Just to clarify here, I have no issue with you thinking the post is bad. That seems besides the point to me. My issue is with you doing much of what you accuse Miller of doing.
Insults: “This post seems completely insane to me, as do people who unquestionable retweet it.”
Aggression: “I cannot believe I have to argue for this… [cursing]...”
Sneering: “Has anyone who liked this actually read this post? How on earth is this convincing to anyone?”
Note also that the discussion around the Bentham post was previously calm and friendly. You walked in and dramatically worsened the discourse quality. By contrast, Geoffrey engages on hot-button political topics where discussion is already very heated.
As a quick and relatively objective measure, with a quick search, out of all 80K Geoffrey Miller tweets, I was only able to find one non-quoted f-bomb (“Fuck the Singularity.”).
As a matter of simple intellectual honesty, it would be nice if you could acknowledge that you engage in insults and aggressive behavior on Twitter. You might be doing it less than Geoffrey does. You might express it in a different way. But it’s just a question of degree, as far as I can tell. I really don’t think you have much moral high ground here.
You also have far fewer tweets than Geoffrey does (factor of ~16 difference). So it’s not just that you’ve dropped more f-bombs than him; your density of f-bombs appears to be far higher.
I… again am happy to accept critique of my posting, but I think you are really weirdly off-base here. Feel free to ask some neutral third-party to do an evaluation of our commenting or tweeting styles and how they compare to local norms of discourse.
In-particular, who cares about using words like “fuck”? What does this have to do with anything? Saying “fuck them” is much less aggressive or bad than saying “Behind your pretty-boy mask, you’re a sociopathic ghoul. Glad that Americans are learning the truth about the deep, dark, bitter pit where your soul should be.”!
I have certainly said the former to friends or acquaintances many times and received it many times. If you ever hear me or anyone else say the latter (or anything like it) earnestly to you, I think something is seriously going wrong.
Saying ‘fuck them’ when people are shifting to taking actions that threaten society is expressing something that should be expressed, in my view.
I see Oliver replied that in response to two Epoch researchers leaving to found an AI start-up focussed on improving capabilities. I interpret it as ‘this is bad, dismiss those people’. It’s not polite though maybe for others who don’t usually swear, it comes across much stronger?
To me, if someone posts an intense-feeling negatively worded text in response to what other people are doing, it usually signals that there is something they care about that they perceive to be threatened. I’ve found it productive to try relate with that first, before responding. Jumping to enforcing general rules stipulated somewhere in the community, and then implying that the person not following those rules is not harmonious with or does not belong to the community, can get counterproductive.
(Note I’m not tracking much of what Oliver and Geoffrey have said here and on twitter. Just wanted to respond to this part.)
To me, if someone posts an intense-feeling negatively worded text in response to what other people are doing, it usually signals that there is something they care about that they perceive to be threatened. I’ve found it productive to try relate with that first, before responding. Jumping to enforcing general rules stipulated somewhere in the community, and then implying that the person not following those rules is not harmonious with or does not belong to the community, can get counterproductive.
I’m a bit concerned about a situation where “insiders” always get this sort of contextual benefit-of-the-doubt, and “outsiders” don’t.
Agreed on tracking that hypothesis. It makes sense that people are more open to consider what’s said by an insider they look up to or know. In a few discussions I saw, this seemed a likely explanation.
Also, insiders tend to say more stuff that is already agreed on and understandable by others in the community.
Here there seems to be another factor:
Whether the person is expressing negative views that appear to support v.s. to be dissonant with core premises. With ‘core premises’, I mean beliefs about the world that much thinking shared in the community is based on, or tacitly relies on to be true.
In my experience (yours might be different), when making an argument that reaches a conclusion that contradicts a core premise in the community, I had to be painstakingly careful to be polite, route around understandable misinterpretations, and already address common objections. To be able to get to a conversation where the argument was explored somewhat openly.
It’s hard to have productive conversations that way. The person arguing against the ‘core premise’ bears by far the most cost trying to write out responses in a way that might be insightful for others (instead of dismissed too quickly). The time and strain this takes is mostly hidden to others.
