This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Hello Mottizens, long time lurker, first time top-level commenter. I think I understand the rules, if I haven't absorbed them by lurking over the last 9 or so months. As ai x-risk enters the politicosphere, I hope we can consider discussion of the topic as on-topic for the thread.
I've been thinking about the upper echelons of the x-risk bourgeois- in particular, the polyamory. Your Aella, your Eliezer, your MIRI heads, the ouroboric relationships in the community, and watching the social drek that's been demonstrated by following their various Twitter accounts. I've been wondering. Aella is a sex worker, and she is clearly being treated like shit by Eliezer. For a man who believes doom is coming, having a kid seems, at this point, frankly illogical.
With all the money EY has picked up from MIRI etc, I would probably fuck off to some tropical islands, or if EY is such a japanophile, to Japan.
But: Why does Aella tolerate his bullshit on Twitter ?
My theory, therefore, is that Aella has so much dirt on those people that she could singlehandedly doom any prospects of a bunch of the lesswrongian bay area stemcels from seeing the light of day for the next ten years. You simply don't host consentual-non-consent parties without picking up some piles of dirt. Whether they're our redpillers who think rape should be legal, or just lonely rich dudes who just need someone to fuck but don't know how to go to Vegas and get escorts.
You don't host sex parties without eventually picking some really terrible, skeevy shit. And I think she realizes this. And I also think she realizes that these are the kind of people with enough money, that if they wanted her gone, she's gone. As such, it's my belief that Aella is stuck in a hell of her own making. If the bubble pops, things will get nasty.
As such, my theory is that Aella is tolerating Yud, and the other rationalists, because she's scared for her life. If she were to tell EY "no, you're being a creep... and also endangering the entire x-risk movement", (which, as an aside, I don't think he himself believes in, based on his behavior) she's going to get replaced as the sex gatekeeper for the rich, sex-starved stembros. And so, perhaps, her attempt to have a kid is her bid at retiring and moving to fade off into obscurity?
And so, when she (imo, inevitably, some time in the next few years if her hail mary to disappear off the map before her body expires and they no longer want her) explodes, we'll have another article in TIME, or The Guardian or whatever other woke news reporter can get their hands on first. If/when that happens, we can kiss the pretenses of x-risk concern out the window, as the final curtains get pulled.
Thoughts? Holes in logic? Did I assume too much?
Maybe you said too little? I was very confused by this post until I saw your comment below adding context. But even then, your question is a bit confusing--"if you believe in X-risk, why have a child" is a non sequitur (at best, I think). You pack a lot of antagonism into a pretty small space, too--I don't think Eliezer or Aella are likely to spend much time around here, but either (A) you are in their social orbit and so you're assuming too much about what your audience actually knows and agrees upon, or (B) you are not in their social orbit, and are drawing various unflattering conclusions about their lives and motivations from dubious parasocial sources like Twitter.
"If you believe in X-risk, why have a child" might be a question worth discussing, assuming you provide at minimum some detailed discussion of the argument behind the question, but then the Eliezer/Aella stuff is not the focus and thus should not consume the bulk of your post. On the other hand, there are surely reasonable discussions to be had about Eliezer and/or Aella, but then you'd need to be quite a bit more charitable toward them.
Hopefully that helps.
Fair enough, though...
The core, or the crux of my concern was "does Eliezer" - who is going out in the public spaces, and thus entering the political sphere "himself, believe in AI risk as a threat to the human race," and what evidence I would use to determine that, and this was some of the things that came to mind when I made the post. Part of the reason I thought highlighting the cringe was important was because if you enter the political sphere, it is a wild miscalculation in order to not assume that your public image- mannerisms, diction, behaviors matters.
If I can't evaluate that aspect, that seems to me like it's cutting off an entire line of reasoning.
Edit: Okay, rereading my post, i focused a bit too much on Aella herself, rather than Eliezer, so I failed on my own metric.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link