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I didn't want to get into his Twitter, but yes, I agree. After he became a reasonably big name and a sort of authority on AI/ML (which is justifiable), the boost in popularity only encouraged him to spout far less technically grounded hot-takes on topics like politics.
Twitter moderation is not The Motte's moderation (lol, lmao). I know I code-switch a little when switching context, I'm more polite and formal on LessWrong than I would be here. But most of the time, I speak exactly as I would on our platform.
That's the thing. Some people are innately in tune with our ethos, our rules don't strike them as unreasonable because they're inclined to act that way by default. Others don't agree, on an instinctual level, but follow the rules because of the value the forum provides them.
This is hardly a binary, on one hand we have we have consistently polite effort posters, and on the other side trolls and shitposters. I hope I land pretty left on that spectrum.
And now that I contemplate it, the main reason that I lurk and rarely comment or post on my Twitter account is because the pressure towards being concise or dropping zingers isn't my style at all. I could probably do it, but I don't want to. You can do long-form text and intelligent analysis there with some success, but it's clearly not the default.
So we have Dase, who is clearly smart and talented, but has an abrasive personality, displays clears impatience for those he considers fools, and holds a few rather questionable and strongly held opinions. When he started here, with minimal X clout, he was in an environment that encouraged the the good stuff and came down strongly on the bad.
But X? The negative feedback mechanism is nowhere near as strong. Some of his insults and hot takes took off, or caused him no real harm. And sometimes, he does have a point when he's mad, the number of idiots or hostile interlocutors here is not zero, let alone on X.
Further, he's shifted mostly to posting there, only rarely visiting our site. I don't begrudge him for this, not at all. But that makes the relative impact of a ban or a warning far less meaningful to him. He knows he can pivot to X completely (and I doubt he's the kind to make an alt and scurry back, he's too proud for that).
In other words, we're less important to him than we used to be, our validation and our negative feedback means less, and he's got a fallback at hand. Shame, I like him despite all of that, and that includes tolerating him despite his anti-Indian bias. I wish he'd clean up his act, I can't defend him anymore.
What is his twitter?
Edit: nevermind I think I found it.... what a sad sight it is
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He has now blocked me on X : /
I don't know how to put this in a way that won't be interpreted, incorrectly, as condescension but I think he's going through a rough time and hope he can get through to the other side alright. He wrote some posts that I cherish and arguing with him in long form helped me think particularly about the AI race with China even if I don't quite agree with him on the conclusion.
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What’s his X handle?
Is it public knowledge? I don't know. I figured it out by accident while using X normally.
I'm quite loathe to share by default, even if I don't think he minds. If you really want it, I can DM you.
Edit: This wasn't intended to be an offer to DM it to everyone who asks.
DM me please too
I would like to, but I already felt uneasy about the potential dox, and Dase has specifically edited his post to ask me not to share further, albeit not because he seems concerned about doxxing. I'm sorry about that.
Man that edit was not great.
It concerns me greatly that so many people who survived Wokeness and COVID without breaking are collapsing in response to our usual once every decade or so Middle Eastern idiocy.
It's not really a new thing, IMO. Even back on the subreddit, you can see a lot of once very popular names and faces either vanish into dust or go out in flames. When I go back to the very earliest CWR threads - the ones that predate my entry altogether - I often found out that many of them were later casualties of suicide-by-mod.
Eh, I would have always said that Dase was at high risk of this happening. While he disagrees with my armchair psychoanalysis, I stand by it. He's always been crotchety, and he's struggled to keep himself in check.
Once upon a time, an informal warning got him to rein it in. Then it started taking formal warnings. Then short bans, then more short bans where we had to explicitly acknowledge that we treat valued contributors with more leniency. Some of the things he said would have gotten him banned for months if he had been a new poster, or even perms-banned.
He said that he didn't want special treatment. Fair enough, that's his prerogative, and we took it seriously. So 3 months it is, and I would say it's 50:50 if he ends up permabanned in a year, or if he even bothers to come back when the ban expires.
I would say the decline coincided with the beginning of the war in Ukraine, when he had to flee to Argentina (and perhaps Turkey along the way can't remember). That's an understandable stressor. I wouldn't blame the current war in particular, he was already this... bitter last year. Oh well, good luck to him nonetheless. I've done everything I can to help, and he doesn't see himself as being in need of help. That's the Russian way.
Ugh, perhaps you are right.
This one feels like a Socratic Gadfly dying to me more than some of the other flame outs, perhaps that's what bothers me.
Ugh so true.
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DM me too
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Agree with the ban, but also want to keep up to date with his spicy rants, could you DM it to me too, please?
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