I’d disagree with the notion that “this post made a really serious effort to optimize for maximizing damage to the reputation to at least one of the major Schelling points in the Rationality community.” The thing I was optimizing for was getting people to be more skeptical about Eliezer’s views, not ruining his career or reputation. In fact, as I said in the article, I think he often has interesting, clever, and unique insights and has made the world a better place.
See also my reply to Eliezer. In short, if you’re writing a post arguing for why we should trust someone less, I don’t know why you can’t start out with the broad claim and then give the reasons. Eliezer doesn’t defend that practice—he just asserts that it’s basic rationality.
Yeah it seems pretty obvious to me that there are far worse things you could’ve said if you wanted to optimize for reputational damage, assuming above 75th percentile creativity and/or ruthlessness.
I’d disagree with the notion that “this post made a really serious effort to optimize for maximizing damage to the reputation to at least one of the major Schelling points in the Rationality community.” The thing I was optimizing for was getting people to be more skeptical about Eliezer’s views, not ruining his career or reputation. In fact, as I said in the article, I think he often has interesting, clever, and unique insights and has made the world a better place.
See also my reply to Eliezer. In short, if you’re writing a post arguing for why we should trust someone less, I don’t know why you can’t start out with the broad claim and then give the reasons. Eliezer doesn’t defend that practice—he just asserts that it’s basic rationality.
Yeah it seems pretty obvious to me that there are far worse things you could’ve said if you wanted to optimize for reputational damage, assuming above 75th percentile creativity and/or ruthlessness.