I think Habryka’s tweet there is totally reasonable.
By default, I think it’s totally fine for people to use evidence and reason to make choices about which other people they want to support in various ways. This is the obvious default, and perhaps we don’t need to say anything more about it, but I’ll elaborate on what I see as the best relevant argument for why this would be bad, and explain why I don’t think it applies here:
In some cases, people build infrastructure where they promise not to use the power they get from running the infrastructure in various ways. For example, it would be considered totally unacceptable for LessWrong or Facebook or whatever to post people’s private messages in order to accomplish their objectives. And I think it’s reasonable for users of Twitter to not like it if the algorithm is specifically designed to boost certain political views. As another example, MATS uses an external council to decide which mentors should be supported by MATS; they are explicitly trying to avoid consolidating a certain type of power so that other actors (in this case, maybe mostly funders) are happier to empower them in other ways.
But that’s not what’s happening here. Hypothetically, Lightcone could have claimed that they would provide free space for any event that was approved of by a broad swathe of AI safety people, so that AI safety people were more willing to empower Lightcone. But that didn’t happen at all. Lightcone never said that. Oli is just using the authority that he has as the leader of an organization to take actions in a way that I think is totally consistent with the expectations he’s tried to set with his public communications.
Of course Habryka has the right to run Lightcone as he sees fit. However, when you retaliate like the way he is considering doing with Scott Alexander—it has a real and negative impact on the epistemic health of the community. I think that is very sad and I implore Habryka to reconsider.
Scott Alexander is universally acknowledged to be a most reasonable interlocutors. His positions are very close to that of Habryka—Scott Alexander holds a doomer position that is more extreme than ~90% of the space. He has been unfailingly polite. He represents a huge swathe of the larger AI safety and rationalist space.
LessWrong serves as the public square for the AI safety community; Lightcone has the aspiration of being a lighthouse for the rationalist community, ai safety more broadly [indeed the entire lightcone]. Habryka has been a vocal advocate for strong free speech norms [rightfully so!]. He has defended the right to platform very controversial people and opinions. He has made a big deal of speaking truth to power—yet when he is the powerful party it seems he can see the mote in another but not the beam in his own eye.
I think that Scott’s recent tweets on this topic have actually been sort of unreasonable and impolite.
LessWrong serves as the public square for the AI safety community
Yes, if the proposal was to ban Scott from LessWrong I’d be much more opposed than if it was to (perhaps! this probably won’t even happen!) not host ACX meetups for free.
I think it is has been net positive for people to begin having earnest conversations about their real reasons for things in public rather than filter everything through a particular discourse norms filter that in practice means people don’t share their real reasons.
Scott Alexander is universally acknowledged to be a most reasonable interlocutors. His positions are very close to that of Habryka—Scott Alexander holds a doomer position that is more extreme than ~90% of the space. He has been unfailingly polite. He represents a huge swathe of the larger AI safety and rationalist space.
Hmm, I think that Scott being such a goated writer would make it harder to notice if he is being epistemically sloppy or underhanded in some way (unless of course you happen to be the target). I’m not saying this to accuse Scott of actually failing at this (I haven’t been following or reading this whole thing carefully), but just to point out that “universally acknowledged to be a most reasonable interlocutors” and “unfailingly polite” are not very compelling to me as evidence of virtuous behavior.
Or more specifically, I expect the world in which he is a paragon of virtuous discourse vs the world in which he is not to both leave one with these impressions, due to his skill as a writer.
That’s not to say that it’s impossible to notice such things, but it’s not the sort of information that exists in “universal acknowledgement” or “politeness”, a more personal endorsement would go a lot further.
The question isn’t whether Scott Alexander is right [or virtuous]. I happen to disagree with plenty of things he is saying. That’s all beside the point. The point is that if you have the ideal to support and manage a community dedicated to honest intellectual inquiry then pushing out reasonable, polite, serious thinkers and writers is bad. Especially ones that agree with 90% of your ideology.
What is the endgame here? You think you will be able to convince world governments of a pauze if you kick out the majority of rationalists for not being pure doomer enough?
I think upholding a standard of virtue is a good thing. If Scott is behaving significantly unvirtuously, then it’s reasonable to stop giving him free support (and if not, then it’s probably unvirtuous for Habryka to stop providing support in retaliation). At least for me, the purity of doomerism is not at issue here either way, nor is the extent to which I agree with their object-level claims.
Basically, I think the specific details matter, and that this can’t simply be decided on general reputations.
He has defended the right to platform very controversial people and opinions. He has made a big deal of speaking truth to power—yet when he is the powerful party it seems he can see the mote in another but not the beam in his own eye.
Come on, I am not going to ban Scott Alexander from events here, or LessWrong.
Some of the services Lightcone provides are relatively neutral pieces of infrastructure where access is taken by default as a right, and some of them are highly discretionary where access is a privilege. Whether to actively host ACX meetups at Lighthaven for free is IMO clearly a privilege not a right. We don’t do that for literally anyone else besides the sequences reading groups and a few researchers we are extremely close to.
(Beyond that, I do want to actively set the expectation that I expect to make infrastructure and culture and access decisions in ways that will be driven by pretty complicated inside-view considerations of mine that I do not promise to always make maximally legible or be uncontroversial. I e.g. think it was the right choice to ban Said from LessWrong, and will make similar choices in the future. Please do not later say that you supported me or LessWrong only conditional on me never doing that!)
Of course Habryka has the right to run Lightcone as he sees fit. However, when you retaliate like the way he is considering doing with Scott Alexander—it has a real and negative impact on the epistemic health of the community. I think that is very sad and I implore Habryka to reconsider.
