[SEQ RERUN] Extenuating Circumstances

Today’s post, Extenuating Circumstances was originally published on 06 April 2009. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

You can excuse other people’s shortcomings on the basis of extenuating circumstances, but you shouldn’t do that with yourself.


Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).

This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we’ll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky’s old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Real-Life Anthropic Weirdness, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.

Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day’s sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.