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Calien comments on Open Thread, Jun. 15 - Jun. 21, 2015 - Less Wrong
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Today, I was using someone else's computer and typed "lesswrong" into the search/address bar. Apparently the next most popular search is "lesswrong cult". I started shrieking with laughter, getting a concerned reaction from the owner, which doesn't help our image much.
Eliezer wants to be a guru. No one calls him on it. There is an enormous amount of unhealthy hero worship. What did you expect, exactly?
-- Yvain on EY.
I don't know, it feels like I see more people criticizing perceived hero worship of EY than I see actual hero worship. If anything the "in" thing on LW these days seems to be signalling how evolved one is by putting down EY or writing off the sequences as "just a decent popular introduction to cognitive biases, nothing more" or whatever.
I don't call it out so much as find it incredibly amusing.
Eliezer wants to be a guru. No one calls him on it. There is an enormous amount of unhealthy hero worship. What did you expect, exactly?
Even if you see Eliezer as a wanna-be-guru, he is not that powerful. The kind of hero worship that you see in real cults is on a different scale.
Very charismatic people who actually get people to follow them through the strength of their charisma don't come across as "hilariously over-the-top arrogant" to people within their in-group.
I also find it hard how you can cite such a paragraph by Yvain and at the same time say with a straight face "Nobody calls EY on it".
Arrogance is just poor instrumental rationality in interpersonal communication. "Guruhood" is something different, and more dangerous.
I don't know exactly what you mean with "Guruhood" in this context. If you look at a figure like Ayn Rand, someone who would have said what Scott wrote about EY would have been kicked out of Ayn Rand's inner circle. Ayn Rand kicked people out because they had the wrong taste of music.
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
It's not enough to not be Hitler, basically.
My model for a thought leader is someone like Richard Feynman. Feynman didn't write epistles or officiate weddings. This did not prevent him from being enormously influential in physics.
The fact of the matter is, EY wants to be a guru, and the community wants him to be a guru, too.
I don't think a guru being beyond criticism is something unique to a particular group like Ayn Rand's objectivists.
I don't think Ayn Rand was Hitler. She wasn't as bad as cult leaders like Jim Jones,
Do you think that everybody who tries to build a community is a guru?
My point was, it's not a steelman response to pick a deliberately weak foil (and Rand is a quite weak foil as far as movement leaders are concerned). It's not enough to be ?better? than Rand. There isn't even a total ordering on awfulness. That's what the Anna Karenina quote was about.
No?
But I am not talking about everybody, I am talking about EY. And the relevant feature of EY's is not that he tried (and succeeded) to build a community, it's that he writes epistles, officiates weddings, has something called the Sequences (with a capital S!), etc. etc. etc.
He is not trying to build a community of colleagues/equals, as far as I can tell. If he did, he would act a lot more like Feynman.
Do you use "movement leader" synonymous with "guru"? Feymann isn't a movement leader. Do you object to EY wanting to be a movement leader?
I don't think Ayn Rand is a deliberately weak foil. Jim Jones is a deliberately weak foil. I use Ayn Rand because it's the nearest "rational cult" I can think of.
If I would seek for "rational movement" I could also go for New Atheists. Richard Dawkins is a movement leader. On the other hand I wouldn't call him a guru. Would you?
Why are you comparing against a negative example, rather than an example to emulate?
I already described what sorts of features of EY's make him a "guru."
It can make sense to call out borderline cases within your own community, because that gives you the greatest chance of making a difference.
I don't believe in the paradigm of "call out culture". Copying SJW tactics isn't a good idea. In most cases it's more effective to give feedback for improvement privately.
The idea that EY didn't get pushback is completely illusory. He got enough pushback that he now doesn't post on LW. During the last year where UFAI got more of public attention EY didn't seek the spotlight but rather left that role to FHI. To me that reflect an understanding that this decision was in the benefit of the cause.
I didn't mention anyone by name.
That still leaves my first paragraph. I don't believe that "calling out" is generally the best technique for making a difference.
I am completely unsurprised.