Eliezer is popular here. He founded LessWrong, MIRI and the AGI x-risk community. It’s not surprising you are getting downvoted for criticising his work (note I have not downvoted you, just explaining here).
Not just for criticism of his work but also for bringing this up in a totally unrelated context. If you’re (I mean the anonymous commenter) bothered by the way Eliezer dismisses concerns around “sex within orgs or close networks makes things messy and often ends badly,” I think that’s fair enough and I wouldn’t have downvoted your comment for it. But then adding that you think his intellectual contributions are also shit (or at least are seen as bad by people outside the movement) – that just seems a bit mean-spirited (besides IMO being wrong).
… I feel sad and uncomfortable about the commenters here criticizing Anonymous for “personally attacking” Eliezer, “bringing this up in a totally unrelated context”, being “mean-spirited”, etc.
It surely matters whether or not the intellectual contributions of someone in Eliezer’s reference class are bad, and in a world where they are bad, I care a lot more about learning that fact than about exactly which thread or subthread the discussion occurs on.
I’m glad you mention “besides IMO being wrong” at all. But where’s the objection that no supporting argument has been given? Where are the requests for specifics, so that it’s even possible to evaluate Anon’s claim by comparing notes about whether a given idea is a good intellectual contribution?
The problem with “More importantly, the low opinion of Eliezer’s contributions is well known” isn’t that it’s rude or off-topic; it’s that it’s maximally vague, more like a schoolyard taunt (“Oh, everyone knows X is lame, it’s so obvious I don’t even need to say why!”) than like a normal critique of someone’s intellectual output. If you think Eliezer’s wrong about tons of stuff, give some examples so those can be talked about, for goodness’ sake.
I agree that maximal vagueness is the much bigger issue with the intellectual criticism part of the comment than its unrelatedness and should also have said so. (And also via that vagueness implying that there’s a consensus where there IMO isn’t.)
I have, as it happens, a low opinion of Eliezer’s influence on EA (though I admit I’ve hardly read his stuff), but I still downvoted a generalized off-topic nasty personal attack.
Eliezer is popular here. He founded LessWrong, MIRI and the AGI x-risk community. It’s not surprising you are getting downvoted for criticising his work (note I have not downvoted you, just explaining here).
Not just for criticism of his work but also for bringing this up in a totally unrelated context. If you’re (I mean the anonymous commenter) bothered by the way Eliezer dismisses concerns around “sex within orgs or close networks makes things messy and often ends badly,” I think that’s fair enough and I wouldn’t have downvoted your comment for it. But then adding that you think his intellectual contributions are also shit (or at least are seen as bad by people outside the movement) – that just seems a bit mean-spirited (besides IMO being wrong).
… I feel sad and uncomfortable about the commenters here criticizing Anonymous for “personally attacking” Eliezer, “bringing this up in a totally unrelated context”, being “mean-spirited”, etc.
It surely matters whether or not the intellectual contributions of someone in Eliezer’s reference class are bad, and in a world where they are bad, I care a lot more about learning that fact than about exactly which thread or subthread the discussion occurs on.
I’m glad you mention “besides IMO being wrong” at all. But where’s the objection that no supporting argument has been given? Where are the requests for specifics, so that it’s even possible to evaluate Anon’s claim by comparing notes about whether a given idea is a good intellectual contribution?
The problem with “More importantly, the low opinion of Eliezer’s contributions is well known” isn’t that it’s rude or off-topic; it’s that it’s maximally vague, more like a schoolyard taunt (“Oh, everyone knows X is lame, it’s so obvious I don’t even need to say why!”) than like a normal critique of someone’s intellectual output. If you think Eliezer’s wrong about tons of stuff, give some examples so those can be talked about, for goodness’ sake.
I agree that maximal vagueness is the much bigger issue with the intellectual criticism part of the comment than its unrelatedness and should also have said so. (And also via that vagueness implying that there’s a consensus where there IMO isn’t.)
I have, as it happens, a low opinion of Eliezer’s influence on EA (though I admit I’ve hardly read his stuff), but I still downvoted a generalized off-topic nasty personal attack.