EAs and rationalists are extraordinarily, and to my mind, inexplicably annoying to adjacent communities (i.e. people hate rationalists on Hacker News for some reason)
Isn’t the most straightforward common reason that many of us think that their jobs are evil? There are probably sophisticated, empathetic, high social-skills, nice ways to say
I think your work is contributing to the end of humanity and anybody who does this work is the scum of the Earth. Also, you regularly lie to the American people. I hope you go to jail soon.
with love and kindness and grace, but our community isn’t known for unusually high social skills and tact, and honestly I’m not sure many people would take the skillful version even if they knew how to.
I mean, I’m pretty sure animosity towards rationalists on Hacker News is older than the existence of OpenAI and probably even DeepMind. Also most people on Hacker News don’t work in AI. So I don’t really know why this hypothesis is coming to mind, I don’t think it’s relevant for most of what’s gone on.
I’d be more inclined to put it down to Hacker News having many standard online pathologies for bullying easy targets, and rationalists historically being a lot of weird and outcast kinds of people, along with some strains of anti-intellectualism in the tech/startup world.
Interesting, the only recent irl aggression (verbal, not physical) I’ve received from the techie crowd in SF was related to the Sam Altman firing[1]. I’ve also gotten more standard leftist anger but I don’t think that anger is very centrally Hacker News-y, I’d guess those people would also be angry at Hacker News.
I have Hacker News blocked so I cannot pull up threads now, but what I have in mind (and I’m pretty confident is what DirectedEvolution had in mind) is many many threads on Hacker News where, when LessWrong is mentioned, it’s called a cult and has a bunch of other low-quality critical comments about it with a derisive tone.
(I believe I recalled it getting better in the few years after LessWrong 2.0 started, though I think I’ve seen an uptick again around AI threads.)
Isn’t the most straightforward common reason that many of us think that their jobs are evil?
Most of the critical comments I see on HN involve accusing LW of being a cult, being too stupid to realize people can’t be fully rational, or being incredibly arrogant and overconfident about analysis based on ass-numbers and ill-researched personal opinion. I don’t see that much engagement with LW arguments around AI specifically.
On Twitter at least, a fair number of the cult allegations seem to be from (honestly fairly cult-ish people themselves) who don’t like what LW people say about AI, at least in the threads I’m likely to follow. But I defer to your greater HN expertise!
Isn’t the most straightforward common reason that many of us think that their jobs are evil? There are probably sophisticated, empathetic, high social-skills, nice ways to say
with love and kindness and grace, but our community isn’t known for unusually high social skills and tact, and honestly I’m not sure many people would take the skillful version even if they knew how to.
I mean, I’m pretty sure animosity towards rationalists on Hacker News is older than the existence of OpenAI and probably even DeepMind. Also most people on Hacker News don’t work in AI. So I don’t really know why this hypothesis is coming to mind, I don’t think it’s relevant for most of what’s gone on.
I’d be more inclined to put it down to Hacker News having many standard online pathologies for bullying easy targets, and rationalists historically being a lot of weird and outcast kinds of people, along with some strains of anti-intellectualism in the tech/startup world.
Interesting, the only recent irl aggression (verbal, not physical) I’ve received from the techie crowd in SF was related to the Sam Altman firing[1]. I’ve also gotten more standard leftist anger but I don’t think that anger is very centrally Hacker News-y, I’d guess those people would also be angry at Hacker News.
Oh I remember another time an ML person got mad at me for mentioning Bostrom’s Superintelligence.
I have Hacker News blocked so I cannot pull up threads now, but what I have in mind (and I’m pretty confident is what DirectedEvolution had in mind) is many many threads on Hacker News where, when LessWrong is mentioned, it’s called a cult and has a bunch of other low-quality critical comments about it with a derisive tone.
(I believe I recalled it getting better in the few years after LessWrong 2.0 started, though I think I’ve seen an uptick again around AI threads.)
Most of the critical comments I see on HN involve accusing LW of being a cult, being too stupid to realize people can’t be fully rational, or being incredibly arrogant and overconfident about analysis based on ass-numbers and ill-researched personal opinion. I don’t see that much engagement with LW arguments around AI specifically.
On Twitter at least, a fair number of the cult allegations seem to be from (honestly fairly cult-ish people themselves) who don’t like what LW people say about AI, at least in the threads I’m likely to follow. But I defer to your greater HN expertise!