I don’t really think that these things have anything to do with each other (whether humanity should flourish vs being killed and turned into paperclips, and whether Said should be banned from LessWrong).
I also reject your characterization that we’re intentionally sacrificing epistemic standards to get back good authors. My story is that this is much more to do with my opinion that Said makes lots of demands of authors to explain things to his satisfaction, and yet often cannot seem (to me) to accept basic explanations of things either out of being dense or because of a commitment to not changing his mind (which he has endorsed sometimes doing for periods of at least a few days here).
Older version of this comment kept for posterity: A commenter that is epistemically committed to not changing his mind in the face of evidence and argument, and who demands people explain things to his satisfaction over and over and over again at the risk of being labeled ignorant and laughable, being banned from this webforum, has little-to-nothing to do with whether it’s better for humanity to have a flourishing future or instead to be turned into paperclips. Insofar as you’re genuinely unsure about whether you like paperclips a lot, perhaps buy some and find out? I mean I don’t actually think you might like paperclips that much, I think that you’re trying to say something about losing faith in LW but instead said something that doesn’t make sense.
I don’t really think that these things have anything to do with each other (whether humanity should flourish vs being killed and turned into paperclips, and whether Said should be banned from LessWrong).
I also reject your characterization that we’re intentionally sacrificing epistemic standards to get back good authors. My story is that this is much more to do with my opinion that Said makes lots of demands of authors to explain things to his satisfaction, and yet often cannot seem (to me) to accept basic explanations of things either out of being dense or because of a commitment to not changing his mind (which he has endorsed sometimes doing for periods of at least a few days here).
Older version of this comment kept for posterity:
A commenter that is epistemically committed to not changing his mind in the face of evidence and argument, and who demands people explain things to his satisfaction over and over and over again at the risk of being labeled ignorant and laughable, being banned from this webforum, has little-to-nothing to do with whether it’s better for humanity to have a flourishing future or instead to be turned into paperclips. Insofar as you’re genuinely unsure about whether you like paperclips a lot, perhaps buy some and find out? I mean I don’t actually think you might like paperclips that much, I think that you’re trying to say something about losing faith in LW but instead said something that doesn’t make sense.