I was confused at the time why habryka disagree-emojied the last sentence in my last paragraph, but it all makes sense now. As I learned in the comment threads here, habryka doesn’t believe extreme sadists exist.
I wonder if that’s the crux this is based on? Even if it isn’t, wouldn’t it be convenient if the person who thinks it’s the right/principled stance to give influence to everyone without safeguards also just happens to have this contrarian belief about the non-existence of extreme sadists?
I know it’s not always easy to introspectively disentangle what individual components high-level takes are based on, so maybe back when you made this disagreevote you didn’t feel like you were doing so for fairly contrarian reasons. But I feel like once you notice that your takes are based substantially on something rather contrarian, it becomes good practice to flag it as such! Because without it, a lot of people will think you’re credible (high karma and standing) and have thoughtful opinions about integrity and moral action, so maybe they should update in your direction when you disagree and imply that something someone else writes is undemocratic or whatever. But if you had flagged that much of the impetus for your opinion was informed by not believing that extreme sadists exist, many people who would otherwise update somewhat in your direction will just go “oh, habryka seems oddly misinformed here for some reason, I guess I’ll just ignore his take on this specific topic.”
To be clear, I think they exist, I just think they are extremely rare, and am skeptical of any specific instance of people claiming to have found one. I think it’s very unlikely for any given world leader, even one renowned for being evil, to be of this kind (I do think if you go down 1-2 levels of hierarchy, you can probably find some people with that qualification).
Okay, then we are closer together on that other discussion, which is good! I don’t feel too attached to any specific frequency claim, for what it’s worth. (I probably think it’s more frequent than you do, but it’s not like I have a specific percentage in mind that I am confident in. (Edited to add: Unfortunately for the world, I also think these things often correlate with power-seeking and can in destabilized situations even be conducive to it. But then it’s also a question of degree, I think it’s quite unlikely that Putin is at the extreme end of sadism, but at the same time I think it’s likely even just on priors that he he’s at least moderately high on it.))
What is a bit weird though, and what made me think you were maybe backpedalling a bit just now, is that in the other thread you disagree-voted on an example of something particularly evil/sadistic that I gave. If you indeed think extreme sadists exist (even if rare) then surely someone who has looked into this topic a bit, will be able to think of a fitting example of it. So, rather than disagreevoting my point without even checking, you could have said something like “sure, maybe that’s an exmaple of extreme sadism, but the world has 8 billion people and some of them will have all kinds of weird psychologies, so I’m interested also in making a claim about (in)frequency here.”
I agree that was a bit rude, I am sorry! I do currently expect to find that specific example falsified when I look into it (though I am not overwhelmingly confident), but I agree my disagree-vote could have been taken as “I don’t think any such examples exist”.
I was confused at the time why habryka disagree-emojied the last sentence in my last paragraph, but it all makes sense now. As I learned in the comment threads here, habryka doesn’t believe extreme sadists exist.
I wonder if that’s the crux this is based on? Even if it isn’t, wouldn’t it be convenient if the person who thinks it’s the right/principled stance to give influence to everyone without safeguards also just happens to have this contrarian belief about the non-existence of extreme sadists?
I know it’s not always easy to introspectively disentangle what individual components high-level takes are based on, so maybe back when you made this disagreevote you didn’t feel like you were doing so for fairly contrarian reasons. But I feel like once you notice that your takes are based substantially on something rather contrarian, it becomes good practice to flag it as such! Because without it, a lot of people will think you’re credible (high karma and standing) and have thoughtful opinions about integrity and moral action, so maybe they should update in your direction when you disagree and imply that something someone else writes is undemocratic or whatever. But if you had flagged that much of the impetus for your opinion was informed by not believing that extreme sadists exist, many people who would otherwise update somewhat in your direction will just go “oh, habryka seems oddly misinformed here for some reason, I guess I’ll just ignore his take on this specific topic.”
To be clear, I think they exist, I just think they are extremely rare, and am skeptical of any specific instance of people claiming to have found one. I think it’s very unlikely for any given world leader, even one renowned for being evil, to be of this kind (I do think if you go down 1-2 levels of hierarchy, you can probably find some people with that qualification).
Okay, then we are closer together on that other discussion, which is good! I don’t feel too attached to any specific frequency claim, for what it’s worth. (I probably think it’s more frequent than you do, but it’s not like I have a specific percentage in mind that I am confident in. (Edited to add: Unfortunately for the world, I also think these things often correlate with power-seeking and can in destabilized situations even be conducive to it. But then it’s also a question of degree, I think it’s quite unlikely that Putin is at the extreme end of sadism, but at the same time I think it’s likely even just on priors that he he’s at least moderately high on it.))
What is a bit weird though, and what made me think you were maybe backpedalling a bit just now, is that in the other thread you disagree-voted on an example of something particularly evil/sadistic that I gave. If you indeed think extreme sadists exist (even if rare) then surely someone who has looked into this topic a bit, will be able to think of a fitting example of it. So, rather than disagreevoting my point without even checking, you could have said something like “sure, maybe that’s an exmaple of extreme sadism, but the world has 8 billion people and some of them will have all kinds of weird psychologies, so I’m interested also in making a claim about (in)frequency here.”
I agree that was a bit rude, I am sorry! I do currently expect to find that specific example falsified when I look into it (though I am not overwhelmingly confident), but I agree my disagree-vote could have been taken as “I don’t think any such examples exist”.