For what it’s worth, whilst I find arguing with Yarrow quite stressful, and I definitely don’t always agree with her, and sometimes think she’s a bit reluctant to concede, I don’t think a ban was a good idea. Her comments are usually substantive, people who don’t want to engage with them can just ignore, critical perspectives are always valuable etc. In some cases, she’s actually spotted pretty important stuff that people had missed, i.e. that Waymo’s still have humans in the loop, or a problem in a Forecasting Research Institute study that I cited during one our arguments.
Thank you, David, that’s very generous of you. I just want to say that you were, to me, definitely the best commenter I talked to on the EA Forum. Although it can also kinda be fun to spar a bit over intellectual topics, thinking back now, I worry whether I was too harsh with you at times. Maybe sparring can sometimes get too heated, and if I ever fail to treat someone with kindness and empathy and respect, that’s wrong and my fault.
I feel a bit guilty and regretful to hear you say you’ve found arguing with me stressful. I definitely don’t want to make someone feel stressed, and now I’m wondering what I could do differently to help people feel less stressed in the future. Now that I think about it, I also feel stressed during a lot of intellectual arguments, and I wonder why. It seems like it shouldn’t be be like that, and like something is going wrong.
What I’ve appreciated most about talking to you is your level of sincere curiosity. The topics we’ve discussed seem like live issues to you, where you’re genuinely trying to make up your mind and get the best information and argumentation, and not just argue to win. Conversely, you’ve often made me pause, get curious, and give things a second thought. There’s a comment you left a while ago on Reflective Altruism related to deep uncertainty that I still think about. You have a knack for raise fascinating points, the sort that I have to think about and chew over for a long time. Which I love.
I feel like, if you’re interested, there’s a lot we could still have fun talking about — probably not on the EA Forum, at this point. But I’m really thinking about what you said about how it’s stressful for you to argue with me, and I would want to be really conscious of that and try to make that not happen in the future.
For what it’s worth, whilst I find arguing with Yarrow quite stressful, and I definitely don’t always agree with her, and sometimes think she’s a bit reluctant to concede, I don’t think a ban was a good idea. Her comments are usually substantive, people who don’t want to engage with them can just ignore, critical perspectives are always valuable etc. In some cases, she’s actually spotted pretty important stuff that people had missed, i.e. that Waymo’s still have humans in the loop, or a problem in a Forecasting Research Institute study that I cited during one our arguments.
Thank you, David, that’s very generous of you. I just want to say that you were, to me, definitely the best commenter I talked to on the EA Forum. Although it can also kinda be fun to spar a bit over intellectual topics, thinking back now, I worry whether I was too harsh with you at times. Maybe sparring can sometimes get too heated, and if I ever fail to treat someone with kindness and empathy and respect, that’s wrong and my fault.
I feel a bit guilty and regretful to hear you say you’ve found arguing with me stressful. I definitely don’t want to make someone feel stressed, and now I’m wondering what I could do differently to help people feel less stressed in the future. Now that I think about it, I also feel stressed during a lot of intellectual arguments, and I wonder why. It seems like it shouldn’t be be like that, and like something is going wrong.
What I’ve appreciated most about talking to you is your level of sincere curiosity. The topics we’ve discussed seem like live issues to you, where you’re genuinely trying to make up your mind and get the best information and argumentation, and not just argue to win. Conversely, you’ve often made me pause, get curious, and give things a second thought. There’s a comment you left a while ago on Reflective Altruism related to deep uncertainty that I still think about. You have a knack for raise fascinating points, the sort that I have to think about and chew over for a long time. Which I love.
I feel like, if you’re interested, there’s a lot we could still have fun talking about — probably not on the EA Forum, at this point. But I’m really thinking about what you said about how it’s stressful for you to argue with me, and I would want to be really conscious of that and try to make that not happen in the future.