I want to apologize, and make sure there is a clear record of what I think both on the object level, and about my comment, in retrospect. (For other mistakes I made, not related to this comment, see here.)
I handled this very poorly, and wasted a significant amount of people’s time. I still think that the claims in the post were materially misleading, (and think some of the claims still are, after edits.) The authors replaced the section saying not to listen to the CDC with a very different disclaimer, which now says: “Notably we’re not saying any of the things they do recommend are bad.” I think we should have a clear norm that potentially harmful things need a much greater degree of caution than it displayed. But calling for it to be removed was stupid.
Above and beyond my initial comment, critically, I screwed up by being pissed off and responding angrily below about what I saw as an uninformed and misleading post, and continued to reply to comments without due consideration of the people involved in both the original post, and the comments. This was in part due to personal biases, and in part due to personal stress, which is not an excuse. This led to what can generously be described as a waste of valuable people’s time, at a particularly bad time. I have apologized to some of those those involved already, but wanted to do so publicly here as well.
Reviewing the arguments
I initially said the post should have been removed. I also used the term “infohazard” in a way that was alarmist—my central claim was that it was damaging and misleading, not that it was an infohazard in the global catastrophic risk sense that people assumed.
Several counterarguments and response to my claim that it should be taken down were advanced follow. I originally responded poorly, so I wanted to review them here, along with my view on the strength of the claims.
1) I should not have been a jerk.
I was dismissive and annoyed about what seemed to me to be many obvious factual errors. My attitude was a mistake. It was also stupid for a number of reasons, and at the very least I should have contacted the authors directly and privately, and been less confrontational. Again, I apologize.
2) Telling people to check with others before posting, and threatening to remove posts which were not so checked, is censorship, which is harmful in other ways.
As I mentioned above, saying the post should be removed was stupid, but I maintain, as I did then, that when a person is unsure about whether saying something is a good idea, and it is consequential enough to matter, they should ask for some outside advice. I think this should be a basic norm, one that lesswrong and the rationality community should not just recommend but where feasible, should try to enforce. I do think that there was a reasonable sense of urgency in getting the message out in this case, and that excuses some level of failure to vet the information carefully.
3) We should encourage people to say true things even when harmful, or as one person said “I’d want people to err heavily on the side of sharing information even if it might be dangerous.”
This stops short of Nietzschean honesty, but I still don’t think this holds up well. First, as I said, I think the post was misleading, so this simply does not apply. But the discussion in the comments and privately pushed on this more, and I think it’s useful to clarify what I claimed. I agree that we should not withhold information which could be important because of a vague concern, and if this post were correct, it would fall under that umbrella. However, what the post seem to me to try to do is collect misleading statements to make it clearer that a bad organization is, in fact, bad—playing level 2 regardless of truth. That seems obviously unacceptable. I do not think lying is acceptable to pursue level 2 goals in Zvi’s explanation of Simulacra, except in dire circumstances.
But the principle advocated here says to default to level 1 brutal / damaging honesty far more often than I think is advisable, not to lie. My initial impression what the the CDC was doing far better than it in fact was, and that the negative impacts were greatly under-appreciated.
I can understand why the balance of how much truth to say when the effect is damaging is critical, and think that Lesswrong’s norms are far better than those elsewhere. I agree that the bare minimum of not actively lying is insufficient, but as I said above, I disagree with others about how far to go in saying things that might be harmful because they are true.
4) We should not attempt to play political games by shielding bad organizations and ignoring or obscuring the truth in order to build trust incorrectly.
I think this is a claim that people should never play level 3. I endorse this. I agree that I was attempting to defend an institution that was doing poorly from claims that it was doing poorly, on the basis that a significant fraction of those claims were unfair. As I said above, this would be a defense. In retrospect, the organization was far worse than I thought at the time, as I realized far too late, and discussed more here. On the other hand, many of the claims were in fact misleading, and I don’t think that false attacks on bad things are OK either.
