I feel like this post is doing something I really don’t like, which I’d categorize as something like “instead of trying to persuade with arguments, using rhetorical tricks to define terms in such a way that the other side is stuck defending a loaded concept and has an unjustified uphill battle.”
For instance:
let us be clear: hiding your beliefs, in ways that predictably leads people to believe false things, is lying. This is the case regardless of your intentions, and regardless of how it feels.
I mean, no, that’s just not how the term is usually used. It’s misleading to hide your beliefs in that way, and you could argue it’s dishonest, but it’s not generally what people would call a “lie” (or if they did, they’d use the phrase “lie by omission”). One could argue that lies by omission are no less bad than lies by commission, but I think this is at least nonobvious, and also a view that I’m pretty sure most people don’t hold. You could have written this post with words like “mislead” or “act coyly about true beliefs” instead of “lie”, and I think that would have made this post substantially better.
I also feel like the piece weirdly implies that it’s dishonest to advocate for a policy that you think is second best. Like, this just doesn’t follow – someone could, for instance, want a $20/hr minimum wage, and advocate for a $15/hr minimum wage based on the idea that it’s more politically feasible, and this isn’t remotely dishonest unless they’re being dishonest about their preference for $20/hr in other communications. You say:
many AI Safety people being much more vocal about their endorsement of RSPs than their private belief that in a saner world, all AGI progress should stop right now.
but this simply isn’t contradictory – you could think a perfect society would pause but that RSPs are still good and make more sense to advocate for given the political reality of our society.
Isn’t your point a little bit pedantic here in the sense that you seem to be perfectly able to understand the key point the post was trying to make, find that point somewhat objectionable or controversial, and thus point to some issues regarding „framing“ rather than really engage deeply with the key points?
Of course, every post could be better written, more thoughtful, etc. but let’s be honest, we are here to make progress on important issues and not to win „argument style points.“ In particular, I find it disturbing that this technique of criticizing style of argument seems to be used quite often to discredit or not engage with „niche“ viewpoints that criticize prevailing „mainstream“ opinions in the EA community. Happened to me as well, when I was suggesting we should look more into whether there are maybe alternatives to purely for profit/closed sourced driven business models for AI ventures. Some people where bending over backwards to argue some concerns that were only tangentially related to the proposal I made (e.g., government can’t be trusted and is incompetent so anything involving regulation could never ever work, etc.). Another case was a post on engagement with “post growth” concepts. There I witnessed something like a wholesale character assassination of the post growth community for whatever reasons. Not saying this happened here but I am simply trying to show a pattern of dismissal of niche viewpoints for spurious, tangential reasons without really engaging with them.
Altogether, wouldn’t it be more productive to have more open minded discussions and practice more of what we preach to the normies out there ourselves (e.g., steel-manning instead of straw-manning)? Critiquing style is fine and has its place but maybe let’s do substance first and style second?
My problem with the post wasn’t that it used subpar prose or “could be written better”, it’s that it uses rhetorical techniques that make actual exchange of ideas and truth-seeking harder. This isn’t about “argument style points”, it’s about cultivating norms in the community that make it easier for us to converge on truth, even on hard topics.
The reason I didn’t personally engage with the object level is I didn’t feel like I had anything particularly valuable to say on the topic. I didn’t avoid saying my object-level views (if he had written a similar post with a style I didn’t take issue with, I wouldn’t have responded at all), and I don’t want other people in the community to avoid engaging with the ideas either.
as I also stated in another reply to Nick, I didn’t really mean to diminish the point you raised but to highlight that this is really more of a „meta point“ that’s only tangential to the matter of the issue outlined. My critical reaction was not meant to be against you or the point you raised but the more general community practice / trend of focusing on those points at the expense of engaging the subject matter itself, in particular, when the topic is against mainstream thinking. This I think is somewhat demonstrated by the fact that your comment is by far the most upvoted on an issue that would have far reaching implications if accepted as having some merit.
Hope this makes it clearer. Don’t mean to criticize the object level of your argument, it’s just coincidental that I picked out your comment to illustrate a problematic development that I see.
P.S.: There is also some irony in me posting a meta critique of a meta critique to argue for more object level engagement but that’s life I guess.
Thanks Alex. In general I agree with you, if viewpoints are expressed that are outside of what most EAs think, they do sometimes get strawmanned and voted down without good reason (like you say ideas like handing more power to governments and post-growth concepts). In this case though I think the original poster was fairly aggressive with rhetorical tricks, as a pretty large part of making their argument—so I think Daniel’s criticism was reasonable.
thanks for your reply. I didn’t mean to say that Daniel didn’t have a point. It’s a reasonable argument to make. I just wanted to highlight that this shouldn’t be the only angle to look at such posts. If you look, his comment is by far the most upvoted and it only addresses a point tangential to the problem at hand. Of course, getting upvoted is not his „fault“. I just felt compelled to highlight that overly focusing on this kind of angle only brings us so far.
