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Dahlen comments on What are "the really good ideas" that Peter Thiel says are too dangerous to mention? - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (78)
Inaccurately polarized ideas about Thiel's politics, general divisiveness and hostilities between LessWrongers, a fantastic opportunity for politically motivated trolls to come out, and spillover nasty rumours with regards to Thiel himself.
And '"so" concerned' may be a bit pushing it.
I think you are greatly overestimating the power of a LW comment thread to harm Thiel. Also, I consider it a strong possibility that Thiel wants people to guess at what he was referring to. Finally, you shouldn't assume his dangerous ideas are political.
Beyond considering it as a possibility out of common courtesy, I have no reason to be invested in what happens to Thiel as a result of this discussion.
Just because he might want people to guess doesn't mean LessWrong is the place for it.
I stand by what I said when I claimed that this thread will attract politically motivated trolls. Take a look at the rest of the thread. Go tell them not to assume his dangerous ideas are political.
It's inappropriate for you to bring up the possibility that my post might harm Thiel, and then when I respond say that you are not "invested" in whether Thiel will be harmed.
Color me unimpressed. Both of them can be perfectly true and valid at once. He's some random guy I don't know and he didn't ask for this, therefore I'm going to consider whether other people could put words in his mouth, just because it's common courtesy and I don't have a reason to wish him bad. At the same time I'm not his PR specialist. If the opposite of what he ostensibly expressed is true, and it's a publicity stunt, then it doesn't follow that I should be okay with someone using LW at large to gain support for him. So yes, I'm not invested in his success, no scare quotes. I don't get paid if more people agree with him. Precisely the position of a neutral observer, biased only by the fact that I do care about not giving the political trolls of LessWrong a venue for expressing themselves.
More abstractly, saying X is true, and then when something claims it's not true, responding with "well I don't care about X" is very bad form in a debate because if you don't care about X you should not have brought it up.
My point was that there are degrees of caring*, and that caring does depend** on how sincere a person is when claiming not to want to draw attention to one of their points.
* = going from "I don't give a fuck" to "this is my best friend we're talking about / I'm paid to give a fuck", on which spectrum I took the middle position.
** = they don't want to draw attention to it, fine, let's respect their wishes. Oh, they were playing reverse psychology on me? Screw them then.
There's no point in trying to get me to express a plainly pro- or anti-Thiel opinion.
The monopoly idea is in some sense political. I think there good reason to believe that other ideas are similarly political.
That depends on how seriously people take the possibilities speculated upon, and there's no real reason to take idle speculation seriously. Perhaps we should credit other posters with the capacity for practicing basic epistemic hygiene?
This could be caused by any contentious topic. You could draw a distinction between productive/necessary friction and useless friction. Though I don't share your dour view of the local capacity for political discussion and thus don't anticipate a ruckus - perhaps your mileage has varied.
Thiel has been accused of self-promotion by another commenter in a somewhat glib fashion, so that seems to have happened, though any discussion of Thiel and his ideas could invite similar comments. Don't see how that could be avoided bar avoiding all discussion of Thiel (or anyone else who's disliked by some other people).
*shrugs* You asked, I answered.
shimmies Well then I'll be on my way moonwalks like an Egyptian