I agree the standards are quite different! Nevertheless, I do currently think you are being overly aggressive even by the standards I would have for the broader rationality community for what appropriate norms are for Twitter.
I mean, my comment was written before at least I had heard any news of that, so I don’t really see its relevance to the conversation.
Also, I really don’t see the relevance of bringing in Charlie Kirk into this conversation at all. Like, if you want we can have a real conversation about whether marginally more aggressive comments on social media were partially response for it or not (seems plausible to me but I haven’t thought much about it), but I am not even sure what you mean by “this is not the day for that”, and it certainly isn’t related to really anything else in this comment section.
You accused me of being ‘overly aggressive’. I was pointing out that tweets aren’t acts of aggression. Shooting people in the neck is.
As far as I can remember, I’ve never called for violence, on any topic, in any of the 80,000 posts I’ve shared on Twitter/X, to my 150,000 followers. So, I think your claim that my posts are ‘overly aggressive’ is poorly calibrated in relation to what actual aggression looks like.
That’s the relevance of the assassination of Charlie Kirk. A reminder that in this LessWrong bubble of ever-so-cautious, ever-so-rational, ever-so-epistemically-pure discourse, people can get very disconnected from the reality of high-stakes political debate and ideologically-driven terrorism.
Of course words can be “aggressive”. Yes, they are a different form of aggression from literal physical violence, but we still have norms for words. Some tweets are obviously “acts of aggression”.
Unless you mean to import some technical meaning with those words, in which case I am happy to clarify that I am not meaning to import any technical meaning behind “aggression” and just mean the obvious everyday usage of the word.
Regarding “calling for violence”: I can’t find any specific example scrolling through your past tweets, so it’s plausible I am wrong about this! I do think I remember some, but as you say yourself, you have >80,000 tweets and I don’t know of an efficient way to search through all of them. I apologize if it turns out to be wrong, I did not mean to imply a high level of confidence in that specific adjective. There are some tweets that I feel like someone could argue are calls for violence, though I don’t think any of them obviously cross that line.
X (formerly known as Twitter) isn’t for ‘reasonable discourse’ according to the very specific and high epistemic standards of LessWrong.
X is for influence, persuasion, and impact. Which is exactly what AI safety advocates need, if we’re to have any influence, persuasion, or impact.
I’m comfortable using different styles, modes of discourse, and forms of outreach on X versus podcasts versus LessWrong versus my academic writing.
I agree the standards are quite different! Nevertheless, I do currently think you are being overly aggressive even by the standards I would have for the broader rationality community for what appropriate norms are for Twitter.
‘Overly aggressive’ is what the shooter who just assassinated conservative Charlie Kirk was being.
Posting hot takes on X is not being ‘aggressive’.
This is not a day when I will tolerate any conflation of posting strong words on social media with committing actual aggressive violence.
This is not the day for that.
I mean, my comment was written before at least I had heard any news of that, so I don’t really see its relevance to the conversation.
Also, I really don’t see the relevance of bringing in Charlie Kirk into this conversation at all. Like, if you want we can have a real conversation about whether marginally more aggressive comments on social media were partially response for it or not (seems plausible to me but I haven’t thought much about it), but I am not even sure what you mean by “this is not the day for that”, and it certainly isn’t related to really anything else in this comment section.
You accused me of being ‘overly aggressive’. I was pointing out that tweets aren’t acts of aggression. Shooting people in the neck is.
As far as I can remember, I’ve never called for violence, on any topic, in any of the 80,000 posts I’ve shared on Twitter/X, to my 150,000 followers. So, I think your claim that my posts are ‘overly aggressive’ is poorly calibrated in relation to what actual aggression looks like.
That’s the relevance of the assassination of Charlie Kirk. A reminder that in this LessWrong bubble of ever-so-cautious, ever-so-rational, ever-so-epistemically-pure discourse, people can get very disconnected from the reality of high-stakes political debate and ideologically-driven terrorism.
Of course words can be “aggressive”. Yes, they are a different form of aggression from literal physical violence, but we still have norms for words. Some tweets are obviously “acts of aggression”.
Unless you mean to import some technical meaning with those words, in which case I am happy to clarify that I am not meaning to import any technical meaning behind “aggression” and just mean the obvious everyday usage of the word.
Regarding “calling for violence”: I can’t find any specific example scrolling through your past tweets, so it’s plausible I am wrong about this! I do think I remember some, but as you say yourself, you have >80,000 tweets and I don’t know of an efficient way to search through all of them. I apologize if it turns out to be wrong, I did not mean to imply a high level of confidence in that specific adjective. There are some tweets that I feel like someone could argue are calls for violence, though I don’t think any of them obviously cross that line.