I strongly, strongly, strongly disagree with this decision.
Per my own values and style of communication, I think that welcoming people like sapphire or Sabs who a) are or can be intensely disagreeable, and b) have points worth sharing and processing, is strongly on the side of worth doing, even if c) they make other people uncomfortable, and d) even if they occasionally misfire, and even if they are wrong most of the time, as long as the expected value of the stuff they say remains high.
In particular, I think that doing so is good for arriving at correct beliefs and for becoming stronger, which I value a whole lot. It is the kind of communication which we use on my forecasting group, where the goal is to arrive at correct beliefs.
I understand that the EA Forum moderators may have different values, and that they may want to make the forum a less spiky place. Know that this has the predictable consequence of losing a Nuño, and it is part of the reason why I’ve bothered to create a blog and added comments to it in a way which I expect to be fairly uncensorable[1].
Separately, I do think it is the case that EA “simps” for tech billionaires[2]. An answer I would have preferred to see would be a steelmanning of why that is good, or an argument of why this isn’t the case.
Uncensorable by others: I am hosting the blog on top of nja.la and the comments on my own servers. Not uncensorable by me; I can and will censor stuff that I think is low value by my own utilitarian/consequentialist lights.
I’m conflicted on this: on the one hand I agree that it’s worth listening to people who aren’t skilled at politeness or aren’t putting enough effort into it. On the other hand, I think someone like Sapphire is capable of communicating the same information in a more polite way, and a ban incentivizes people to put more effort into politeness, which will make the community nicer.
Yeah, you also see this with criticism, where for any given piece of criticism, you could put more effort into it and make it more effective. But having that as a standard (even as a personal one) means that it will happen less.
So I don’t think we disagree on the fact that there is a demand curve? Maybe we disagree that I want to have more sapphires and less politeness, on the margin?
The mods can’t realistically call different strike zones based on whether or not “expected value of the stuff [a poster says] remains high.” Not only does that make them look non-impartial, it actually is non-impartial.
Plus, warnings and bans are the primary methods by which the mods give substance to the floor of what forum norms require. That educative function requires a fairly consistent floor. If a comment doesn’t draw a warning, it’s at least a weak signal that the comment doesn’t cross the line.
I do think a history of positive contributions is relevant to the sanction.
I strongly, strongly, strongly disagree with this decision.
Per my own values and style of communication, I think that welcoming people like sapphire or Sabs who a) are or can be intensely disagreeable, and b) have points worth sharing and processing, is strongly on the side of worth doing, even if c) they make other people uncomfortable, and d) even if they occasionally misfire, and even if they are wrong most of the time, as long as the expected value of the stuff they say remains high.
In particular, I think that doing so is good for arriving at correct beliefs and for becoming stronger, which I value a whole lot. It is the kind of communication which we use on my forecasting group, where the goal is to arrive at correct beliefs.
I understand that the EA Forum moderators may have different values, and that they may want to make the forum a less spiky place. Know that this has the predictable consequence of losing a Nuño, and it is part of the reason why I’ve bothered to create a blog and added comments to it in a way which I expect to be fairly uncensorable[1].
Separately, I do think it is the case that EA “simps” for tech billionaires[2]. An answer I would have preferred to see would be a steelmanning of why that is good, or an argument of why this isn’t the case.
Uncensorable by others: I am hosting the blog on top of nja.la and the comments on my own servers. Not uncensorable by me; I can and will censor stuff that I think is low value by my own utilitarian/consequentialist lights.
Less sure of AI companies, but you could also make the case, e.g., 80kh does recommend positions at OpenAI (<https://jobs.80000hours.org/?query=OpenAI>)
I’m conflicted on this: on the one hand I agree that it’s worth listening to people who aren’t skilled at politeness or aren’t putting enough effort into it. On the other hand, I think someone like Sapphire is capable of communicating the same information in a more polite way, and a ban incentivizes people to put more effort into politeness, which will make the community nicer.
Yeah, you also see this with criticism, where for any given piece of criticism, you could put more effort into it and make it more effective. But having that as a standard (even as a personal one) means that it will happen less.
So I don’t think we disagree on the fact that there is a demand curve? Maybe we disagree that I want to have more sapphires and less politeness, on the margin?
The mods can’t realistically call different strike zones based on whether or not “expected value of the stuff [a poster says] remains high.” Not only does that make them look non-impartial, it actually is non-impartial.
Plus, warnings and bans are the primary methods by which the mods give substance to the floor of what forum norms require. That educative function requires a fairly consistent floor. If a comment doesn’t draw a warning, it’s at least a weak signal that the comment doesn’t cross the line.
I do think a history of positive contributions is relevant to the sanction.