I would like to say one positive thing about this post, by the way, which is that it takes quite a lot of intellectual courage to post something so negative about a person helping run a workshop you are currently at and will remain at for weeks, while surrounded by people who like and respect that person as a core pillar of the community that you are in and talking to with your post. I think your willingness to post this is a positive trait of yours; I just hope future accusations are a little better-grounded.
I’m going to disagree, very strongly. There’s a line between “courage” and “thinking consequences cannot happen, because the people around you will respond as dath ilani, a fictional group of people”. The former is a virtue the community should encourage, the latter is an unhealthy condition that we should wean people off of.
Taking into account your LW profile description: you’re pretty wrong about what were the relevant considerations. I would not particularly think about the consequences of others responding to what I think I should do, as I know this could nudge me towards not doing that, even though I wouldn’t want to be moved by such things; I talked more about my stance towards that here: https://mikhailsamin.substack.com/p/on-access-and-whistleblowing.
(I stopped modelling Lightcone Infrastructure as dath ilani, the fictional version of humanity, due to Oliver’s policy I describe in the post, and I’d publish this post just the same even if I thought Lightcone Infrastructure were going to beat me up or something in response. But mostly considerations like “what if they kick me out” have not crossed my mind because these are irrelevant considerations in the context of deciding to publish a post I think I should.)
I would like to say one positive thing about this post, by the way, which is that it takes quite a lot of intellectual courage to post something so negative about a person helping run a workshop you are currently at and will remain at for weeks, while surrounded by people who like and respect that person as a core pillar of the community that you are in and talking to with your post. I think your willingness to post this is a positive trait of yours; I just hope future accusations are a little better-grounded.
I’m going to disagree, very strongly. There’s a line between “courage” and “thinking consequences cannot happen, because the people around you will respond as dath ilani, a fictional group of people”. The former is a virtue the community should encourage, the latter is an unhealthy condition that we should wean people off of.
Taking into account your LW profile description: you’re pretty wrong about what were the relevant considerations. I would not particularly think about the consequences of others responding to what I think I should do, as I know this could nudge me towards not doing that, even though I wouldn’t want to be moved by such things; I talked more about my stance towards that here: https://mikhailsamin.substack.com/p/on-access-and-whistleblowing.
(I stopped modelling Lightcone Infrastructure as dath ilani, the fictional version of humanity, due to Oliver’s policy I describe in the post, and I’d publish this post just the same even if I thought Lightcone Infrastructure were going to beat me up or something in response. But mostly considerations like “what if they kick me out” have not crossed my mind because these are irrelevant considerations in the context of deciding to publish a post I think I should.)