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Ishaan comments on xkcd on the AI box experiment - Less Wrong Discussion
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So I'm going to say this here rather than anywhere else, but I think Eliezer's approach to this has been completely wrong headed. His response has always come tinged with a hint of outrage and upset. He may even be right to be that upset and angry about the internet's reaction to this, but I don't think it looks good! From a PR perspective, I would personally stick with an amused tone. Something like:
"Hi, Eliezer here. Yeah, that whole thing was kind of a mess! I over-reacted, everyone else over-reacted to my over-reaction... just urgh. To clear things up, no, I didn't take the whole basilisk thing seriously, but some members did and got upset about it, I got upset, it all got a bit messy. It wasn't my or anyone else's best day, but we all have bad moments on the internet. Sadly the thing about being moderately internet famous is your silly over reactions get captured in carbonite forever! I have done/ written lots of more sensible things since then, which you can check out over at less wrong :)"
Obviously not exactly that, but I think that kind of tone would come across a lot more persuasively than the angry hectoring tone currently adopted whenever this subject comes up.
My response in EY's place would probably be, "I'm a person who had trained himself to take ideas seriously [insert link on Taking Ideas Seriously]. I thought there might be a risk at the time, I acted quickly, and upon further thought it turned out I was wrong and yes, that's fairly embarrassing in hindsight. That's one of the pitfalls of Taking Ideas Seriously - you're more likely to embarrass yourself. But imagine the alternative, where there really is a threat, and people kept quiet because they didn't want to be embarrassed. From that perspective, I think that the way I acted on the spur of the moment was understandable".
[Edit: this is apparently not what happened and there may or may not be some sort of smear campaign or something distorting everything, although I'm confused at why it was banned here then. I'm not really sure what' actually happened now, oh well... either way, whatever actually happened, I taking a general stance of judging people mostly by accomplishments and good ideas rather than mistakes and bad ideas, except in cases of actual harm done.]
That's not what actually happened; his first comment on the eventually-banned thread said that he didn't believe in the threat. But yes, that would be a good response if that's what had happened; he might have to say something like this some day.