It seems to me that you’re repeating the claim that Oli’s actions are of an adversarial/retaliatory nature, but you’re not responding to the counterpoints (including the one in Oli’s tweet) that they are more akin to withdrawing support because he comes to consider the receiver of said support less support-worthy.
That is true. This is not an argument [though I have tried to elucidate in some of the comments]. This is me expressing my displeasure & encouraging Habryka to reflect and reconsider.
I think Habryka’s tweet there is totally reasonable.
By default, I think it’s totally fine for people to use evidence and reason to make choices about which other people they want to support in various ways. This is the obvious default, and perhaps we don’t need to say anything more about it, but I’ll elaborate on what I see as the best relevant argument for why this would be bad, and explain why I don’t think it applies here:
In some cases, people build infrastructure where they promise not to use the power they get from running the infrastructure in various ways. For example, it would be considered totally unacceptable for LessWrong or Facebook or whatever to post people’s private messages in order to accomplish their objectives. And I think it’s reasonable for users of Twitter to not like it if the algorithm is specifically designed to boost certain political views. As another example, MATS uses an external council to decide which mentors should be supported by MATS; they are explicitly trying to avoid consolidating a certain type of power so that other actors (in this case, maybe mostly funders) are happier to empower them in other ways.
But that’s not what’s happening here. Hypothetically, Lightcone could have claimed that they would provide free space for any event that was approved of by a broad swathe of AI safety people, so that AI safety people were more willing to empower Lightcone. But that didn’t happen at all. Lightcone never said that. Oli is just using the authority that he has as the leader of an organization to take actions in a way that I think is totally consistent with the expectations he’s tried to set with his public communications.
Of course Habryka has the right to run Lightcone as he sees fit. However, when you retaliate like the way he is considering doing with Scott Alexander—it has a real and negative impact on the epistemic health of the community. I think that is very sad and I implore Habryka to reconsider.
Scott Alexander is universally acknowledged to be a most reasonable interlocutors. His positions are very close to that of Habryka—Scott Alexander holds a doomer position that is more extreme than ~90% of the space. He has been unfailingly polite. He represents a huge swathe of the larger AI safety and rationalist space.
LessWrong serves as the public square for the AI safety community; Lightcone has the aspiration of being a lighthouse for the rationalist community, ai safety more broadly [indeed the entire lightcone]. Habryka has been a vocal advocate for strong free speech norms [rightfully so!]. He has defended the right to platform very controversial people and opinions. He has made a big deal of speaking truth to power—yet when he is the powerful party it seems he can see the mote in another but not the beam in his own eye.
I think that Scott’s recent tweets on this topic have actually been sort of unreasonable and impolite.
Yes, if the proposal was to ban Scott from LessWrong I’d be much more opposed than if it was to (perhaps! this probably won’t even happen!) not host ACX meetups for free.
I think it is has been net positive for people to begin having earnest conversations about their real reasons for things in public rather than filter everything through a particular discourse norms filter that in practice means people don’t share their real reasons.
Hmm, I think that Scott being such a goated writer would make it harder to notice if he is being epistemically sloppy or underhanded in some way (unless of course you happen to be the target). I’m not saying this to accuse Scott of actually failing at this (I haven’t been following or reading this whole thing carefully), but just to point out that “universally acknowledged to be a most reasonable interlocutors” and “unfailingly polite” are not very compelling to me as evidence of virtuous behavior.
Or more specifically, I expect the world in which he is a paragon of virtuous discourse vs the world in which he is not to both leave one with these impressions, due to his skill as a writer.
That’s not to say that it’s impossible to notice such things, but it’s not the sort of information that exists in “universal acknowledgement” or “politeness”, a more personal endorsement would go a lot further.
The question isn’t whether Scott Alexander is right [or virtuous]. I happen to disagree with plenty of things he is saying. That’s all beside the point. The point is that if you have the ideal to support and manage a community dedicated to honest intellectual inquiry then pushing out reasonable, polite, serious thinkers and writers is bad. Especially ones that agree with 90% of your ideology.
What is the endgame here? You think you will be able to convince world governments of a pauze if you kick out the majority of rationalists for not being pure doomer enough?
I think upholding a standard of virtue is a good thing. If Scott is behaving significantly unvirtuously, then it’s reasonable to stop giving him free support (and if not, then it’s probably unvirtuous for Habryka to stop providing support in retaliation). At least for me, the purity of doomerism is not at issue here either way, nor is the extent to which I agree with their object-level claims.
Basically, I think the specific details matter, and that this can’t simply be decided on general reputations.
Come on, I am not going to ban Scott Alexander from events here, or LessWrong.
Some of the services Lightcone provides are relatively neutral pieces of infrastructure where access is taken by default as a right, and some of them are highly discretionary where access is a privilege. Whether to actively host ACX meetups at Lighthaven for free is IMO clearly a privilege not a right. We don’t do that for literally anyone else besides the sequences reading groups and a few researchers we are extremely close to.
(Beyond that, I do want to actively set the expectation that I expect to make infrastructure and culture and access decisions in ways that will be driven by pretty complicated inside-view considerations of mine that I do not promise to always make maximally legible or be uncontroversial. I e.g. think it was the right choice to ban Said from LessWrong, and will make similar choices in the future. Please do not later say that you supported me or LessWrong only conditional on me never doing that!)
It seems to me that you’re repeating the claim that Oli’s actions are of an adversarial/retaliatory nature, but you’re not responding to the counterpoints (including the one in Oli’s tweet) that they are more akin to withdrawing support because he comes to consider the receiver of said support less support-worthy.
That is true. This is not an argument [though I have tried to elucidate in some of the comments]. This is me expressing my displeasure & encouraging Habryka to reflect and reconsider.
(I didn’t quite understand this, though it was the vibe I was getting. This comment clarifies that.)