It is definitely concerning that a lot of LW will immediately go into tribal mode when faced with a very heavily-qualified statement that <person their tribe does not like> is not a cartoon supervillain. A lot of the comments here, including almost all of the ones at the top, read like atrocity propaganda rather than a dispassionate analysis of what drives peoples’ behavior, and most of them are more heavily-upvoted than the original post while being vastly less substantiated.
To be clear, there are legitimate arguments that a world leader is not implicitly guaranteed to have a good CEV. Lavrentiy Beria, who attempted a coup using the NKVD after Stalin died, is an extreme counterexample. But I get the feeling that a lot of the people expressing a willingness to gamble the existence of humanity on <Putin/Xinping/whoever else> fundamentally valuing torture for the sake of torture have not looked into these people in any meaningful sense—read biographies[1], listened to a few speeches, and tried to picture what the decision-making process looks like from their perspective. It is likewise worthwhile to point out that atrocity propaganda asserting cartoonish evil has a very poor track record, even when it comes from a liberal democracy and gets endorsed by very trusted institutions like Amnesty International.
Even if I truly hated someone, I would try to learn more about them if I sincerely believed there was a risk of them becoming omnipotent. I feel like there’s been a very sharp change in the community’s level of tribalism over the past year, to the point where nuance elicits outright anger from a substantial share of users.
It is definitely concerning that a lot of LW will immediately go into tribal mode when faced with a very heavily-qualified statement that <person their tribe does not like> is not a cartoon supervillain.
Like a lot of advice, some people need to follow this more and some need to follow it less.
The quokka meme is a thing for a reason. Some people are for all practical purposes cartoon supervillains, and quokkas can’t recognize it. What you’re seeing is pushback against quokkadom.
Quokkadom definitely, and in my case another driver of disagreement is also something about other posters IMO having too much faith in people’s interest (and ability) in “deep reflection”. Like, if someone’s values don’t currently seem good to you, it’s quite a strong prediction that the person will shift towards good values once the person gets access to future technology and AI assistants. Do people really have a gears-level model of what “deep reflection” would look like in practice post-singularity, from which they can draw confident predictions? Or do they have emotional attachment and halo effects around ideas like the power of rationality/thinking, and somehow those being linked to “competence” so that people are especially optimistic about powerful people (since they’ve shown competence in getting into power), even though we have seen many many examples where people with competence at gaining and staying in power are absolutely awful at philosophical thinking, LW-style rationality, or being interested in the well-being of others.
Calling exasperated reactions to the post “tribal” feels like too cheap of an explanation. I don’t know many rationalists who spend a lot of their attention thinking about how bad Putin is. (I’d expect more tribalism if the example had been Trump.) People get triggered when something they care about is under attack. “Who would you be okay having power” is a question with some real-life relevance (even if it’s often discussed in the abstract and with hypotheticals) and if you see someone advance a take that you think would be very bad, surely that’s a bit of a threat to the expected impact of the community that you’re in? So, I think people care about this not out of “tribalism” but because it’s the nature of “Who would you be okay as a leader/in power” that ppl often feel invested.
If we are optimizing the universe based on any CEV, we are gambling the fate and existence of humanity. In this essay, Habryka would choose Putin’s CEV over Claude’s CEV or a dog’s CEV. This is gambling with the existence of humanity, because Putin’s CEV may not include humans. It’s gambling with the fate of humanity, because Putin’s CEV may include galaxies of torture.
Meanwhile, Thane Ruthenis would choose extinction over Putin’s CEV. Arguably this is not gambling with the existence of humanity, because there is no gamble, if we are extinct, we don’t exist. But there is a sense in which it is gambling with the fate of humanity, because Putin’s CEV may not include galaxies of torture, and then it would be a shame if we were extinct because Thane thought otherwise.
I feel like there’s been a very sharp change in the community’s level of tribalism over the past year, to the point where nuance elicits outright anger from a substantial share of users.
