The kinds of things which an upper-class American is prone to believe (which would not garner him favour with other members of society), I suppose. I mean, I’m not expecting him to be secretly yearning for a Communist workers’ paradise. Also he is an entrepreneur with transhumanist sympathies, therefore a forward-thinking guy, so probably the internet crusaders from the opposite camp aren’t bashing his ideas yet—because they haven’t yet conceived of them; you can count on people like him to think in an original way—but probably will be in 20 years from now.
HOWEVER. I take issue with the thing you’re attempting to do with this post. Obviously none of us are Thiel himself; obviously the attempt to guess what Thiel meant is a classic case of grasping at straws; whatever the community can come up with probably isn’t even in the same ballpark as Thiel’s secret heresies. Besides, if I were him, I’d personally be bothered by some random people’s attempts to guess at beliefs I don’t want to make public, for reasons relating to the telephone game that ensues and the risk of other people from other websites misinterpreting those positions as my own. Alas, that is but my own take on this, because I’m not Peter Thiel. Obviously.
I regard this kind of challenge as inflammatory. Even though I remember having made a case for more political discussion on LessWrong, time and again I get reminded how awfully LessWrongers handle political topics, and how badly I had overestimated people’s aptitude at not causing political discussions to degenerate into flame wars. This is worse than the average political discussion. This is an open invitation for people to fill in the blanks with their pet thoughtcrimes, as long as they consider themselves roughly on the same side of the political spectrum as Thiel. It’s going to attract the worst sort of people, and it can harm participants, onlookers, and Thiel himself.
You’re a smart guy, you don’t need me to tell you that we cannot run an accurate simulation of Thiel, and I know from your article publication history that you’re not doing this for inquisitorial purposes, which leaves the intention of drawing attention to his “really good ideas”. However, the man himself (ostensibly) wants the opposite. Which he is in full right to do. So how about we leave him be and refrain from making wild guesses as to what he meant?
I don’t know about inflammatory, but it’s pretty clearly a waste of time. We’re more likely to find out what is true by looking for that rather than guessing about what Thiel is thinking.
Furthermore, is there any great mystery about the possible scope of these hidden opinions? I suspect (though how can I verify?) that most of these “too controversial to mention” opinions can be enumerated by simple inversion of common beliefs.
Blue is right → Blue is wrong
Green is good → Green is bad
If we’re talking about things you can’t say because of moral outrage, then there aren’t that many beliefs that are common enough to provoke widespread outrage by publicly challenging them. Maybe you can’t guess exactly why Blue is Actually Bad, but you know the general forms of how it could be so.
Certainly there are other, more exotic things you shouldn’t say in public (“How to build a super laser weapon from pocket change”, etc), but I doubt this problem is the driving force here.
We are invited here to attribute various “dangerous” ideas to Thiel. And he couldn’t even deny them because, well, that’s exactly what he would do if it was his dangerous idea, wouldn’t he?
In other words, the rules of this game are: “Invent a controversial political idea and pretend that it is the idea Peter Thiel is trying to hide.” No falsifiability; except for a possible group opinion that something is completely out of character. You get points for the idea being controversial; you don’t lose points if it is not Thiel’s idea. So why not simply post the most controversial idea you have?
We are invited to abuse the man’s name as a pretext to publish our controversial ideas. Why not use our own names then? I suspect this is what people will do here anyway. They will just use Thiel’s name to add status to their own ideas.
the rules of this game are: “Invent a controversial political idea and pretend that it is the idea Peter Thiel is trying to hide.”
Who’s saying to pretend that Thiel actually holds whatever idea some particular person thinks he does? Why would anyone take such idle speculation seriously?
You get points for the idea being controversial; you don’t lose points if it is not Thiel’s idea. So why not simply post the most controversial idea you have?
Judging by the distribution of likes in over other comments here, the most controversial (by which I mean “NRx-y” for now) ideas don’t seem to be great point-winners. So I think the community itself should be credited with posessing some common sense.
We are invited to abuse the man’s name as a pretext to publish our controversial ideas. Why not use our own names then? … They will just use Thiel’s name to add status to their own ideas.
