Asteroid impacts are a prime candidate to stop global warming.

I dunno man, Randall Munroe thinks that they would cause global warming.

The nicest thing one can say about that arrangement is that it failed to start WW III

You say this like it's some kind of grudging acknowledgement, but it's actually the entire point of the structure and a Big F'n Deal. Recall that there was less than 25 years between WW1 and WW2. It's been almost 80 years without WW3, despite high tensions at various times. WW3 would have been catastrophic, and preventing it is a great accomplishment.

If that's what Quinn (comment OP) is saying then I think it's obviously wrong - people really do value the goods and services they access via the internet very highly. This leads me to believe that this is not what Quinn is saying.

What I (post author) am saying is people don't apply even a tiny fraction of the vibes that come with that high value to their actual ISP (or, analogously, airline, electric company etc).

I think the lesson of social desirability bias is that valuable services having lower status than they "ought" to is the system working as intended.

Can you elaborate? I don't understand your point because it's too compressed. I feel like I need ~3 more sentences here to get it.

Yes, my claim is that "The Comcast Problem" is the reason for hatred, as opposed a feeling more like "I really value the service but am annoyed by the customer service and pricing, so overall meh."

On a -5 to +5 scale, I'm saying they are often at like -5 when they really should be somewhere between -1 and +1.

Well, one additional factor the US has is that various veto points and power centers cycle on different time scales.

There would also be an incentive to introduce lots of meaningless elections between irrelevant (to you) alternatives in order to abstain and accrue more stored votes.

Could also be described as "There would also be an incentive to allow others to make decisions on issue that matter more to them than to you, in order to be more likely to get your way on an issue you care about."

Re-phrased that way, it's not clear to me that this is a bad thing. If they don't care about those other issues either, then you won't gain any stored votes on net relative to other voters.

Absolutely! I value your voice. But, and excuse me if this is a misread, your posts in this series read to me like you are still trying to convince yourself and/or him.

It reads like you are a sort of rationalist Martin Luther criticizing the Pope. But, like, there are already a lot of metaphorically-protestant rationalists.

I think I'm trying to make a different point than footnote 20?

It seems like you are taking me to be saying something like "You shouldn't care what EY thinks about this Trans issue because "Everybody Knows" not to take his statements on this seriously" - that's how I read FN20.

Whereas I think my point is much more general and really not specific to Trans at all - like why be so deeply invested in the contents of some one guy's mind, at all? On any issue?

EY wrote some great (book-like objects). Inspiring, even. Worldview changing. But, like, whatever his opinions are today (on any issue), my view is mostly like, who cares? Either his arguments are convincing or they aren't.

By analogy, suppose (counter factually) that I think that Barack Obama was the greatest president in history (he wasn't, but he has to be alive for this analogy to work). Does that mean that I should decide what I think about today's political and policy problems based on what Obama thinks? Such that if Obama was wrong about something, I should engage in an epic quest to Get Obama's Attention and get him to admit he's wrong? I mean, that would be ridiculous, right?

Maybe I just don't get it because I'm not part of the Berkeley Community, I just read the writing. But my immediate reaction to this is like, why does Zack care so much about what Eliezer (2024) does or does not think? Or even whether, these days, he is or is not a fraud?

Like if you thought what he wrote in 2007 was great, just listen to that? Many (all?) authors who write great books have also written worse books. Maybe Zack's opinion is falling a long way from wherever it was.

But perhaps he would be happier to adopt a more ecumenical non-Berkeley-ite stance, which I think has been common all along outside The Berkeley Community, and which is something like "Eliezer wrote some great stuff that was very influential on my thinking and that I still believe was very insightful, and I really appreciate that. I enjoy reading LW more than I think I'd enjoy the marginal alternative use of reading time, but I don't go too far out of my way to pay attention to or care about what he's up to these days." - rather than assigning himself an Epic Quest to Win This Argument.