SquirrelInHell

Then what makes Peterson so special?

This is what the whole discussion is about. You are setting boundaries that are convenient for you, and refuse to think further. But some people in that reference class you are now denigrating as a whole are different from others. Some actually know their stuff and are not charlatans. Throwing a tantrum about it doesn't change it.

Replying toThe Jordan Peterson Mask

I did in fact have something between those two in mind, and was even ready to defend it, but then I basically remembered that LW is status-crazy and and gave up on fighting that uphill battle. Kudos to alkjash for the fighting spirit.

-1

Replying toThe Jordan Peterson Mask

They explicitly said that he's not wrong-on-many-things in the T framework, the same way Eliezer is T.correct.

Frustrating, that's not what I said! Rule 10: be precise in your speech, Rule 10b: be precise in your reading and listening :P My wording was quite purposeful:

I don't think you can safely say Peterson is "technically wrong" about anything

I think Raemon read my comments the way I intended them. I hoped to push on a frame in people seem to be (according to my private, unjustified, wanton opinion) obviously too stuck in. See also my reply below.

I'm sorry if my phrasing seemed conflict-y to you. I think the fact that Eliezer has high status in the community and Peterson has low status is making people stupid about this issue, and this makes me write in a certain style in which I sort of intend to push on status because that's what I think is actually stopping people from thinking here.

Replying toThe Jordan Peterson Mask

Cool examples, thanks! Yeah, these are issues outside of his cognitive expertise and it's quite clear that he's getting them wrong.

Note that I never said that Peterson isn't making mistakes (I'm quite careful with my wording!). I said that his truth-seeking power is in the same weight class, but obviously he has a different kind of power than LW-style. E.g. he's less able to deal with cognitive bias.

But if you are doing "fact-checking" in LW style, you are mostly accusing him of getting things wrong about which he never cared in the first place.

Like when Eliezer is using phlogiston as an example in the Sequences and gets the historical facts wrong. But that doesn't make Eliezer wrong in any meaningful sense, because that's not what he was talking about.

There's some basic courtesy in listening to someone's message, not words.

Replying toMurphy’s Quest Ch 1: Exposure Therapy

Murphy’s Quest Ch 1: Exposure Therapy

This story is trash and so am I.

If people don't want to see this on LW I can delete it.

You are showcasing a certain unproductive mental pattern, for which there's a simple cure. Repeat after me:

This is my mud pile

I show it with a smile

And this is my face

It also has its place

For increased effect, repeat 5 times in rap style.

Replying toThe Jordan Peterson Mask

[Please delete this thread if you think this is getting out of hand. Because it might :)]

I'm not really going to change my mind on the basis of just your own authority backing Peterson's authority.

See right here, you haven't listened. What I'm saying is that there is some fairly objective quality which I called "truth-seeking juice" about people like Peterson, Eliezer and Scott which you can evaluate by yourself. But you are just dug yourself into the same trap a little bit more. From what you write, your heuristics for evaluating sources seem to be a combination of authority and fact-checking isolated pieces (regardless of how much you understand the whole picture).... (read more)

Replying toThe Jordan Peterson Mask

[Note: somewhat taking you up on the Crocker's rules]

Peterson's truth-seeking and data-processing juice is in super-heavy weight class, comparable to Eliezer etc. Please don't make the mistake of lightly saying he's "wrong on many things".

At the level of analysis in your post and the linked Medium article, I don't think you can safely say Peterson is "technically wrong" about anything; it's overwhelmingly more likely you just didn't understand what he means. [it's possible to make more case-specific arguments here but I think the outside view meta-rationality should be enough...]

Replying toIs there a Connection Between Greatness in Math and Philosophy?

Is there a Connection Between Greatness in Math and Philosophy?

4) The skill to produce great math and skill to produce great philosophy are secretly the same thing. Many people in either field do not have this skill and are not interested in the other field, but the people who shape the fields do.

FWIW I have reasonably strong but not-easily-transferable evidence for this, based on observation of how people manipulate abstract concepts in various disciplines. Using this lens, math, philosophy, theoretical computer science, theoretical physics, all meta disciplines, epistemic rationality, etc. form a cluster in which math is a central node, and philosophy is unusually close to math even considered in the context of the cluster.

Replying toFunding for AI alignment research

Funding for AI alignment research

Note that this is (by far) the least incentive-skewing from all (publicly advertised) funding channels that I know of.

Apply especially if all of 1), 2) and 3) hold:

1) you want to solve AI alignment

2) you think your cognition is pwned by Moloch

3) but you wish it wasn't

Replying toFocusing

Dynamic Karma & Static Karma

Focusing

tl;dr: your brain hallucinates sensory experiences that have no correspondence to reality. Noticing and articulating these “felt senses” gives you access to the deep wisdom of your soul.

I think this snark makes it clear that you lack gears in your model of how focusing works. There are actual muscles in your actual body that get tense as a result of stuff going on with your nervous system, and many people can feel that even if they don't know exactly what they are feeling.

The current karma system tracks one number for each user. This number is used both as an indicator of "is this user's writing worth paying attention to" and as a voting weight (using the new powers-of-five system). I think this is hugely broken and splitting these two apart could make the karma system more effective and also simpler in some sense.

One important way in which the current system is broken is that it forces a painful tradeoff between wanting to easily delegate moderation power (which should ideally have a more local scope, and be used up rather than taken away), but also wanting to conservatively signal the importance of contributions (which should... (read 463 more words →)

Messaging Troubles

I can't see the content of any private messages. A person I talked to reports the same. So it must be true for everyone, based on the well known principle that that n=0: plausible hypothesis, n=1: near certainty for personal purposes, n=2: established science.

Btw, it's currently possible to set up a private two-way communications link by repeatedly editing the title of a conversation :)

RSS Troubles

Bug: Inconsistent session status

Some stuff that is currently broken about handling RSS feeds:

rss link builders on the front page create invalid urls
all feeds except the one with all posts are unusable in practice, because of sth like the low end of the range of posts that is available in them sometimes goes back in time, which makes rss readers pick up old posts as new posts
if user accounts are supposed to work like personal blogs, then they need to have their own rss links which are easy to access from there
ideally, there would be a way to subscribe to an aggregate feed of all blogs which one is following, and also to all non-meta posts
relatedly, I can't find a way to view a list of accounts which I'm following