Again I think you’re selling short the capacity of others to avoid frivolously drawing spurious conclusions. Crediting others with basic powers of reason is, I think, a necessary starting point in order to have any kind of rationalist community whatsoever.
Internet is a public place. So even if all LW readers would understand what this is all about (creating a place to post mostly NRx-y ideas, while pretending to talk about Peter Thiel), a random visitor would see Peter Thiel in the title and the ideas below. Most people are not driven by the power of reason, but by the power of associations, which is what we are creating in this thread. If the man did not present the ideas as his own, then his name should not be in the title.
Also, Peter Thiel happens to be a sponsor of MIRI, which makes it seem more credible when people talk about “his” ideas on a website associated with MIRI.
Peter Thiel happens to be a sponsor of MIRI, which makes it seem more credible when people talk about “his” ideas on a website associated with MIRI.
That’s a valid concern indeed.
even if all LW readers would understand what this is all about (creating a place to post mostly NRx-y ideas, while pretending to talk about Peter Thiel), a random visitor would see Peter Thiel in the title and the ideas below
Random visitors who are prone to poor reasoning in all sorts of creative ways could stumble across almost anything and draw wildly inaccurate conclusions about what they read. I don’t see any reasons that the opinions of such persons should be much of a threat to anyone but themselves.
Inaccurately polarized ideas about Thiel’s politics, general divisiveness and hostilities between LessWrongers, a fantastic opportunity for politically motivated trolls to come out, and spillover nasty rumours with regards to Thiel himself.
I think you are greatly overestimating the power of a LW comment thread to harm Thiel. Also, I consider it a strong possibility that Thiel wants people to guess at what he was referring to. Finally, you shouldn’t assume his dangerous ideas are political.
Beyond considering it as a possibility out of common courtesy, I have no reason to be invested in what happens to Thiel as a result of this discussion.
Just because he might want people to guess doesn’t mean LessWrong is the place for it.
I stand by what I said when I claimed that this thread will attract politically motivated trolls. Take a look at the rest of the thread. Go tell them not to assume his dangerous ideas are political.
It’s inappropriate for you to bring up the possibility that my post might harm Thiel, and then when I respond say that you are not “invested” in whether Thiel will be harmed.
Color me unimpressed. Both of them can be perfectly true and valid at once. He’s some random guy I don’t know and he didn’t ask for this, therefore I’m going to consider whether other people could put words in his mouth, just because it’s common courtesy and I don’t have a reason to wish him bad. At the same time I’m not his PR specialist. If the opposite of what he ostensibly expressed is true, and it’s a publicity stunt, then it doesn’t follow that I should be okay with someone using LW at large to gain support for him. So yes, I’m not invested in his success, no scare quotes. I don’t get paid if more people agree with him. Precisely the position of a neutral observer, biased only by the fact that I do care about not giving the political trolls of LessWrong a venue for expressing themselves.
More abstractly, saying X is true, and then when something claims it’s not true, responding with “well I don’t care about X” is very bad form in a debate because if you don’t care about X you should not have brought it up.
My point was that there are degrees of caring*, and that caring does depend** on how sincere a person is when claiming not to want to draw attention to one of their points.
* = going from “I don’t give a fuck” to “this is my best friend we’re talking about / I’m paid to give a fuck”, on which spectrum I took the middle position.
** = they don’t want to draw attention to it, fine, let’s respect their wishes. Oh, they were playing reverse psychology on me? Screw them then.
There’s no point in trying to get me to express a plainly pro- or anti-Thiel opinion.
Inaccurately polarized ideas about Thiel’s politics
That depends on how seriously people take the possibilities speculated upon, and there’s no real reason to take idle speculation seriously. Perhaps we should credit other posters with the capacity for practicing basic epistemic hygiene?
general divisiveness and hostilities between LessWrongers
This could be caused by any contentious topic. You could draw a distinction between productive/necessary friction and useless friction. Though I don’t share your dour view of the local capacity for political discussion and thus don’t anticipate a ruckus—perhaps your mileage has varied.
a fantastic opportunity for politically motivated trolls to come out, and spillover nasty rumours with regards to Thiel himself
Thiel has been accused of self-promotion by another commenter in a somewhat glib fashion, so that seems to have happened, though any discussion of Thiel and his ideas could invite similar comments. Don’t see how that could be avoided bar avoiding all discussion of Thiel (or anyone else who’s disliked by some other people).
