On “controversy bad enough”, I asked that because your statement was “I think asking Bostrom to step down because of controversies belies the value that FHI most provides for the world”, and I didn’t know whether you were referring to these recent controversies specifically (the bad effects of the recent controversies isn’t bad enough to override the good that Bostrom is expected to provide in the future over the counterfactual), or about controversies generally (asking Bostrom to step down because of controversies in general misses the value of what Bostrom brings; we should not do this).
A lot of people seem angry at Bostrom, but that surely isn’t a good measure of “how bad” something that someone did was.
Yeah, I agree that in many cases it isn’t a good measure, but I think saying it “surely isn’t a good measure” probably goes too far. There probably are nonzero contexts where it is a good measure, even if this isn’t one of them. For example, if someone’s work and role was highly dependent on or affected by popular opinion or buy-in, then something can be bad just because of a lot of people being angry at it.
Ah, yeah, sorry, that was indeed unclear of me. I think saying “because of recent controversies” would have been more accurate. I wasn’t trying to make a statement about all types of controversies (people totally get angry and cause controversies for good reasons as well as bad reasons).
Thanks for clarifying!
On “controversy bad enough”, I asked that because your statement was “I think asking Bostrom to step down because of controversies belies the value that FHI most provides for the world”, and I didn’t know whether you were referring to these recent controversies specifically (the bad effects of the recent controversies isn’t bad enough to override the good that Bostrom is expected to provide in the future over the counterfactual), or about controversies generally (asking Bostrom to step down because of controversies in general misses the value of what Bostrom brings; we should not do this).
Yeah, I agree that in many cases it isn’t a good measure, but I think saying it “surely isn’t a good measure” probably goes too far. There probably are nonzero contexts where it is a good measure, even if this isn’t one of them. For example, if someone’s work and role was highly dependent on or affected by popular opinion or buy-in, then something can be bad just because of a lot of people being angry at it.
Ah, yeah, sorry, that was indeed unclear of me. I think saying “because of recent controversies” would have been more accurate. I wasn’t trying to make a statement about all types of controversies (people totally get angry and cause controversies for good reasons as well as bad reasons).