Some of the criticisms I’ve read of MIRI are so nasty that I hesitate to rehash them all here for fear of changing the subject and side tracking the conversation. I’ll just say this:
MIRI has been accused of much worse stuff than this post is accusing Gleb of right now. Compared to that weird MIRI stuff, Gleb looks like a normal guy who is fumbling his way through marketing a startup. The weird stuff MIRI / Eliezer did is really bizarre. For just one example, there are places in The Sequences where Eliezer presented his particular beliefs as The Correct Beliefs. In the context of a marketing piece, that would be bad (albeit in a mundane way that we see often), but in the context of a document on how to think rationally, that’s more like… egregious blasphemy. It’s a good thing the guy counter-balanced whatever that behavior was with articles like “Screening Off Authority” and “Guardians of the Truth”.
Do some searches for web marketing advice sometime, and you’ll see that Gleb might have actually been following some kind of instructions in some of the cases listed above. Not the best instructions, mind you… but somebody’s serious attempt to persuade you that some pretty weird stuff is the right thing to do. This is not exactly a science… it’s not even psychology. We’re talking about marketing. For instance, paying Facebook to promote things can result in problems… yet this is recommended by a really big company, Facebook. :/
There are a few complaints against him that stand out as a WTF… (Then again, if you’re really scouring for problems, you’re probably going to find the sorts of super embarrassing mistakes people only make when they’re really exhausted or whatever. I don’t know what to make of every single one of these examples yet.)
Anyway, MIRI / Eliezer can’t claim stuff like “I was following some marketing instructions I read on the Internet somewhere.”, which, IMO, would explain a lot of this stuff that Gleb did—which is not to say I think copying him is an effective or ethical way of promoting things! The Eliezer stuff was, like self-contradictory enough that it was weird to the point of being original. It took me forever to figure that guy out. There were several years where I simply had no cogent opinion on him.
The stuff Gleb is doing is just so commonly bad. It’s not an excuse. I still want to see InIn shape up or ship out. I think EA can and should have higher standards than this. I have read and experienced a lot in the area of promoting things, and I know there are ways of persuading through making people think that don’t bias them or mislead them, but by getting them more in touch with reality. I think it takes a really well thought out person to accomplish that because seeing reality is only the first step… then, you need to know how to deal with it, and you need to encourage the person to do something constructive with the knowledge as well. Sometimes bare information can leave people feeling pretty cynical, and it’s not like we were all taught how to be creative and resourceful and lead ourselves in situations that are unexpectedly different from what we believed.
I really believe there are better ways to be memorable other than making claims about how much attention you’re getting. Providing questionable info of this type is certainly bad. The way I’m seeing it, wasting time on such uninspired attempts involves such a large quantity of lost potential that questionable info is almost silly by comparison. I feel like we’re worried about a guy who says he has the best lemonade stand ever, but what we should be worried about is why he hasn’t managed to move up to selling at the grocery store yet.
I can very clearly envision the difference between what Gleb has been doing, and specific awesome ways in which it is possible to promote rationality. I can’t condemn Gleb as some sort of bad guy when what he’s doing wrong betrays such deep ignorance about marketing. I feel like: surely, a true villain would have taken over the beverage aisle at the grocery store by now.
Some of the criticisms I’ve read of MIRI are so nasty that I hesitate to rehash them all here for fear of changing the subject and side tracking the conversation. I’ll just say this:
MIRI has been accused of much worse stuff than this post is accusing Gleb of right now. Compared to that weird MIRI stuff, Gleb looks like a normal guy who is fumbling his way through marketing a startup. The weird stuff MIRI / Eliezer did is really bizarre. For just one example, there are places in The Sequences where Eliezer presented his particular beliefs as The Correct Beliefs. In the context of a marketing piece, that would be bad (albeit in a mundane way that we see often), but in the context of a document on how to think rationally, that’s more like… egregious blasphemy. It’s a good thing the guy counter-balanced whatever that behavior was with articles like “Screening Off Authority” and “Guardians of the Truth”.
Do some searches for web marketing advice sometime, and you’ll see that Gleb might have actually been following some kind of instructions in some of the cases listed above. Not the best instructions, mind you… but somebody’s serious attempt to persuade you that some pretty weird stuff is the right thing to do. This is not exactly a science… it’s not even psychology. We’re talking about marketing. For instance, paying Facebook to promote things can result in problems… yet this is recommended by a really big company, Facebook. :/
There are a few complaints against him that stand out as a WTF… (Then again, if you’re really scouring for problems, you’re probably going to find the sorts of super embarrassing mistakes people only make when they’re really exhausted or whatever. I don’t know what to make of every single one of these examples yet.)
Anyway, MIRI / Eliezer can’t claim stuff like “I was following some marketing instructions I read on the Internet somewhere.”, which, IMO, would explain a lot of this stuff that Gleb did—which is not to say I think copying him is an effective or ethical way of promoting things! The Eliezer stuff was, like self-contradictory enough that it was weird to the point of being original. It took me forever to figure that guy out. There were several years where I simply had no cogent opinion on him.
The stuff Gleb is doing is just so commonly bad. It’s not an excuse. I still want to see InIn shape up or ship out. I think EA can and should have higher standards than this. I have read and experienced a lot in the area of promoting things, and I know there are ways of persuading through making people think that don’t bias them or mislead them, but by getting them more in touch with reality. I think it takes a really well thought out person to accomplish that because seeing reality is only the first step… then, you need to know how to deal with it, and you need to encourage the person to do something constructive with the knowledge as well. Sometimes bare information can leave people feeling pretty cynical, and it’s not like we were all taught how to be creative and resourceful and lead ourselves in situations that are unexpectedly different from what we believed.
I really believe there are better ways to be memorable other than making claims about how much attention you’re getting. Providing questionable info of this type is certainly bad. The way I’m seeing it, wasting time on such uninspired attempts involves such a large quantity of lost potential that questionable info is almost silly by comparison. I feel like we’re worried about a guy who says he has the best lemonade stand ever, but what we should be worried about is why he hasn’t managed to move up to selling at the grocery store yet.
I can very clearly envision the difference between what Gleb has been doing, and specific awesome ways in which it is possible to promote rationality. I can’t condemn Gleb as some sort of bad guy when what he’s doing wrong betrays such deep ignorance about marketing. I feel like: surely, a true villain would have taken over the beverage aisle at the grocery store by now.