Often I think “fear of polarization” ends up making the person not able to ask tough questions at all; and sometimes they end up straight up going over to work on bad stuff.
People working on bad stuff are absolutely taking advantage of orientations like “fear of polarization”. (Not everyone, and it’s a mix of sympathetic / unsympathetic, intentional / unintentional; but still happening.) For example, I suspect this is a primary enabler of self-deception—being unclear about what’s wrong about someone’s beliefs or actions.
I agree re/ networks (https://tsvibt.blogspot.com/2022/09/dangers-of-deferrence.html). I also agree with polarization being bad. However:
Often I think “fear of polarization” ends up making the person not able to ask tough questions at all; and sometimes they end up straight up going over to work on bad stuff.
People working on bad stuff are absolutely taking advantage of orientations like “fear of polarization”. (Not everyone, and it’s a mix of sympathetic / unsympathetic, intentional / unintentional; but still happening.) For example, I suspect this is a primary enabler of self-deception—being unclear about what’s wrong about someone’s beliefs or actions.
I think this means something like, you strongly strongly criticize the behavior, but not demonize the person. I have for example said this: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CYTwRZtrhHuYf7QYu/a-case-for-courage-when-speaking-of-ai-danger?commentId=pLH6dxnTrTz56BQYj
I’m curious how else we-broadly can go about this better.