which seems like a big leap from what came before it in the post
Sorry, the fifth- to second-to-last paragraphs of the originally published version of this post were egregiously terrible writing on my part. (I was summarizing some things Ben said at the time that felt like a relevant part of the story, but what I actually needed to do was explain in my own words the points that I want to endorsedly convey to my readers.)
I’ve rewritten that passage (now the third- and second-to-last paragraphs). I hope this version is clearer.
I’m not conjecturing anything worse than Kolmogorov complicity. (And the 2021 MIRI conversations were great.) I do think political censorship is significantly more damaging to epistemic conditions than many others seem to. People playing a Kolmogorov complicity strategy typically seem to think that it’s cheap to just avoid a few sensitive topics. But the disturbing thing about the events described in this post was that the distortion didn’t stay confined to sensitive topics: the reversal (in emphasis and practice, if not outright logical contradiction) from “words can be wrong” to “you’re not standing in defense of truth [...]” is about the cognitive function of categorization, a “dry” philosophy topic which you wouldn’t expect to be politically sensitive!
I would be interested to read an account of how this happened
He encourages it, doesn’t he? (Much more to say in a future post, or via PM.)
Sorry, the fifth- to second-to-last paragraphs of the originally published version of this post were egregiously terrible writing on my part. (I was summarizing some things Ben said at the time that felt like a relevant part of the story, but what I actually needed to do was explain in my own words the points that I want to endorsedly convey to my readers.)
I’ve rewritten that passage (now the third- and second-to-last paragraphs). I hope this version is clearer.
I’m not conjecturing anything worse than Kolmogorov complicity. (And the 2021 MIRI conversations were great.) I do think political censorship is significantly more damaging to epistemic conditions than many others seem to. People playing a Kolmogorov complicity strategy typically seem to think that it’s cheap to just avoid a few sensitive topics. But the disturbing thing about the events described in this post was that the distortion didn’t stay confined to sensitive topics: the reversal (in emphasis and practice, if not outright logical contradiction) from “words can be wrong” to “you’re not standing in defense of truth [...]” is about the cognitive function of categorization, a “dry” philosophy topic which you wouldn’t expect to be politically sensitive!
He encourages it, doesn’t he? (Much more to say in a future post, or via PM.)