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Sigh, slow news week.
Dexter and why meta-contrarians suck.
Dexter was a show about a serial-killer that aired on Showtime. It was pretty good, especially the early seasons. The premise, for those of you who don't know, is that Dexter was a "good" serial killer who only killed other killers.
If killers are bad, then Dexter was good because he reduced the number of killers.
You know who would really suck? A meta-Dexter who only killed Dexters.
... and that's how I see meta-contrarians.
"Let a thousand flowers bloom", the contrarians say, considering all sorts of weird and different ideas. "Actually, the rose is already the best flower and you smell bad" says the meta-contrarian, smugly.
Who are these meta-contrarians you ask? They are mustachioed hipsters of the rationalist community. They might dabble in some forbidden thoughts, but they don't take them seriously. Because, after all, the default hypthosis is usually the correct one.
And, yes, the default hypthosis usually is correct. But contrarians serve a valuable purpose, even if they are wrong more often than not! Because not EVERY default hypothesis is correct. And without contrarians we'll never find out which ones are wrong.
So I think it's important to give contrarians a lot MORE grace than people who espouse the default opinion. Meta-contrarians give them LESS grace. And that's why they suck.
I've never heard of this before. Do you have any examples?
My biggest beef is with the people who want to police AI "doomerism".
Big Yud is probably wrong about AI. But I think his ideas are valuable, much more so than the army of normies who own $NVDA stock and think AI is neato keen, isn't science fucking awesome?
Contrarians are society's immune system and should be respected as such. Sometimes they attack healthy tissue, but we're so much better off with them then without.
Your point would be better if Yud was a prophet in the wilderness, but instead, he's an influential idiot who has influence in the development of LLMs (and whatever AGIs emerge from their development.) It would be like having a board member on Intel who wants to make their chips hotter and slower. He's past the point of contrarianism: he's a Yuddite.
Isn't this point basically just "yes you should be able to have contrarian views, but only when they're completely ignorable and useless." If the Opposition can't actually do anything, then there's really no point in having them. I understand if you just think the Anti-AI position is dumb, but your argument seems like a general argument against opposition.
I just wanted to make the distinction that being a contrarian is merely being against the prevailing wisdom. It doesn't imply action, only disagreement.
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