by writing an article on your blog called "why I am tired of debating MIRI", describing your reasons to stop debating it, or just the decision to stop debating it, even without any specific details. And then you could add the link to that article from the old MI...
If I look at the comments to this post, my perception is that many people understood it as some kind of confession that everything I ever wrote is just wrong and that they can subsequently ignore everything else I might ever write.
If it helps, I believe your criticism is a mix of good and bad parts, but the bad parts make it really difficult for the reader to focus on the good parts, so at the end even the good parts are kinda wasted. It would be better if you could separate them, but the problem is probably what you describe as being "easily overwhelmed".
You take this stuff really seriously, which in some way is impressive. Unfortunately, "taking stuff seriously" does not guarantee rational approach. (It could actually be the other way round; the higher stakes, the more difficult it is to keep a calm head.)
Also, the problem is not the criticism you have or the questions you ask, but the way how you do that. For example, if you find an old quote by Eliezer which seems problematic, the better way would be to post it in an open thread and ask: "I find this very disturbing. Does Eliezer still believe it or not? If yes, please explain. If no, please provide evidence of the change of mind." Instead, the way you handled this, you made a few enemies.
If the topic is so important to you, you should have handled it better. At this moment, it is probably better to just stop and relax. (And perhaps try a better approach one year later.)
A mixture of good and bad parts is exactly how I would summarize LW.
"Something made out of atoms" is exactly how I would summarize most things.
You don't need to delete any of your posts or comments. What I mainly fear is that if I was to delete posts, without linking to archived versions, then you would forever go around implying that all kinds of horrible things could have been found on those pages, and that me deleting them is evidence of this.
If you promise not to do anything like that, and stop portraying me as somehow being the worst person on Earth, then I'll delete the comments, passages or posts that you deem offending.
But if there is nothing reasonable I could do to ever improve your opinion of me (i.e. other than donating all my money to MIRI), as if I committed some deadly sin, then this is a waste of time.
I would be willing to delete them because they offend certain people and could have been written much more benignly, with more rigor, and also because some of them might actually be misrepresentations which I accidentally made. Another reason for deletion would be that they have negative expected value, not because the arguments are necessarily wrong.
And if you agree, then please think about the Streisand effect. And if you e.g. ask me to delete my basilisk page, think about whether people could start believing that I take it seriously and as a result take it more seriously themselves. I have thought about this before and couldn't reach a conclusive answer.
This is obviously not an agreement to delete everything you might want, such as my interview series.
I wouldn't want you to delete the interview series anyway. The things that most offended me was this: the title of "http://kruel.co/2013/01/10/the-singularity-institute-how-they-brainwash-you/" is absurdly offensive and inappropriate if you don't believe in the deliberate ill intent of MIRI. If you don't want to delete the post altogether, at least rename it to "How they convince you". When you use 'brainwash' or 'trick' or 'con', you're accusing them of being criminals. Only say such words if you really believe it.
I'd also like the deletion of http://kruel.co/2012/05/12/we-are-siai-argument-is-futile/ Putting words into SIAI's mouth as if it accurately presents its side of the case is unfair.
I was also primarily going to say to delete all the contents of your 'mockery index' , which I believe you yourself had already admitted was unfair mockery, but it seems you have already delete them. I'm glad and pleasantly surprised.
Assuming the mockery index pages remain deleted, and you delete or rename the 'how they brainwash you' page, I DO promise to refrain from discussing you again in any way (reasonable caveats like you not discussing me are assumed), and will cert...
I already deleted the 'mockery index' (which had included a disclaimer for some months that read that I distant myself from those outsourced posts). I also deleted the second post you mentioned.
I changed the brainwash post to 'The Singularity Institute: How They Convince You' and added the following disclaimer suggested by user Anatoly Vorobey:
I wrote the post below during years in which, I now recognize, I was locked in a venom-filled flamewar against a community which I actually like and appreciate, despite what I perceive as its faults. I do not automatically repudiate my arguments and factual points, but if you read the below, please note that I regret the venom and the personal attacks and that I may well have quote-mined and misrepresented persons and communities. I now wish I wrote it all in a kinder spirit.
I also completely deleted the post 'Why you should be wary of the Singularity Institute'.
Yesterday I also deleted the Yudkowsky quotes page and the personality page.
Under what circumstances is the 'olive branch' valuable to MIRI- that is, what are the conditions under which they would want you to stop?
It seems to me that informed, insightful criticism is of tremendous value to anyone, although it's not always fun to get. It's great to find an intellectual opponent that can see weaknesses in your implementation and offer corrections, or even give you strong reason to reassess your whole plan. I go looking for principled opposition to transhumanism, Quinean philosophy, and what have you- these debates can offer some o...