I want to apologize, and make sure there is a clear record of what I think both on the object level, and about my comment, in retrospect. (For other mistakes I made, not related to this comment, see here.)
I handled this very poorly, and wasted a significant amount of people’s time. I still think that the claims in the post were materially misleading, (and think some of the claims still are, after edits.) The authors replaced the section saying not to listen to the CDC with a very different disclaimer, which now says: “Notably we’re not saying any of the things they do recommend are bad.” I think we should have a clear norm that potentially harmful things need a much greater degree of caution than it displayed. But calling for it to be removed was stupid.
Above and beyond my initial comment, critically, I screwed up by being pissed off and responding angrily below about what I saw as an uninformed and misleading post, and continued to reply to comments without due consideration of the people involved in both the original post, and the comments. This was in part due to personal biases, and in part due to personal stress, which is not an excuse. This led to what can generously be described as a waste of valuable people’s time, at a particularly bad time. I have apologized to some of those those involved already, but wanted to do so publicly here as well.
Reviewing the arguments
I initially said the post should have been removed. I also used the term “infohazard” in a way that was alarmist—my central claim was that it was damaging and misleading, not that it was an infohazard in the global catastrophic risk sense that people assumed.
Several counterarguments and response to my claim that it should be taken down were advanced follow. I originally responded poorly, so I wanted to review them here, along with my view on the strength of the claims.
1) I should not have been a jerk.
I was dismissive and annoyed about what seemed to me to be many obvious factual errors. My attitude was a mistake. It was also stupid for a number of reasons, and at the very least I should have contacted the authors directly and privately, and been less confrontational. Again, I apologize.
2) Telling people to check with others before posting, and threatening to remove posts which were not so checked, is censorship, which is harmful in other ways.
As I mentioned above, saying the post should be removed was stupid, but I maintain, as I did then, that when a person is unsure about whether saying something is a good idea, and it is consequential enough to matter, they should ask for some outside advice. I think this should be a basic norm, one that lesswrong and the rationality community should not just recommend but where feasible, should try to enforce. I do think that there was a reasonable sense of urgency in getting the message out in this case, and that excuses some level of failure to vet the information carefully.
3) We should encourage people to say true things even when harmful, or as one person said “I’d want people to err heavily on the side of sharing information even if it might be dangerous.”
This stops short of Nietzschean honesty, but I still don’t think this holds up well. First, as I said, I think the post was misleading, so this simply does not apply. But the discussion in the comments and privately pushed on this more, and I think it’s useful to clarify what I claimed. I agree that we should not withhold information which could be important because of a vague concern, and if this post were correct, it would fall under that umbrella. However, what the post seem to me to try to do is collect misleading statements to make it clearer that a bad organization is, in fact, bad—playing level 2 regardless of truth. That seems obviously unacceptable. I do not think lying is acceptable to pursue level 2 goals in Zvi’s explanation of Simulacra, except in dire circumstances.
But the principle advocated here says to default to level 1 brutal / damaging honesty far more often than I think is advisable, not to lie. My initial impression what the the CDC was doing far better than it in fact was, and that the negative impacts were greatly under-appreciated.
I can understand why the balance of how much truth to say when the effect is damaging is critical, and think that Lesswrong’s norms are far better than those elsewhere. I agree that the bare minimum of not actively lying is insufficient, but as I said above, I disagree with others about how far to go in saying things that might be harmful because they are true.
4) We should not attempt to play political games by shielding bad organizations and ignoring or obscuring the truth in order to build trust incorrectly.
I think this is a claim that people should never play level 3. I endorse this. I agree that I was attempting to defend an institution that was doing poorly from claims that it was doing poorly, on the basis that a significant fraction of those claims were unfair. As I said above, this would be a defense. In retrospect, the organization was far worse than I thought at the time, as I realized far too late, and discussed more here. On the other hand, many of the claims were in fact misleading, and I don’t think that false attacks on bad things are OK either.