The kinds of things which an upper-class American is prone to believe (which would not garner him favour with other members of society), I suppose. I mean, I’m not expecting him to be secretly yearning for a Communist workers’ paradise. Also he is an entrepreneur with transhumanist sympathies, therefore a forward-thinking guy, so probably the internet crusaders from the opposite camp aren’t bashing his ideas yet—because they haven’t yet conceived of them; you can count on people like him to think in an original way—but probably will be in 20 years from now.
HOWEVER. I take issue with the thing you’re attempting to do with this post. Obviously none of us are Thiel himself; obviously the attempt to guess what Thiel meant is a classic case of grasping at straws; whatever the community can come up with probably isn’t even in the same ballpark as Thiel’s secret heresies. Besides, if I were him, I’d personally be bothered by some random people’s attempts to guess at beliefs I don’t want to make public, for reasons relating to the telephone game that ensues and the risk of other people from other websites misinterpreting those positions as my own. Alas, that is but my own take on this, because I’m not Peter Thiel. Obviously.
I regard this kind of challenge as inflammatory. Even though I remember having made a case for more political discussion on LessWrong, time and again I get reminded how awfully LessWrongers handle political topics, and how badly I had overestimated people’s aptitude at not causing political discussions to degenerate into flame wars. This is worse than the average political discussion. This is an open invitation for people to fill in the blanks with their pet thoughtcrimes, as long as they consider themselves roughly on the same side of the political spectrum as Thiel. It’s going to attract the worst sort of people, and it can harm participants, onlookers, and Thiel himself.
You’re a smart guy, you don’t need me to tell you that we cannot run an accurate simulation of Thiel, and I know from your article publication history that you’re not doing this for inquisitorial purposes, which leaves the intention of drawing attention to his “really good ideas”. However, the man himself (ostensibly) wants the opposite. Which he is in full right to do. So how about we leave him be and refrain from making wild guesses as to what he meant?
I don’t know about inflammatory, but it’s pretty clearly a waste of time. We’re more likely to find out what is true by looking for that rather than guessing about what Thiel is thinking.
Well put.
Furthermore, is there any great mystery about the possible scope of these hidden opinions? I suspect (though how can I verify?) that most of these “too controversial to mention” opinions can be enumerated by simple inversion of common beliefs.
Blue is right → Blue is wrong Green is good → Green is bad
If we’re talking about things you can’t say because of moral outrage, then there aren’t that many beliefs that are common enough to provoke widespread outrage by publicly challenging them. Maybe you can’t guess exactly why Blue is Actually Bad, but you know the general forms of how it could be so.
Certainly there are other, more exotic things you shouldn’t say in public (“How to build a super laser weapon from pocket change”, etc), but I doubt this problem is the driving force here.
What harm will come to participants, onlookers and Thiel himself about which you’re so concerned?
We are invited here to attribute various “dangerous” ideas to Thiel. And he couldn’t even deny them because, well, that’s exactly what he would do if it was his dangerous idea, wouldn’t he?
In other words, the rules of this game are: “Invent a controversial political idea and pretend that it is the idea Peter Thiel is trying to hide.” No falsifiability; except for a possible group opinion that something is completely out of character. You get points for the idea being controversial; you don’t lose points if it is not Thiel’s idea. So why not simply post the most controversial idea you have?
We are invited to abuse the man’s name as a pretext to publish our controversial ideas. Why not use our own names then? I suspect this is what people will do here anyway. They will just use Thiel’s name to add status to their own ideas.
Who’s saying to pretend that Thiel actually holds whatever idea some particular person thinks he does? Why would anyone take such idle speculation seriously?
Judging by the distribution of likes in over other comments here, the most controversial (by which I mean “NRx-y” for now) ideas don’t seem to be great point-winners. So I think the community itself should be credited with posessing some common sense.
