(Again, not trying to excuse pointlessly being a dick. Plausibly Eliezer is not infrequently a big pointless dick, I do not know, no strong opinion.)
Another hypothesis: It’s possible that he thinks some people should be treated with public contempt.
As an intuition pump for how it might be hypothetically possible that someone should be treated with public contempt, consider a car salesman who defrauds desperate people. He just straightforwardly lies about the quality of the cars he sells; he picks vulnerable people desperate for a cheap way to juggle too many transport needs; he charms them, burning goodwill. He has been confronted about this, and just pettily attacks accusers, or if necessary moves towns. He has no excuse, he’s not desperate himself, he just likes making money.
How should you treat him? Plausibly contempt is correct—or rather, contempt in reference to anything to do with his car sales business. IDK. Maybe you can think of a better response, but contempt does seem to serve some kind of function here: a very strong signal of “this stuff is just awful; anyone who learns much about it much will agree; join in on contempt for this stuff; this way people will know to avoid this stuff”.
a very strong signal of “this stuff is just awful; anyone who learns much about it much will agree; join in on contempt for this stuff; this way people will know to avoid this stuff”.
When Eliezer says that something is just awful, I interpret that to mean “this is just awful.” Period. I’m sure that from long experience he has observed that in fact very few people who learn much about it will agree, because they are not able to follow his reasoning, let alone derive his conclusions for themselves. I also doubt he would find it useful to have a crowd of potplants dogpiling on the target in imitation of his excoriation but without his understanding.
(Again, not trying to excuse pointlessly being a dick. Plausibly Eliezer is not infrequently a big pointless dick, I do not know, no strong opinion.)
Another hypothesis: It’s possible that he thinks some people should be treated with public contempt.
As an intuition pump for how it might be hypothetically possible that someone should be treated with public contempt, consider a car salesman who defrauds desperate people. He just straightforwardly lies about the quality of the cars he sells; he picks vulnerable people desperate for a cheap way to juggle too many transport needs; he charms them, burning goodwill. He has been confronted about this, and just pettily attacks accusers, or if necessary moves towns. He has no excuse, he’s not desperate himself, he just likes making money.
How should you treat him? Plausibly contempt is correct—or rather, contempt in reference to anything to do with his car sales business. IDK. Maybe you can think of a better response, but contempt does seem to serve some kind of function here: a very strong signal of “this stuff is just awful; anyone who learns much about it much will agree; join in on contempt for this stuff; this way people will know to avoid this stuff”.
When Eliezer says that something is just awful, I interpret that to mean “this is just awful.” Period. I’m sure that from long experience he has observed that in fact very few people who learn much about it will agree, because they are not able to follow his reasoning, let alone derive his conclusions for themselves. I also doubt he would find it useful to have a crowd of potplants dogpiling on the target in imitation of his excoriation but without his understanding.