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Notes -
I'd like to take a moment to comment on a bit of controversy below.
With the AI safety discourse escaping containment and what might be described as the cold light of day falling across Yudkowski's forlorn-hope coalition and its personalities and practices, we are treated to an actual test of how the Rationalist movement has done at systematizing winning, particularly in the subcategory of allocating weirdness points. From where I'm sitting, it doesn't seem they've done especially well. Admittedly, I'm not the target audience, but it seems like arguing for "AI safety" you don't actually know how to secure via tools you absolutely can't be trusted to wield probably would be easier if you weren't also having to explain Aella and Slutcon and reverse-gangbang-bribery tactics and the Cow Question to generic normies at the same time.
Scott Alexander, apparently feeling the pinch, decided to put his oar in:
This is certainly one of the defenses of all time. Alexander has always been witty, and I get the feeling, possibly mistaken, that he kinda swung for the fences on this one. "Kolmogrov Complicity" and "no one actually cares about monogomy" pretty much put a cap on my ability to respect his opinions, but he's had a tough road, even if much of his own making. Let him rest.
Some have pointed out that this is Alexander doing the meme, and that discourse has continued here on the Motte, in this thread. Several commenters spoke up in support of Scott's argument, and I think it might be best to address them collectively:
To those of you who thought Scott's argument was in some way a reasonable one, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that most of you either participated in or at least had a reasonable familiarity with the Atheist internet wars. Can any of you recall a single time in that era when you heard of a prominent Conservative Christian caught in a sex scandal, where you saw it argued in good faith that actually, getting caught with a hooker was fine, because Jesus also associated with prostitutes? Can you claim to me, with a straight face, that you would consider this, then or now, a reasonable defense of a Conservative Christian influencer attending an orgy? Why do you think that is?
It's one thing to argue that Christian rules are stupid. That's understandable from non-Christians, though it's kind of neat how the logic convolutes in cases like the Cornell 7. And it's understandable for non-Christians to heap scorn on Christians who fail to live up to Christian standards, and even to then scorn all Christians for having such standards. It's not charitable, and it certainly isn't rational or principled, but humans inevitably human. When the argument is that behavior that Christians find deplorable, behavior that Christians police other Christians over, behavior that non-Christians scorn Christians for engaging in when they're caught doing so, is actually comparable to the behavior of Christ, it's time to examine the question of what further discourse is actually expected to achieve.
Scott's argument is a contemptable language game. I do not believe Scott nor anyone else is actually confused about any of the particulars here. Jesus did indeed associate with prostitutes; he did not partake of their services, nor did he employ them on their backs for horizontal forms of evangelism-by-the-hour. Christians' moral objections to Aella's activities and to the Yudkowskiites' exploitation of them for tactical advantage are straightforward and unimpeachable from within the Christian frame. There are no meaningful parallels here to the life or ministry of Jesus Christ, and implying otherwise is merely a demonstration that Scott and those agreeing with him are willing to say pretty much anything if they perceive tactical utility in doing so.
I do not accept that the Yudkowskiites or the "Effective Altruism" movement they have parasitized are offering a "message of compassion" any more than Aella or her cohort would accept that I am motivated by genuine concern for their welfare and eudaemonia, no matter how (sincerely!) I might argue that this was the case; we do not share anything remotely resembling coherent values, and it seems to me that one of the prerequisites to even attempting communication across that divide is to refrain from this sort of chicanery. My understanding of Yudkowski's legacy to date is that he has inspired at least one no-shit murder cult, a number of normal cults with a serious record of abuse toward their participants, one of the largest financial frauds ever committed, and the initiation of the exact sort of AI race he set out to avoid, together with some fairly-good short-term misery amelioration of questionable sustainability and a lot of intelligent, sensitive humans driven mad by overwhelming concern over shrimp welfare.
There's likely more to say, but why bother when people can simply pretend to not understand?
First, Scott is not a Christian. I think this is a difference that gets forgotten or not even considered in such discussions, because the assumption is "Well we're all the products of modern secular Western society here, so we all share the same values, right?"
So he's gonna make Jewish jokes about the boy from Nazareth. And as far as offensive Jewish jokes about Jesus go, this one is barely a one on the scale if it even makes it that far. Hell, I'm still salty about a stupid lapsed Catholic Irish comedian's dumb joke on a chat show decades (by this point) ago because that wasn't the time for it and they should have known better and it was still within a cultural context where they could get an easy shock reaction by mocking Jesus.
Second, he does have personal loyalty to the Big Yud, because back when he was young and impressionable and the kids were just getting started with this Rationalists thing, they were all in the fandom together. Good times, good times. And those of us who have been there from the start, or pretty near to it, in our own fandoms know the kind of bonds that means.
Third, I give Scott a hell of a lot of the benefit of the doubt, because he's earned it as far as I'm concerned. Some random 'who that?' on the Innertubes, I'll gladly leap upon him and rip off his face. Scott has been way more tolerant of religious posting on his website when us Christians get into it among each other.
Fourth, he's able to take it as well as dish it out, see any of the House Party posts on his Substack.
Fifth, this tweet should remind us of the scandal of Christianity. We're used to swimming in that water by now, two thousand years or so later, but it did not start off as "our teacher says we should all be nice". The religious establishment of the day were shocked by what they were doing, see this chapter of Luke (for one):
Sixth, I think I do not yield the palm to any here in being judgemental (particularly of sexual excess) so every now and then I need to get smacked upside the head by a seven hundred year old poem reminding me "Your ways are not God's ways, and God's ways are not your ways":
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