Again I think you’re selling short the capacity of others to avoid frivolously drawing spurious conclusions. Crediting others with basic powers of reason is, I think, a necessary starting point in order to have any kind of rationalist community whatsoever.
Internet is a public place. So even if all LW readers would understand what this is all about (creating a place to post mostly NRx-y ideas, while pretending to talk about Peter Thiel), a random visitor would see Peter Thiel in the title and the ideas below. Most people are not driven by the power of reason, but by the power of associations, which is what we are creating in this thread. If the man did not present the ideas as his own, then his name should not be in the title.
Also, Peter Thiel happens to be a sponsor of MIRI, which makes it seem more credible when people talk about “his” ideas on a website associated with MIRI.
That’s a valid concern indeed.
Random visitors who are prone to poor reasoning in all sorts of creative ways could stumble across almost anything and draw wildly inaccurate conclusions about what they read. I don’t see any reasons that the opinions of such persons should be much of a threat to anyone but themselves.
Inaccurately polarized ideas about Thiel’s politics, general divisiveness and hostilities between LessWrongers, a fantastic opportunity for politically motivated trolls to come out, and spillover nasty rumours with regards to Thiel himself.
And ‘”so” concerned’ may be a bit pushing it.
I think you are greatly overestimating the power of a LW comment thread to harm Thiel. Also, I consider it a strong possibility that Thiel wants people to guess at what he was referring to. Finally, you shouldn’t assume his dangerous ideas are political.
The monopoly idea is in some sense political. I think there good reason to believe that other ideas are similarly political.
Beyond considering it as a possibility out of common courtesy, I have no reason to be invested in what happens to Thiel as a result of this discussion.
Just because he might want people to guess doesn’t mean LessWrong is the place for it.
I stand by what I said when I claimed that this thread will attract politically motivated trolls. Take a look at the rest of the thread. Go tell them not to assume his dangerous ideas are political.
It’s inappropriate for you to bring up the possibility that my post might harm Thiel, and then when I respond say that you are not “invested” in whether Thiel will be harmed.
Color me unimpressed. Both of them can be perfectly true and valid at once. He’s some random guy I don’t know and he didn’t ask for this, therefore I’m going to consider whether other people could put words in his mouth, just because it’s common courtesy and I don’t have a reason to wish him bad. At the same time I’m not his PR specialist. If the opposite of what he ostensibly expressed is true, and it’s a publicity stunt, then it doesn’t follow that I should be okay with someone using LW at large to gain support for him. So yes, I’m not invested in his success, no scare quotes. I don’t get paid if more people agree with him. Precisely the position of a neutral observer, biased only by the fact that I do care about not giving the political trolls of LessWrong a venue for expressing themselves.
More abstractly, saying X is true, and then when something claims it’s not true, responding with “well I don’t care about X” is very bad form in a debate because if you don’t care about X you should not have brought it up.
My point was that there are degrees of caring*, and that caring does depend** on how sincere a person is when claiming not to want to draw attention to one of their points.
* = going from “I don’t give a fuck” to “this is my best friend we’re talking about / I’m paid to give a fuck”, on which spectrum I took the middle position.
** = they don’t want to draw attention to it, fine, let’s respect their wishes. Oh, they were playing reverse psychology on me? Screw them then.
There’s no point in trying to get me to express a plainly pro- or anti-Thiel opinion.
That depends on how seriously people take the possibilities speculated upon, and there’s no real reason to take idle speculation seriously. Perhaps we should credit other posters with the capacity for practicing basic epistemic hygiene?
This could be caused by any contentious topic. You could draw a distinction between productive/necessary friction and useless friction. Though I don’t share your dour view of the local capacity for political discussion and thus don’t anticipate a ruckus—perhaps your mileage has varied.
Thiel has been accused of self-promotion by another commenter in a somewhat glib fashion, so that seems to have happened, though any discussion of Thiel and his ideas could invite similar comments. Don’t see how that could be avoided bar avoiding all discussion of Thiel (or anyone else who’s disliked by some other people).
*shrugs* You asked, I answered.
shimmies Well then I’ll be on my way moonwalks like an Egyptian