So I think it’s a little underrated as an argument. I don’t think its exactly true but I guess I think it could have been better framed to avoid all this—ie the first person could have made clear they though the email was racist and bad and that we should take a moment before responding.
Hard, but I think we owe it to our community to not get everyone upset.
In my view, Bostrom was making a point about offensive language and decided to use actually offensive examples. I think the appropriateness of this depends on context. I don’t know the attitudes of the email group but I if nobody was particularly offended or only a few people, it seems like minimal harm.
However, whoever was looking back through old emails was going to deliberately spread to an audience thousands of times larger which increases the number of offended persons by orders of magnitude.
If this were about offense then either the person rummaging through old emails or 2023-Bostrom is the most morally blameworthy. I think the actual issue is that Bostrom harbors politically incorrect views and people want to lower his status, this was just the best way of doing so.
I think honestly that if people are extremely upset by the text, they should not discuss the text and avoid it for their own mental well-being.
So I think it’s a little underrated as an argument. I don’t think its exactly true but I guess I think it could have been better framed to avoid all this—ie the first person could have made clear they though the email was racist and bad and that we should take a moment before responding.
Hard, but I think we owe it to our community to not get everyone upset.
In my view, Bostrom was making a point about offensive language and decided to use actually offensive examples. I think the appropriateness of this depends on context. I don’t know the attitudes of the email group but I if nobody was particularly offended or only a few people, it seems like minimal harm.
However, whoever was looking back through old emails was going to deliberately spread to an audience thousands of times larger which increases the number of offended persons by orders of magnitude.
If this were about offense then either the person rummaging through old emails or 2023-Bostrom is the most morally blameworthy. I think the actual issue is that Bostrom harbors politically incorrect views and people want to lower his status, this was just the best way of doing so.
I think honestly that if people are extremely upset by the text, they should not discuss the text and avoid it for their own mental well-being.