I expect that a bunch of this post is “spun” in uncharitable ways.
That is, I think of the post as primarily trying to do the social move of “lower trust in Anthropic” rather than the epistemic move of “try to figure out what’s up with Anthropic”. The latter would involve discussion of considerations like: sometimes lab leaders need to change their minds. To what extent are disparities in their statements and actions evidence of deceptiveness versus changing their minds? Etc. More generally, I think of good critiques as trying to identify standards of behavior that should be met, and comparing people or organizations to those standards, rather than just throwing accusations at them.
“I think a bunch of this comment is fairly uncharitable.”
The first was of Oliver Habryka. I feel pretty confident that this was a bad critique, which overstated its claims on the basis of pretty weak evidence.
I’m curious if this post was also (along with the Habryka critique) one of Mikhail’s daily Inkhaven posts. If so it seems worth thinking about whether there are types of posts that should be written much more slowly, and which Inkhaven should therefore discourage from being generated by the “ship something every day” process.
For reference, the other person I’ve drawn the most similar conclusion about was Alexey Guzey (e.g. of his critiques here, here, and in some internal OpenAI docs). I notice that he and Mikhail are both Russian. I do have some sympathy for the idea that in Russia it’s very appropriate to assume a lot of bad faith from power structures, and I wonder if that’s a generator for these critiques.
“That is, I think of the comment as primarily trying to do the social move of “lower trust in what Mikhail says” rather than the epistemic move of “figure out what’s up with Mikhail”. The latter would involve considerations like: to what extent disparities between your state of knowledge and Mikhail’s other posts evidence of being uncharitable vs. having different sets of information and trying to share the information? Etc. More generally, I think of good critiques as trying to identify standards of behavior that should be met, and comparing people to those standards, rather than just throwing accusations at them.”
I’d much rather the discussion was about the facts and not about people or conversational norms.
(downvoted because you didn’t actually spell out what point you’re making with that rephrase. You think nobody should ever call people out for doing social moves? You think Richard didn’t do a good job with it?)
This didn’t really do what I wanted. For starters, literally quoting Richard is self-defeating – either it’s reasonable to make this sort of criticism, or it’s not. If you think there is something different between your post and Richard’s comment, I don’t know what it is and why you’re doing the reverse-quote except to be sorta cute.
I don’t even know why you think Richard’s comment is “primarily doing the social move of lower trust in what Mikhail says”. Richard’s comment gives examples of why he thinks that about your post, you don’t explain what you think is charitable about his.
I think it is necessary sometimes to argue that people are being uncharitable, and looking they are doing a status-lowering move more than earnest truthseeking.
I haven’t actually looked at your writing and don’t have an opinion I’d stand by, but from my passing glances at it I did think Richard’s comment seemed to be pointing at an important thing.
“I think a bunch of this comment is fairly uncharitable.”
“That is, I think of the comment as primarily trying to do the social move of “lower trust in what Mikhail says” rather than the epistemic move of “figure out what’s up with Mikhail”. The latter would involve considerations like: to what extent disparities between your state of knowledge and Mikhail’s other posts evidence of being uncharitable vs. having different sets of information and trying to share the information? Etc. More generally, I think of good critiques as trying to identify standards of behavior that should be met, and comparing people to those standards, rather than just throwing accusations at them.”
I’d much rather the discussion was about the facts and not about people or conversational norms.
(downvoted because you didn’t actually spell out what point you’re making with that rephrase. You think nobody should ever call people out for doing social moves? You think Richard didn’t do a good job with it?)
Somewhat valid, thanks; I added quotes with examples.
This didn’t really do what I wanted. For starters, literally quoting Richard is self-defeating – either it’s reasonable to make this sort of criticism, or it’s not. If you think there is something different between your post and Richard’s comment, I don’t know what it is and why you’re doing the reverse-quote except to be sorta cute.
I don’t even know why you think Richard’s comment is “primarily doing the social move of lower trust in what Mikhail says”. Richard’s comment gives examples of why he thinks that about your post, you don’t explain what you think is charitable about his.
I think it is necessary sometimes to argue that people are being uncharitable, and looking they are doing a status-lowering move more than earnest truthseeking.
I haven’t actually looked at your writing and don’t have an opinion I’d stand by, but from my passing glances at it I did think Richard’s comment seemed to be pointing at an important thing.
I attempted to demonstrate Richard’s criticism is not reasonable, as some parts of it are not reasonable according to its own criteria.
(E.g., he did not describe how I should’ve approached the Lightcone Infrastructure post better.)
To be crystal clear, I do not endorse this kind of criticism.