I agree in general, but think that titotal’s specific use was fine. In my opinion, the main goal of that post was not to engage the AI 2037, which had already be done extensively in private but rather to communicate their views to the broader community. Titles in particular are extremely limited, many people only read the title, and titles are a key way people decide whether to eat on, and efficiency of communication is extremely important. The point they were trying to convey was these models that are treated as high status and prestigious should not be and I disagree that non-violent communication could have achieved a similar effect to that title (note, I don’t particularly like how they framed the post, but I think this was perfectly reasonable from their perspective)
I agree with you but I think that part of the deal here should be that if you make a strong value judgement in your title, you get more social punishment if you fail to convince readers. E.g. if that post is unpersuasive, I think it’s reasonable to strong downvote it, but if it had a gentler title, I’d think you should be more forgiving.
I agree with the “strong title + unconvincing = social punishment” part. But you seem to only apply it to the “value judgement” in the title, and I disagree with that.
The post being critiqued has a bold, unapologetic title: no “model” or “forecast” or “this could be”, just this is “AI 2027″, you deal with it. And is published on its own website with high production values. It’s borderline arrogant.
In that context, a response article (not a website!) named “A deep critique… of bad timeline models” sounds comparatively level-headed to me.
tbf to the AI 2027 article, whilst it makes a number of contentious arguments its actual titles and subtitles seem quite low key.
But I do agree with the meta point that norms of only socially punishing critics for boldness of their claims is counterproductive, and norms of careful hedging can result in actual sanewashing of nonsense “RFK advances novel theory about causes of autism; some experts suggest other causes”.
I’m not saying we should treat criticisms very differently from non-criticism posts (except that criticisms are generally lower effort and lower value).
Even if the goal is communication, it could be the case that normalizing strong attractive titles could lead to more clickbait-y EA content. For example, we could get: “10 Reasons Why [INSERT_PERSON] Wants to Destroy EA.”
Of course, we still need some prioritization system to determine which posts are worth reading (typically via number of upvotes).
Idk, I would just downvote posts with unproductively bad titles, and not downvote posts with strong but justified titles. Further posts that seem superficially justified but actually don’t justify the title properly are also things I dislike and downvote. I don’t think we need a slippery slope argument here when the naive strategy works fine
I agree in general, but think that titotal’s specific use was fine. In my opinion, the main goal of that post was not to engage the AI 2037, which had already be done extensively in private but rather to communicate their views to the broader community. Titles in particular are extremely limited, many people only read the title, and titles are a key way people decide whether to eat on, and efficiency of communication is extremely important. The point they were trying to convey was these models that are treated as high status and prestigious should not be and I disagree that non-violent communication could have achieved a similar effect to that title (note, I don’t particularly like how they framed the post, but I think this was perfectly reasonable from their perspective)
I agree with you but I think that part of the deal here should be that if you make a strong value judgement in your title, you get more social punishment if you fail to convince readers. E.g. if that post is unpersuasive, I think it’s reasonable to strong downvote it, but if it had a gentler title, I’d think you should be more forgiving.
Yep, this seems extremely reasonable—I am in practice far more annoyed if a piece makes attacks and does not deliver
I agree with the “strong title + unconvincing = social punishment” part. But you seem to only apply it to the “value judgement” in the title, and I disagree with that.
The post being critiqued has a bold, unapologetic title: no “model” or “forecast” or “this could be”, just this is “AI 2027″, you deal with it. And is published on its own website with high production values. It’s borderline arrogant.
In that context, a response article (not a website!) named “A deep critique… of bad timeline models” sounds comparatively level-headed to me.
tbf to the AI 2027 article, whilst it makes a number of contentious arguments its actual titles and subtitles seem quite low key.
But I do agree with the meta point that norms of only socially punishing critics for boldness of their claims is counterproductive, and norms of careful hedging can result in actual sanewashing of nonsense “RFK advances novel theory about causes of autism; some experts suggest other causes”.
I’m not saying we should treat criticisms very differently from non-criticism posts (except that criticisms are generally lower effort and lower value).
Even if the goal is communication, it could be the case that normalizing strong attractive titles could lead to more clickbait-y EA content. For example, we could get: “10 Reasons Why [INSERT_PERSON] Wants to Destroy EA.”
Of course, we still need some prioritization system to determine which posts are worth reading (typically via number of upvotes).
Idk, I would just downvote posts with unproductively bad titles, and not downvote posts with strong but justified titles. Further posts that seem superficially justified but actually don’t justify the title properly are also things I dislike and downvote. I don’t think we need a slippery slope argument here when the naive strategy works fine