I had a similar issue, although I think it was just a product of OCD. I used to have insane, tear-your-hair out arguments online with idiots which I could never ever not respond to, no matter how petty. It just bounced around in my brain until I had to vomit out a response to stop myself from going nuts.
I'd like to see a competent cognitive-behavioral therapist, as Eliezer recommended, but I don't believe that competent mental health professionals actually exist. Better to do your own research, and find your own solution.
It just bounced around in my brain until I had to vomit out a response to stop myself from going nuts.
Just an idea: How about you write a response... but in a text file that you just save on your disk and never publish?
Here is a more complicated solution, if you are a programmer. Once when I was irritated by idiots on some website, I created a GreaseMonkey script for a browser that has highlighted the comments of the idiots with yellow color. Their usernames were hardcoded in the script. This trivial change had a huge psychological impact. When I saw their next comment and it was highlighted, I was like "oh, that's just some known idiot, no need to take this seriously, just laught about it", and it didn't hurt me at all. And when I found a new hopeless idiot, I added the new username into my code, and refreshed the page; so I had my revenge. It was incredibly calming, and no one else knew about it.
I don't believe that competent mental health professionals actually exist.
I think they do, especially if you select for the best evidence-based method that will attract evidence-based people, but you may have to try more than one professional, and many people's financial or insurance situations don't permit that.
I think that all the involved people deserve a break time to time. Every one is always attacking them and I have some aesthetic differences and some minor intellectually structural differences, but on the good side of the sanity waterline they're great.
As a somewhat recent follower of LW (less than 1 year), it was actually quite useful to sift through your critiques back then (while occasionally they felt a bit personal and unnecessarily emotionally-motivated, I still valued the gist of the content - they were refreshingly contrarian).
Basically, when I first stumbled upon LW, I was excited, awed, and to some extent hypnotized.
The content was an interesting mixture of mathematics, computer science, philosophy and cognitive science, and as a new reader, I found myself easily convinced of many of the main...
Hehe. I just checked out that blog of yours.
I advise anyone tempted to respond to this to first do so as well.
I respect both updates and hostile ceasefires.
You can update by posting a header to all of your blog posts saying, "I wrote this blog during a dark period of my life. I now realize that Eliezer Yudkowsky is a decent and honest person with no ill intent, and that anybody can be made to look terrible by selectively collecting all of his quotes one-sidedly as I did. I regret this page, and leave it here as an archive to that regret." If that is how you feel and that is what you do, I will treat with you starting from scratch in any future endeavors. I've been stupid too, in my life. (If you then revert to pattern, you do not get a second second chance.)
I have not found it important to say very much at all about you so far, unless you show up to a thread in which I am participating. If carrying on your one-sided vendetta is affecting your health and you want to declare a one-sided ceasefire for instrumental reasons, and you feel afraid that your brain will helplessly drag you back in if anyone mentions your name, then I state that: if you delete your site, withdraw entirely from all related online discussions, and do not say anything about MIRI or Eliezer Yudkowsky in the future, I will not say anything about Xixidu or Alexander Kruel in the future. I will urge others to do the same. I do not control anyone except myself. I remark that you cannot possibly expect anything except hostility given your past conduct and that feeding your past addiction by posting one little comment anywhere, only to react with shock as people don't give you the respect to which you consider yourself entitled, is likely to drag you back in and destroy your health again.
Failing either of these actions:
I am probably going to put up a page about Roko's Basilisk soon. I am not about to mention you just to make your health problems worse, nor avoid mentioning you if I find that a net positive while I happen to be writing; your conduct has placed you outside of my circle of concern. If the name Alexander Kruel happens to arise in some other online discussion or someone links to your site, I will explain that you have been carrying on a one-sided vendetta against MIRI for unknown psychological reasons. If for some reason I am talking about the hazards of my existence, I might bring up the name of Alexander Kruel as that guy who follows me around the 'Net looking for sentences that can be taken out of context to add to his hateblog, and mention with some bemusement that you didn't stop even after you posted that all the one-sided hate was causing you health problems. Either a ceasefire or an update will prevent me from saying any such thing.
I urge you to see a competent cognitive-behavioral therapist and talk to them about the reason why your brain is making you do this even as it destroys your health.
I have written this note according to the principles of Tell Culture to describe my own future actions conditional on yours. Reacting to it in a way I deem inappropriate, such as taking a sentence out of context and putting it on your hateblog, will result in no future such communications with you.
"You can update by posting a header to all of your blog posts saying, "I wrote this blog during a dark period of my life. I now realize that Eliezer Yudkowsky is a decent and honest person with no ill intent, and that anybody can be made to look terrible by selectively collecting all of his quotes one-sidedly as I did. I regret this page, and leave it here as an archive to that regret.""
Wow, just wow. Cult leader demands Stalin-style self-critique on every page (no sane person would consider it reasonable) and censoring of all posts related to Less Wrong after campaign of harassment.
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 ;-)
