It sounds like you’re saying that based on extremely sparse data you made up a Michael Vassar in your head to drive you crazy. More generally, it seems like a bunch of people on this thread, most notably Scott Alexander, are attributing spooky magical powers to him. That is crazy cult behavior and I wish they would stop it.
ETA: In case it wasn’t clear, “that” = multiple people elsewhere in the comments attributing spooky mind control powers to Vassar. I was trying to summarize Eric’s account concisely, because insofar as it assigns agency at all I think it does a good job assigning it where it makes sense to, with the person making the decisions.
Reading through the comments here, I perceive a pattern of short-but-strongly-worded comments from you, many of which seem to me to contain highly inflammatory insinuations while giving little impression of any investment of interpretive labor. It’s not [entirely] clear to me what your goals are, but barring said goals being very strange and inexplicable indeed, it seems to me extremely unlikely that they are best fulfilled by the discourse style you have consistently been employing.
To be clear: I am annoyed by this. I perceive your comments as substantially lower-quality than the mean, and moreover I am annoyed that they seem to be receiving engagement far in excess of what I believe they deserve, resulting in a loss of attentional resources that could be used engaging more productively (either with other commenters, or with a hypothetical-version-of-you who does not do this). My comment here is written for the purpose of registering my impressions, and making it common-knowledge among those who share said impressions (who, for the record, I predict are not few) that said impressions are, in fact, shared.
(If I am mistaken in the above prediction, I am sure the voters will let me know in short order.)
I say all of the above while being reasonably confident that you do, in fact, have good intentions. However, good intentions do not ipso facto result in good comments, and to the extent that they have resulted in bad comments, I think one should point this fact out as bluntly as possible, which is why I worded the first two paragraphs of this comment the way I did. Nonetheless, I felt it important to clarify that I do not stand against [what I believe to be] your causes here, only the way you have been going about pursuing those causes.
(For the record: I am unaffiliated with MIRI, CFAR, Leverage, MAPLE, the “Vassarites”, or the broader rationalist community as it exists in physical space. As such, I have no direct stake in this conversation; but I very much do have an interest in making sure discussion around any topics this sensitive are carried out in a mature, nuanced way.)
If you want to clarify whether I mean to insinuate something in a particular comment, you could ask, like I asked Eliezer. I’m not going to make my comments longer without a specific idea of what’s unclear, that seems pointless.
It is accurate to state that I constructed a model of him based on limited information, which subsequently contributed to my dramatic psychological collapse. Nevertheless, the reason for developing this particular model can be attributed to his interactions with me and others. This was not due to any extraordinary or mystical abilities, but rather his profound commitment to challenging individuals’ perceptions of conventional reality and mastering the most effective methods to do so.
This approach is not inherently negative. However, it must be acknowledged that for certain individuals, such an intense disruption of their perceived reality can precipitate a descent into a detrimental psychological state.
Thanks for verifying. In hindsight my comment reads as though it was condemning you in a way I didn’t mean to; sorry about that.
The thing I meant to characterize as “crazy cult behavior” was people in the comments here attributing things like what you did in your mind to Michael Vassar’s spooky mind powers. You seem to be trying to be helpful and informative here. Sorry if my comment read like a personal attack.
This can be unpacked into an alternative to the charisma theory.
Many people are looking for a reference person to tell them what to do. (This is generally consistent with the Jaynesian family of hypotheses.) High-agency people are unusually easy to refer to, because they reveal the kind of information that allows others to locate them. There’s sufficient excess demand that even if someone doesn’t issue any actual orders, if they seem to have agency, people will generalize from sparse data to try to construct a version of that person that tells them what to do.
It sounds like you’re saying that based on extremely sparse data you made up a Michael Vassar in your head to drive you crazy. More generally, it seems like a bunch of people on this thread, most notably Scott Alexander, are attributing spooky magical powers to him. That is crazy cult behavior and I wish they would stop it.
ETA: In case it wasn’t clear, “that” = multiple people elsewhere in the comments attributing spooky mind control powers to Vassar. I was trying to summarize Eric’s account concisely, because insofar as it assigns agency at all I think it does a good job assigning it where it makes sense to, with the person making the decisions.
Reading through the comments here, I perceive a pattern of short-but-strongly-worded comments from you, many of which seem to me to contain highly inflammatory insinuations while giving little impression of any investment of interpretive labor. It’s not [entirely] clear to me what your goals are, but barring said goals being very strange and inexplicable indeed, it seems to me extremely unlikely that they are best fulfilled by the discourse style you have consistently been employing.
To be clear: I am annoyed by this. I perceive your comments as substantially lower-quality than the mean, and moreover I am annoyed that they seem to be receiving engagement far in excess of what I believe they deserve, resulting in a loss of attentional resources that could be used engaging more productively (either with other commenters, or with a hypothetical-version-of-you who does not do this). My comment here is written for the purpose of registering my impressions, and making it common-knowledge among those who share said impressions (who, for the record, I predict are not few) that said impressions are, in fact, shared.
(If I am mistaken in the above prediction, I am sure the voters will let me know in short order.)
I say all of the above while being reasonably confident that you do, in fact, have good intentions. However, good intentions do not ipso facto result in good comments, and to the extent that they have resulted in bad comments, I think one should point this fact out as bluntly as possible, which is why I worded the first two paragraphs of this comment the way I did. Nonetheless, I felt it important to clarify that I do not stand against [what I believe to be] your causes here, only the way you have been going about pursuing those causes.
(For the record: I am unaffiliated with MIRI, CFAR, Leverage, MAPLE, the “Vassarites”, or the broader rationalist community as it exists in physical space. As such, I have no direct stake in this conversation; but I very much do have an interest in making sure discussion around any topics this sensitive are carried out in a mature, nuanced way.)
If you want to clarify whether I mean to insinuate something in a particular comment, you could ask, like I asked Eliezer. I’m not going to make my comments longer without a specific idea of what’s unclear, that seems pointless.
It is accurate to state that I constructed a model of him based on limited information, which subsequently contributed to my dramatic psychological collapse. Nevertheless, the reason for developing this particular model can be attributed to his interactions with me and others. This was not due to any extraordinary or mystical abilities, but rather his profound commitment to challenging individuals’ perceptions of conventional reality and mastering the most effective methods to do so.
This approach is not inherently negative. However, it must be acknowledged that for certain individuals, such an intense disruption of their perceived reality can precipitate a descent into a detrimental psychological state.
Thanks for verifying. In hindsight my comment reads as though it was condemning you in a way I didn’t mean to; sorry about that.
The thing I meant to characterize as “crazy cult behavior” was people in the comments here attributing things like what you did in your mind to Michael Vassar’s spooky mind powers. You seem to be trying to be helpful and informative here. Sorry if my comment read like a personal attack.
This can be unpacked into an alternative to the charisma theory.
Many people are looking for a reference person to tell them what to do. (This is generally consistent with the Jaynesian family of hypotheses.) High-agency people are unusually easy to refer to, because they reveal the kind of information that allows others to locate them. There’s sufficient excess demand that even if someone doesn’t issue any actual orders, if they seem to have agency, people will generalize from sparse data to try to construct a version of that person that tells them what to do.
A more culturally central example than Vassar is Dr Fauci, who seems to have mostly reasonable opinions about COVID, but is worshipped by a lot of fanatics with crazy beliefs about COVID.
The charisma hypothesis describes this as a fundamental attribute of the person being worshipped, rather than a behavior of their worshippers.