The Hamming Problem of Group Rationality

The upcoming moderation changes are long-term catastrophic. They’re deliberately making it easy for high-status people to silence anyone and everyone they don’t want to hear from, without penalty or stigma. I trust literally no one with this power, even if they have the best of intentions; the social-monkey incentives to abuse it are strong, and of all instincts that one’s probably the best at getting around conscious intentions; according to one of the stronger prevailing theories, it’s literally what our intelligence developed to do.

This is especially bad because as I see it, protecting group epistemics from corrupting social incentives is the Hamming problem of group rationality. The main difference between pursuing the art of rationality alone vs in a group is that in a group you have to manage politics, and politics is an especially strong mind-killer at the small-group level, even more so than at the national tribal level.

So as far as I’m concerned, the dev team has forfeited the war to win one temporary battle (getting Eliezer back on the site). And as significant a battle as that is, it’s not worth the war.