While “retaliate aggressively all the time” does seem like a strawman, it is worth noting that Ziz rejects causal decision theory (a la “retaliate aggressively if it seems like it would cause things to go better, and avoid retaliating if it seems like it would cause things to go worse”) in favor of some sort of timeless/updateless decision theory (a la “retaliate aggressively even if it would cause things to go worse, as long as this means your retaliation is predictable enough to avoid ever running into the situation where you have to retaliate”).
Meanwhile other rationalist orgs might pretend to run on timeless/updateless decision theory but seem in practice to actually run on causal decision theory.
For an example, see the “rationalist fleet” post. Among other conflicts, it describes getting into a drawn-out conflict with a roommate/subletter (who by Ziz’s account was pretty abusive), ending with the below; it seems pretty illustrative of Ziz’s thought-process (and has nothing to do with veganism):
We all had reports to make to CPS. We called the landlord. The nanny reported him for driving drunk to Uber. I went to the police again, showed them my bruise, they still said I couldn’t prove anything. I thought I had a deontological obligation not to let him profit by aggression meant to drive me out of my home for resources. I wondered if this was enough. I felt like maybe I was deontologically obligated to stay there, but, fuck. The door didn’t really close anymore. There was a hole in it. I heard his child was taken away, and was satisfied with that. Then I heard he got him back. I considered whether to show up at fuck o’clock in the morning and put something in his car’s gas tank to destroy it. Murphyjitsu: bring a charged cordless drill to create a hole if it was one of those gas tank caps that locked, and actually look up what things will destroy an engine. (Not done with Murphyjitsu here). But I decided to leave this as a story that I could tell.
Up until writing this, I never gave him any further indication it was me who caused this.
If you combine the logic of “I must retaliate hard enough that the person, had they known this would happen, wouldn’t have acted badly in the first place” (regardless of whether the person even knows about the revenge), with a propensity to escalate (I suspect destroying the car engine would inflict economic costs significantly greater than whatever rent-payments were involved), an obvious disregard for breaking laws and destroying property, and a further disregard for “morality” (described elsewhere, like in the “journey to the dark side” post) such that even committing murder is on the table… then it’s not especially surprising that they’d conclude that, say, killing Jamie’s apparently-abusive parents a decade after the abuse was “deontologically obligatory”.
Meanwhile other rationalist orgs might pretend to run on timeless/updateless decision theory but seem in practice to actually run on causal decision theory.
What semi-inteligent humans natively do without thinking all that hard is closer to “updateless” decision theory than causal decision theory, and people who think that fancy decision theories imply radically different optimal behavior on the part of regular people are usually gravely misunderstanding what they actually say. The Zizians are an example of this.
While “retaliate aggressively all the time” does seem like a strawman, it is worth noting that Ziz rejects causal decision theory (a la “retaliate aggressively if it seems like it would cause things to go better, and avoid retaliating if it seems like it would cause things to go worse”) in favor of some sort of timeless/updateless decision theory (a la “retaliate aggressively even if it would cause things to go worse, as long as this means your retaliation is predictable enough to avoid ever running into the situation where you have to retaliate”).
Meanwhile other rationalist orgs might pretend to run on timeless/updateless decision theory but seem in practice to actually run on causal decision theory.
For an example, see the “rationalist fleet” post. Among other conflicts, it describes getting into a drawn-out conflict with a roommate/subletter (who by Ziz’s account was pretty abusive), ending with the below; it seems pretty illustrative of Ziz’s thought-process (and has nothing to do with veganism):
If you combine the logic of “I must retaliate hard enough that the person, had they known this would happen, wouldn’t have acted badly in the first place” (regardless of whether the person even knows about the revenge), with a propensity to escalate (I suspect destroying the car engine would inflict economic costs significantly greater than whatever rent-payments were involved), an obvious disregard for breaking laws and destroying property, and a further disregard for “morality” (described elsewhere, like in the “journey to the dark side” post) such that even committing murder is on the table… then it’s not especially surprising that they’d conclude that, say, killing Jamie’s apparently-abusive parents a decade after the abuse was “deontologically obligatory”.
What semi-inteligent humans natively do without thinking all that hard is closer to “updateless” decision theory than causal decision theory, and people who think that fancy decision theories imply radically different optimal behavior on the part of regular people are usually gravely misunderstanding what they actually say. The Zizians are an example of this.