1) You focus heavily on 99.99% reliability. That’s 1-in-10,000. If we only count weekdays, that’s 1 absence every 40 years, or about one per working lifetime. If we count weekends, that’s 1 absence every 27 years, or 3 per lifetime. Do you really feel like this is a reasonable standard, or are you being hyperbolic and over-correcting? If the latter, what wold you consider an actual reasonable number?
2) Why does one person being 95% reliable cause CFAR workshops to fail catastrophically? Don’t you have backups / contingencies? I’m not trying to be rude, I’m just used to working with vastly less fragile, more fault-tolerant systems, and I’m noticing I am very confused when you discuss workshops failing catastrophically.
the problem is that any rate of tolerance of real defection (i.e. unmitigated by the social loop-closing norms above) ultimately results in the destruction of the system.
3) Numerous open source programs have been written via a web of one-shot and low-reliability contributors. In general, there’s plenty of examples of successful systems that tolerate significantly more than 0.01% defection. Could you elaborate on why you think these systems “close the loop”, or aren’t destroyed? Could you elaborate on why you think your own endeavors can’t work within those frameworks? The framing seems solidly a general purpose statement, not just a statement on your own personal preferences, but I acknowledge I could be misreading this.
4) You make a number of references to the military, and a general philosophy of “Obedience to Authority”. Given the high rate of sexual assault and pointless bureaucracy in the actual military, that seems like a really bad choice of role model for this experiment. How do you plan to avoid the well known failure states of such a model?
5) You raise a lot of interesting points about Restitution, but never actually go in to details. Is that coming in a future update?
every attempt by an individual to gather power about themselves is at least suspect, given regular ol’ incentive structures and regular ol’ fallible humans
6) You seem to acknowledge that you’re making an extraordinary claim here when you say “I’ve noticed the skulls”. Do you think your original post constitutes extraordinary proof? If not, why are you so upset that some people consider you suspect, and are, as you invited them to do, grilling you and trying to protect the community from someone who might be hoodwinking members?
7) Do you feel comfortable with the precedent of allowing this sort of recruiting post from other people (i.e. me)? I realize I’m making a bit of an ask here, but if I, handoflixue, had written basically this post and was insisting you should trust me that I’m totally not running a cult… would you actually trust me? Would you be okay with the community endorsing me? I am using myself specifically as an example here, because I think you really do not trust me—but I also have the karma / seniority to claim the right to post such a thing if you can :)
I note for others reading this comment and wondering why it hasn’t been addressed that I’ve ceased replying to handoflixue and a couple of other posters on a policy level, for reasons surrounding norms of discourse, strawmanning, epistemic humility, presence or absence of good faith, etc. It’s possible that the above contains good questions or insights; if someone else chooses to repost/re-ask/rephrase sections of this, I’ll likely respond to them.
Concerns about your philosophy
1) You focus heavily on 99.99% reliability. That’s 1-in-10,000. If we only count weekdays, that’s 1 absence every 40 years, or about one per working lifetime. If we count weekends, that’s 1 absence every 27 years, or 3 per lifetime. Do you really feel like this is a reasonable standard, or are you being hyperbolic and over-correcting? If the latter, what wold you consider an actual reasonable number?
2) Why does one person being 95% reliable cause CFAR workshops to fail catastrophically? Don’t you have backups / contingencies? I’m not trying to be rude, I’m just used to working with vastly less fragile, more fault-tolerant systems, and I’m noticing I am very confused when you discuss workshops failing catastrophically.
3) Numerous open source programs have been written via a web of one-shot and low-reliability contributors. In general, there’s plenty of examples of successful systems that tolerate significantly more than 0.01% defection. Could you elaborate on why you think these systems “close the loop”, or aren’t destroyed? Could you elaborate on why you think your own endeavors can’t work within those frameworks? The framing seems solidly a general purpose statement, not just a statement on your own personal preferences, but I acknowledge I could be misreading this.
4) You make a number of references to the military, and a general philosophy of “Obedience to Authority”. Given the high rate of sexual assault and pointless bureaucracy in the actual military, that seems like a really bad choice of role model for this experiment. How do you plan to avoid the well known failure states of such a model?
5) You raise a lot of interesting points about Restitution, but never actually go in to details. Is that coming in a future update?
6) You seem to acknowledge that you’re making an extraordinary claim here when you say “I’ve noticed the skulls”. Do you think your original post constitutes extraordinary proof? If not, why are you so upset that some people consider you suspect, and are, as you invited them to do, grilling you and trying to protect the community from someone who might be hoodwinking members?
7) Do you feel comfortable with the precedent of allowing this sort of recruiting post from other people (i.e. me)? I realize I’m making a bit of an ask here, but if I, handoflixue, had written basically this post and was insisting you should trust me that I’m totally not running a cult… would you actually trust me? Would you be okay with the community endorsing me? I am using myself specifically as an example here, because I think you really do not trust me—but I also have the karma / seniority to claim the right to post such a thing if you can :)
I note for others reading this comment and wondering why it hasn’t been addressed that I’ve ceased replying to handoflixue and a couple of other posters on a policy level, for reasons surrounding norms of discourse, strawmanning, epistemic humility, presence or absence of good faith, etc. It’s possible that the above contains good questions or insights; if someone else chooses to repost/re-ask/rephrase sections of this, I’ll likely respond to them.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/c1/wellkept_gardens_die_by_pacifism/