I feel like this post is doing something I really don’t like, which I’d categorize as something like “instead of trying to persuade with arguments, using rhetorical tricks to define terms in such a way that the other side is stuck defending a loaded concept and has an unjustified uphill battle.”
For instance:
I mean, no, that’s just not how the term is usually used. It’s misleading to hide your beliefs in that way, and you could argue it’s dishonest, but it’s not generally what people would call a “lie” (or if they did, they’d use the phrase “lie by omission”). One could argue that lies by omission are no less bad than lies by commission, but I think this is at least nonobvious, and also a view that I’m pretty sure most people don’t hold. You could have written this post with words like “mislead” or “act coyly about true beliefs” instead of “lie”, and I think that would have made this post substantially better.
I also feel like the piece weirdly implies that it’s dishonest to advocate for a policy that you think is second best. Like, this just doesn’t follow – someone could, for instance, want a $20/hr minimum wage, and advocate for a $15/hr minimum wage based on the idea that it’s more politically feasible, and this isn’t remotely dishonest unless they’re being dishonest about their preference for $20/hr in other communications. You say:
but this simply isn’t contradictory – you could think a perfect society would pause but that RSPs are still good and make more sense to advocate for given the political reality of our society.
Isn’t your point a little bit pedantic here in the sense that you seem to be perfectly able to understand the key point the post was trying to make, find that point somewhat objectionable or controversial, and thus point to some issues regarding „framing“ rather than really engage deeply with the key points?
Of course, every post could be better written, more thoughtful, etc. but let’s be honest, we are here to make progress on important issues and not to win „argument style points.“ In particular, I find it disturbing that this technique of criticizing style of argument seems to be used quite often to discredit or not engage with „niche“ viewpoints that criticize prevailing „mainstream“ opinions in the EA community. Happened to me as well, when I was suggesting we should look more into whether there are maybe alternatives to purely for profit/closed sourced driven business models for AI ventures. Some people where bending over backwards to argue some concerns that were only tangentially related to the proposal I made (e.g., government can’t be trusted and is incompetent so anything involving regulation could never ever work, etc.). Another case was a post on engagement with “post growth” concepts. There I witnessed something like a wholesale character assassination of the post growth community for whatever reasons. Not saying this happened here but I am simply trying to show a pattern of dismissal of niche viewpoints for spurious, tangential reasons without really engaging with them.
Altogether, wouldn’t it be more productive to have more open minded discussions and practice more of what we preach to the normies out there ourselves (e.g., steel-manning instead of straw-manning)? Critiquing style is fine and has its place but maybe let’s do substance first and style second?
My problem with the post wasn’t that it used subpar prose or “could be written better”, it’s that it uses rhetorical techniques that make actual exchange of ideas and truth-seeking harder. This isn’t about “argument style points”, it’s about cultivating norms in the community that make it easier for us to converge on truth, even on hard topics.
The reason I didn’t personally engage with the object level is I didn’t feel like I had anything particularly valuable to say on the topic. I didn’t avoid saying my object-level views (if he had written a similar post with a style I didn’t take issue with, I wouldn’t have responded at all), and I don’t want other people in the community to avoid engaging with the ideas either.
Hey Daniel,
as I also stated in another reply to Nick, I didn’t really mean to diminish the point you raised but to highlight that this is really more of a „meta point“ that’s only tangential to the matter of the issue outlined. My critical reaction was not meant to be against you or the point you raised but the more general community practice / trend of focusing on those points at the expense of engaging the subject matter itself, in particular, when the topic is against mainstream thinking. This I think is somewhat demonstrated by the fact that your comment is by far the most upvoted on an issue that would have far reaching implications if accepted as having some merit.
Hope this makes it clearer. Don’t mean to criticize the object level of your argument, it’s just coincidental that I picked out your comment to illustrate a problematic development that I see.
P.S.: There is also some irony in me posting a meta critique of a meta critique to argue for more object level engagement but that’s life I guess.
Thanks Alex. In general I agree with you, if viewpoints are expressed that are outside of what most EAs think, they do sometimes get strawmanned and voted down without good reason (like you say ideas like handing more power to governments and post-growth concepts). In this case though I think the original poster was fairly aggressive with rhetorical tricks, as a pretty large part of making their argument—so I think Daniel’s criticism was reasonable.
Hey Nick,
thanks for your reply. I didn’t mean to say that Daniel didn’t have a point. It’s a reasonable argument to make. I just wanted to highlight that this shouldn’t be the only angle to look at such posts. If you look, his comment is by far the most upvoted and it only addresses a point tangential to the problem at hand. Of course, getting upvoted is not his „fault“. I just felt compelled to highlight that overly focusing on this kind of angle only brings us so far.
Hope that makes it clearer :)