Just to clarify here, I have no issue with you thinking the post is bad. That seems besides the point to me. My issue is with you doing much of what you accuse Miller of doing.
Insults: “This post seems completely insane to me, as do people who unquestionable retweet it.”
Aggression: “I cannot believe I have to argue for this… [cursing]...”
Sneering: “Has anyone who liked this actually read this post? How on earth is this convincing to anyone?”
Note also that the discussion around the Bentham post was previously calm and friendly. You walked in and dramatically worsened the discourse quality. By contrast, Geoffrey engages on hot-button political topics where discussion is already very heated.
As a quick and relatively objective measure, with a quick search, out of all 80K Geoffrey Miller tweets, I was only able to find one non-quoted f-bomb (“Fuck the Singularity.”).
Your tweets appear to have a somewhat larger number of them, and they’re often directed at individuals rather than abstract concepts. “Fuck them”, “fuck you”, “fuck [those people]”.
As a matter of simple intellectual honesty, it would be nice if you could acknowledge that you engage in insults and aggressive behavior on Twitter. You might be doing it less than Geoffrey does. You might express it in a different way. But it’s just a question of degree, as far as I can tell. I really don’t think you have much moral high ground here.
You also have far fewer tweets than Geoffrey does (factor of ~16 difference). So it’s not just that you’ve dropped more f-bombs than him; your density of f-bombs appears to be far higher.
I… again am happy to accept critique of my posting, but I think you are really weirdly off-base here. Feel free to ask some neutral third-party to do an evaluation of our commenting or tweeting styles and how they compare to local norms of discourse.
In-particular, who cares about using words like “fuck”? What does this have to do with anything? Saying “fuck them” is much less aggressive or bad than saying “Behind your pretty-boy mask, you’re a sociopathic ghoul. Glad that Americans are learning the truth about the deep, dark, bitter pit where your soul should be.”!
I have certainly said the former to friends or acquaintances many times and received it many times. If you ever hear me or anyone else say the latter (or anything like it) earnestly to you, I think something is seriously going wrong.
Saying ‘fuck them’ when people are shifting to taking actions that threaten society is expressing something that should be expressed, in my view.
I see Oliver replied that in response to two Epoch researchers leaving to found an AI start-up focussed on improving capabilities. I interpret it as ‘this is bad, dismiss those people’. It’s not polite though maybe for others who don’t usually swear, it comes across much stronger?
To me, if someone posts an intense-feeling negatively worded text in response to what other people are doing, it usually signals that there is something they care about that they perceive to be threatened. I’ve found it productive to try relate with that first, before responding. Jumping to enforcing general rules stipulated somewhere in the community, and then implying that the person not following those rules is not harmonious with or does not belong to the community, can get counterproductive.
(Note I’m not tracking much of what Oliver and Geoffrey have said here and on twitter. Just wanted to respond to this part.)
I’m a bit concerned about a situation where “insiders” always get this sort of contextual benefit-of-the-doubt, and “outsiders” don’t.
That’s a healthy hypothesis to track.
Agreed on tracking that hypothesis. It makes sense that people are more open to consider what’s said by an insider they look up to or know. In a few discussions I saw, this seemed a likely explanation.
Also, insiders tend to say more stuff that is already agreed on and understandable by others in the community.
Here there seems to be another factor:
Whether the person is expressing negative views that appear to support v.s. to be dissonant with core premises. With ‘core premises’, I mean beliefs about the world that much thinking shared in the community is based on, or tacitly relies on to be true.
In my experience (yours might be different), when making an argument that reaches a conclusion that contradicts a core premise in the community, I had to be painstakingly careful to be polite, route around understandable misinterpretations, and already address common objections. To be able to get to a conversation where the argument was explored somewhat openly.
It’s hard to have productive conversations that way. The person arguing against the ‘core premise’ bears by far the most cost trying to write out responses in a way that might be insightful for others (instead of dismissed too quickly). The time and strain this takes is mostly hidden to others.