I think it’s very good Matthews brought this point up so the movement can make sure we remain tolerant and inclusive of people mostly on our side but differing in a few small points. Especially those focused on x-risk, if he finds them to be most aggressive, but really I think it should apply to all of us.
That being said, I wish he had himself refrained from being divisive with allegations that x-risk is self-serving for those in CS. Your point about CS concentrators being “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” is great. Similarly, the point (you made on facebook?) about many people converting from other areas into computer science as they realize the risk is a VERY strong counterargument to his. But more generally, it seems like he is applying asymmetric standards here. It seems the x-risk crowd no more deserves his label of biased and self-serving as the animal rights crowd, or the global poverty crowd; many of the people in those subsets also began there, so any rebuttal could label them as self-serving for promoting their favored cause if we wanted. Ad hominem is a dangerous road to go down, and I wish he would refrain from critiquing the people and stick to critiquing the arguments (which actually promotes good discussion from people like you and Scott Alexander in regards to his pseudo-probability calculation, even if we’ve been down this road before).
I think it’s very good Matthews brought this point up so the movement can make sure we remain tolerant and inclusive of people mostly on our side but differing in a few small points. Especially those focused on x-risk, if he finds them to be most aggressive, but really I think it should apply to all of us.
That being said, I wish he had himself refrained from being divisive with allegations that x-risk is self-serving for those in CS. Your point about CS concentrators being “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” is great. Similarly, the point (you made on facebook?) about many people converting from other areas into computer science as they realize the risk is a VERY strong counterargument to his. But more generally, it seems like he is applying asymmetric standards here. It seems the x-risk crowd no more deserves his label of biased and self-serving as the animal rights crowd, or the global poverty crowd; many of the people in those subsets also began there, so any rebuttal could label them as self-serving for promoting their favored cause if we wanted. Ad hominem is a dangerous road to go down, and I wish he would refrain from critiquing the people and stick to critiquing the arguments (which actually promotes good discussion from people like you and Scott Alexander in regards to his pseudo-probability calculation, even if we’ve been down this road before).