It wasn’t directed at you at all; my sincere apologies for not making that clear. I don’t have a problem with your question. It was more like “ahhhh, despair, it would take me at least two minutes to think about how to paraphrase the relevant arguments, but I don’t have energy to do that, but I do want to somehow signal that it’s not just tired old group selection arguments because I don’t want NECSI to have been done injustice by my unwillingness to explain their ideas, but if I do that kind of signalling then I’m participating in a game that is plausibly in the reference class of propping up decision policies that are suboptimal, so I’ll just do it in a really weird way that is really discreditable so that I can get out of this double bind while still being able to say in retrospect that on some twisted level I at least tried to do the right thing.” ETA: Well, the double negative version of that which involves lots of fear of bad things, not desire for good things. I am not virtuous and have nothing to be humble about.
This is what Eliezer’s talking about in HP:MoR with:
And he told me then that by the time good and moral people were done tying themselves up in knots, what they usually did was nothing; or, if they did act, you could hardly tell them apart from the people called bad.
I wish Dumbledore were made a steel man so he could give good counterarguments here rather than letting Harry win outright.
It wasn’t directed at you at all; my sincere apologies for not making that clear. I don’t have a problem with your question. It was more like “ahhhh, despair, it would take me at least two minutes to think about how to paraphrase the relevant arguments, but I don’t have energy to do that, but I do want to somehow signal that it’s not just tired old group selection arguments because I don’t want NECSI to have been done injustice by my unwillingness to explain their ideas, but if I do that kind of signalling then I’m participating in a game that is plausibly in the reference class of propping up decision policies that are suboptimal, so I’ll just do it in a really weird way that is really discreditable so that I can get out of this double bind while still being able to say in retrospect that on some twisted level I at least tried to do the right thing.” ETA: Well, the double negative version of that which involves lots of fear of bad things, not desire for good things. I am not virtuous and have nothing to be humble about.
This is what Eliezer’s talking about in HP:MoR with:
I wish Dumbledore were made a steel man so he could give good counterarguments here rather than letting Harry win outright.