To me it feels like the dynamic you describe was there a few years ago as well and I’m surprised that you say that something changed in the last year regarding that. Your account age is six months old, have you been reading for longer?
It is definitely concerning that a lot of LW will immediately go into tribal mode when faced with a very heavily-qualified statement that <person their tribe does not like> is not a cartoon supervillain. A lot of the comments here, including almost all of the ones at the top, read like atrocity propaganda rather than a dispassionate analysis of what drives peoples’ behavior, and most of them are more heavily-upvoted than the original post while being vastly less substantiated.
To be clear, there are legitimate arguments that a world leader is not implicitly guaranteed to have a good CEV. Lavrentiy Beria, who attempted a coup using the NKVD after Stalin died, is an extreme counterexample. But I get the feeling that a lot of the people expressing a willingness to gamble the existence of humanity on <Putin/Xinping/whoever else> fundamentally valuing torture for the sake of torture have not looked into these people in any meaningful sense—read biographies[1], listened to a few speeches, and tried to picture what the decision-making process looks like from their perspective. It is likewise worthwhile to point out that atrocity propaganda asserting cartoonish evil has a very poor track record, even when it comes from a liberal democracy and gets endorsed by very trusted institutions like Amnesty International.
Even if I truly hated someone, I would try to learn more about them if I sincerely believed there was a risk of them becoming omnipotent. I feel like there’s been a very sharp change in the community’s level of tribalism over the past year, to the point where nuance elicits outright anger from a substantial share of users.
There are certainly pop biographies of any world leader that any given country doesn’t like that will reinforce one’s preconceived assumptions,
Like a lot of advice, some people need to follow this more and some need to follow it less.
The quokka meme is a thing for a reason. Some people are for all practical purposes cartoon supervillains, and quokkas can’t recognize it. What you’re seeing is pushback against quokkadom.
Quokkadom definitely, and in my case another driver of disagreement is also something about other posters IMO having too much faith in people’s interest (and ability) in “deep reflection”. Like, if someone’s values don’t currently seem good to you, it’s quite a strong prediction that the person will shift towards good values once the person gets access to future technology and AI assistants. Do people really have a gears-level model of what “deep reflection” would look like in practice post-singularity, from which they can draw confident predictions? Or do they have emotional attachment and halo effects around ideas like the power of rationality/thinking, and somehow those being linked to “competence” so that people are especially optimistic about powerful people (since they’ve shown competence in getting into power), even though we have seen many many examples where people with competence at gaining and staying in power are absolutely awful at philosophical thinking, LW-style rationality, or being interested in the well-being of others.
Calling exasperated reactions to the post “tribal” feels like too cheap of an explanation. I don’t know many rationalists who spend a lot of their attention thinking about how bad Putin is. (I’d expect more tribalism if the example had been Trump.) People get triggered when something they care about is under attack. “Who would you be okay having power” is a question with some real-life relevance (even if it’s often discussed in the abstract and with hypotheticals) and if you see someone advance a take that you think would be very bad, surely that’s a bit of a threat to the expected impact of the community that you’re in? So, I think people care about this not out of “tribalism” but because it’s the nature of “Who would you be okay as a leader/in power” that ppl often feel invested.
If we are optimizing the universe based on any CEV, we are gambling the fate and existence of humanity. In this essay, Habryka would choose Putin’s CEV over Claude’s CEV or a dog’s CEV. This is gambling with the existence of humanity, because Putin’s CEV may not include humans. It’s gambling with the fate of humanity, because Putin’s CEV may include galaxies of torture.
Meanwhile, Thane Ruthenis would choose extinction over Putin’s CEV. Arguably this is not gambling with the existence of humanity, because there is no gamble, if we are extinct, we don’t exist. But there is a sense in which it is gambling with the fate of humanity, because Putin’s CEV may not include galaxies of torture, and then it would be a shame if we were extinct because Thane thought otherwise.
To me it feels like the dynamic you describe was there a few years ago as well and I’m surprised that you say that something changed in the last year regarding that. Your account age is six months old, have you been reading for longer?