I think I am, all things considered, sad about this. I think libel suits are really bad tools for limiting speech, and I declined being involved with them when some of the plaintiffs offered me to be involved on behalf of LW and Lightcone.
I do think RationalWiki is one of the better applications of the relevant law, but the law is too abuse-prone, and normalizing its use would cause much more harm than RationalWiki ever caused, that I don’t think this was the right choice by the plaintiffs. I think it would have been a big personal sacrifice for the common good to not sue despite the high likelihood of success and the high ongoing personal harm incurred from RationalWiki actions, and so I have sympathy for the people who did sue, but I do think it’s pretty bad and they overall likely still made the world worse.
I think libel suits are really bad tools for limiting speech
Especially when the punishment is not only that you may lose the suit, but also the money you have to spend on your legal defense even when you win.
That said, RationalWiki is primarily a bullying (excuse me, snarky) website that most people only consider okay because they believe that the targets deserve it. (And they often do—but the problem is, once you have a shiny powerful gun, it is too tempting to expand the scope.) When your mission is to attack people publicly, you better stick to the facts, and don’t dismiss criticism with “but it is funnier this way”, or the lawyers may have the last laugh.
normalizing [libel suits] would cause much more harm than RationalWiki ever caused . . . . I do think it’s pretty bad and [this action] overall likely still made the world worse.
Is that your true rejection? (I’m surprised if you think the normalizing-libel-suits effect is nontrivial.)
Yeah, what would be my alternative true rejection? I don’t think the normalization effect is weak, indeed I expect even just within my social circle for this whole situation to come up regularly as justification for threatening people with libel suits.
I see your point re: free speech, and I don’t endorse any appeals to “I should abandon my principles because the other side has already done so” as constantly happens in politics. And I can absolutely understand why you wouldn’t be interested in joining such a lawsuit, both due to free speech concerns and because the FTX litigation can’t have been remotely pleasant.
That said, when people do stuff like dismissing x-risk because their top Google search result pointed them at RationalWiki, what exactly was the proper non-free-speech-limiting solution to this problem?
The FTX lawsuit was kind of reasonable IMO! Overall made me increase my trust in the court system for settling things related to bankruptcy.
I think there are many other institutions that are better suited to helping people navigate this kind of stuff. Google can deprioritize them in their search rankings. LLMs can provide reasonable fact-checks. A community-note like system could apply to Google Search results, or people over time switch towards platforms that provide them with community-note like systems.
Indeed, my sense is RationalWiki’s influence had already been decreasing very heavily, and the period in which people did not have antibodies against them was pretty short. And I think that period would have been even shorter if people had written up what they were doing earlier (my sense is a Tracing Woodgrain’s post on some of the core people involved was pretty helpful here).
I think I am, all things considered, sad about this. I think libel suits are really bad tools for limiting speech, and I declined being involved with them when some of the plaintiffs offered me to be involved on behalf of LW and Lightcone.
Appreciate you saying this. It raises my esteem for LW/Lightcone to hear that this is the route that you all choose. Perhaps that doesn’t mean much since I largely agree with the view you express about defamation suits, but even for those that disagree, I think there is something to admire here in terms of sticking to principles even when it’s people you strongly disagree with how are benefiting from those principles in a particular case.
I think I am, all things considered, sad about this. I think libel suits are really bad tools for limiting speech, and I declined being involved with them when some of the plaintiffs offered me to be involved on behalf of LW and Lightcone.
I do think RationalWiki is one of the better applications of the relevant law, but the law is too abuse-prone, and normalizing its use would cause much more harm than RationalWiki ever caused, that I don’t think this was the right choice by the plaintiffs. I think it would have been a big personal sacrifice for the common good to not sue despite the high likelihood of success and the high ongoing personal harm incurred from RationalWiki actions, and so I have sympathy for the people who did sue, but I do think it’s pretty bad and they overall likely still made the world worse.
Especially when the punishment is not only that you may lose the suit, but also the money you have to spend on your legal defense even when you win.
That said, RationalWiki is primarily a bullying (excuse me, snarky) website that most people only consider okay because they believe that the targets deserve it. (And they often do—but the problem is, once you have a shiny powerful gun, it is too tempting to expand the scope.) When your mission is to attack people publicly, you better stick to the facts, and don’t dismiss criticism with “but it is funnier this way”, or the lawyers may have the last laugh.
Is that your true rejection? (I’m surprised if you think the normalizing-libel-suits effect is nontrivial.)
Yeah, what would be my alternative true rejection? I don’t think the normalization effect is weak, indeed I expect even just within my social circle for this whole situation to come up regularly as justification for threatening people with libel suits.
I see your point re: free speech, and I don’t endorse any appeals to “I should abandon my principles because the other side has already done so” as constantly happens in politics. And I can absolutely understand why you wouldn’t be interested in joining such a lawsuit, both due to free speech concerns and because the FTX litigation can’t have been remotely pleasant.
That said, when people do stuff like dismissing x-risk because their top Google search result pointed them at RationalWiki, what exactly was the proper non-free-speech-limiting solution to this problem?
The FTX lawsuit was kind of reasonable IMO! Overall made me increase my trust in the court system for settling things related to bankruptcy.
I think there are many other institutions that are better suited to helping people navigate this kind of stuff. Google can deprioritize them in their search rankings. LLMs can provide reasonable fact-checks. A community-note like system could apply to Google Search results, or people over time switch towards platforms that provide them with community-note like systems.
Indeed, my sense is RationalWiki’s influence had already been decreasing very heavily, and the period in which people did not have antibodies against them was pretty short. And I think that period would have been even shorter if people had written up what they were doing earlier (my sense is a Tracing Woodgrain’s post on some of the core people involved was pretty helpful here).
Appreciate you saying this. It raises my esteem for LW/Lightcone to hear that this is the route that you all choose. Perhaps that doesn’t mean much since I largely agree with the view you express about defamation suits, but even for those that disagree, I think there is something to admire here in terms of sticking to principles even when it’s people you strongly disagree with how are benefiting from those principles in a particular case.