Tone note: I really don’t like people responding to other people’s claims with content like “No. Bad… Bad naive consequentialism” (I’m totally fine with “Really not what I support. Strong disagree.”). It reads quite strongly to me as trying to scold someone or socially punish them using social status for a claim that you disagree with; they feel continuous with some kind of frame that’s like “habryka is the arbiter of the Good”
It sounds like scolding someone because it is! Like, IDK, sometimes that’s the thing you want to do?
I mean, I am not the “arbiter of the good”, but like, many things are distasteful and should be reacted to as such. I react similarly to people posting LLM slop on LW (usually more in the form of “wtf, come on man, please at least write a response yourself, don’t copy paste from an LLM”) and many other things I see as norm violations.
I definitely consider the thing I interpreted Michael to be saying a norm violation of LessWrong, and endorse lending my weight to norm enforcement of that (he then clarified in a way that I think largely diffused the situation, but I think I was pretty justified in my initial reaction). Not all spaces I participate in are places where I feel fine participating in norm enforcement, but of course LessWrong is one such place!
Now, I think there are fine arguments to be made that norm enforcement should also happen at the explicit intellectual level and shouldn’t involve more expressive forms of speech. IDK, I am a bit sympathetic to that, but feel reasonably good about my choices here, especially given that Michael’s comment started with “I agree”, therefore implying that the things he was saying were somehow reflective of my personal opinion. It seems eminently natural that when you approach someone and say “hey, I totally agree with you that <X>” where X is something they vehemently disagree with (like, IDK imagine someone coming to you and saying “hey, I totally agree with you that child pornography should be legal” when you absolutely do not believe this), that they respond the kind of way I did.
Overall, feedback is still appreciated, but I think I would still write roughly the same comment in a similar situation!
Michael’s comment started with “I agree”, therefore implying that the things he was saying were somehow reflective of my personal opinion
Michael’s comment started with a specific point he agreed with you on.
I agree that this is an important thing that deserved more consideration in Eric’s analysis
He specifically phrased the part you were objecting to as his opinion, not as a shared point of view.
FWIW I wouldn’t say “trustworthiness” is the most important thing, more like “can be trusted to take AI risk seriously”, and my model is more about the latter.
I am pretty sure Michael thought he was largely agreeing with me. He wasn’t saying “I agree this thing is important, but here is this totally other thing that I actually think is more important”. He said (and meant to say) “I agree this thing is important, and here is a slightly different spin on it”. Feel free to ask him!
I claim you misread his original comment, as stated. Then you scolded him based on that misreading. I made the case you misread him via quotes, which you ignored, instead inviting me to ask him about his intentions. That’s your responsibility, not mine! I’d invite you to check in with him about his meaning yourself, and to consider doing that in the future before you scold.
I mean, I think his intention in communicating is the ground truth! I was suggesting his intentions as a way to operationalize the disagreement. Like, I am trying to check that you agree that if that was his intention, and I read it correctly, then you agree that you were wrong to say that I misread him. If that isn’t the case then we have a disagreement about the nature of communication on our hand, which I mean, we can go into, but doesn’t sound super exciting.
I do happen to be chatting with Michael sometime in the next few days, so I can ask. Happy to bet about what he says about what he intended to communicate! Like, I am not overwhelmingly confident, but you seem to present overwhelming confidence, so presumably you would be up for offering me a bet at good odds.
I would generally agree, but a mitigating factor here is that that MichaelDickens is presenting himself as agreeing with habryka. It seems more reasonable for habryka to strongly push back against statements that make claims about his own beliefs.
Tone note: I really don’t like people responding to other people’s claims with content like “No. Bad… Bad naive consequentialism” (I’m totally fine with “Really not what I support. Strong disagree.”). It reads quite strongly to me as trying to scold someone or socially punish them using social status for a claim that you disagree with; they feel continuous with some kind of frame that’s like “habryka is the arbiter of the Good”
It sounds like scolding someone because it is! Like, IDK, sometimes that’s the thing you want to do?
I mean, I am not the “arbiter of the good”, but like, many things are distasteful and should be reacted to as such. I react similarly to people posting LLM slop on LW (usually more in the form of “wtf, come on man, please at least write a response yourself, don’t copy paste from an LLM”) and many other things I see as norm violations.
I definitely consider the thing I interpreted Michael to be saying a norm violation of LessWrong, and endorse lending my weight to norm enforcement of that (he then clarified in a way that I think largely diffused the situation, but I think I was pretty justified in my initial reaction). Not all spaces I participate in are places where I feel fine participating in norm enforcement, but of course LessWrong is one such place!
Now, I think there are fine arguments to be made that norm enforcement should also happen at the explicit intellectual level and shouldn’t involve more expressive forms of speech. IDK, I am a bit sympathetic to that, but feel reasonably good about my choices here, especially given that Michael’s comment started with “I agree”, therefore implying that the things he was saying were somehow reflective of my personal opinion. It seems eminently natural that when you approach someone and say “hey, I totally agree with you that <X>” where X is something they vehemently disagree with (like, IDK imagine someone coming to you and saying “hey, I totally agree with you that child pornography should be legal” when you absolutely do not believe this), that they respond the kind of way I did.
Overall, feedback is still appreciated, but I think I would still write roughly the same comment in a similar situation!
Michael’s comment started with a specific point he agreed with you on.
He specifically phrased the part you were objecting to as his opinion, not as a shared point of view.
I am pretty sure Michael thought he was largely agreeing with me. He wasn’t saying “I agree this thing is important, but here is this totally other thing that I actually think is more important”. He said (and meant to say) “I agree this thing is important, and here is a slightly different spin on it”. Feel free to ask him!
I claim you misread his original comment, as stated. Then you scolded him based on that misreading. I made the case you misread him via quotes, which you ignored, instead inviting me to ask him about his intentions. That’s your responsibility, not mine! I’d invite you to check in with him about his meaning yourself, and to consider doing that in the future before you scold.
I mean, I think his intention in communicating is the ground truth! I was suggesting his intentions as a way to operationalize the disagreement. Like, I am trying to check that you agree that if that was his intention, and I read it correctly, then you agree that you were wrong to say that I misread him. If that isn’t the case then we have a disagreement about the nature of communication on our hand, which I mean, we can go into, but doesn’t sound super exciting.
I do happen to be chatting with Michael sometime in the next few days, so I can ask. Happy to bet about what he says about what he intended to communicate! Like, I am not overwhelmingly confident, but you seem to present overwhelming confidence, so presumably you would be up for offering me a bet at good odds.
FWIW I think Habryka was right to call out that some parts of my comment were bad, and the scolding got me to think more carefully about it.
I would generally agree, but a mitigating factor here is that that MichaelDickens is presenting himself as agreeing with habryka. It seems more reasonable for habryka to strongly push back against statements that make claims about his own beliefs.