I’m not sure what Eliezer is referring to, but my guess is that many of the comments that he would mark as “elaborate-misinterpretations”, I would regard as reasonable questions / responses, and I would indeed frown on Eliezer just deleting them. (Though also shrug, since the rules are that authors can delete whatever comments they want.)
Some examples that come to mind are this discussion with Buck and this discussion with Matthew Barnett, in which (to my reading of things) Eliezer seems to be weirdly missing what the other person is saying at least as much as they are missing what he is saying.
I from the frustration Eliezer expressed in those threads, I would guess that he would call these elaborate-misinterpretations.
My take is that there’s some kind of weird fuckyness about communicating about some of these topics where both sides feel exasperation that the other side is apparently obstinately mishearing them. I would indeed think it would be worse if the post author in posts like that just deleted the offending comments.
I currently doubt the Buck thread would qualify as such from Eliezer’s perspective (and agree with you there that in as much as Eliezer disagrees, he is wrong in that case).
IMO I do think it’s a pretty bad mark on LW’s reputation that posts like Matthew’s keep getting upvoted, with what seem to me like quite aggressively obtuse adversarial interpretations of what people are saying.
The existence of the latter unfortunately makes the former much harder to navigate.
I’m not sure what Eliezer is referring to, but my guess is that many of the comments that he would mark as “elaborate-misinterpretations”, I would regard as reasonable questions / responses, and I would indeed frown on Eliezer just deleting them. (Though also shrug, since the rules are that authors can delete whatever comments they want.)
Some examples that come to mind are this discussion with Buck and this discussion with Matthew Barnett, in which (to my reading of things) Eliezer seems to be weirdly missing what the other person is saying at least as much as they are missing what he is saying.
I from the frustration Eliezer expressed in those threads, I would guess that he would call these elaborate-misinterpretations.
My take is that there’s some kind of weird fuckyness about communicating about some of these topics where both sides feel exasperation that the other side is apparently obstinately mishearing them. I would indeed think it would be worse if the post author in posts like that just deleted the offending comments.
I currently doubt the Buck thread would qualify as such from Eliezer’s perspective (and agree with you there that in as much as Eliezer disagrees, he is wrong in that case).
IMO I do think it’s a pretty bad mark on LW’s reputation that posts like Matthew’s keep getting upvoted, with what seem to me like quite aggressively obtuse adversarial interpretations of what people are saying.
The existence of the latter unfortunately makes the former much harder to navigate.