… 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 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.)