NEVER FOLLOW ADVICE LIKE THIS FROM PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT LAWYERS.
I agree this post has some kind of bad advice, but I also don’t believe this statement. I think there are many non-lawyers whose advice I would trust more than lawyer advice here, and I’ve generally found lawyer advice only a relatively weak guide to whether something is actually a good idea.
I do think it makes sense to say something weaker like “Do not follow advice like this from people who have not done pretty thorough legal research, and seem to have good judgement”.
I think the sort of people who look at this advice and find that it sounded plausible to them, might want to first follow the rule of only taking advice that originated in actual lawyers, because they couldn’t tell which nonlawyers had done real legal research. IDK, I don’t know what it’s like from the inside to read the original post and not scream.
Seems plausible to me, though the notice you posted didn’t really seem to distinguish between different people (and I prefer the world where we don’t say things like “never do X” when actually we only want some fraction of people to never do X, but hope that those people will learn to ignore the notices at the right time).
Hm, I think you may be reading the comment from a perspective of “what actions do the symbols refer to, and what would happen if readers did that?” as opposed to “what are the symbols going to cause readers to do?”[1]
The kinds of people who are able distinguish adequate vs inadequate good judgment shouldn’t be encouraged to defer to conventional signals of expertise. But those are also disproportionately the people who, instead of feeling like deferring to Eliezer’s comment, will respond “I agree, but...”
For lack of a better term, and because there should be a term for it: Dan Sperber calls this the “cognitive causal chain”, and contrasts it with the confabulated narratives we often have for what we do. I think it summons up the right image.
When you read something, aspire to always infer what people intend based on the causal chains that led them to write that. Well, no. Not quite. Instead, aspire to always entertain the possibility that the author’s consciously intended meaning may be inferred from what the symbols will cause readers to do. Well, I mean something along these lines. The point is that if you do this, you might discover a genuine optimiser in the wild. : )
On a matter of significance, one shouldn’t take legal advice for their specific situation from someone off an Internet message board—whether they claim to be a lawyer or not. Even if the poster is a lawyer, they are not your lawyer, they are not speaking to your individual situation, they are probably speaking outside their field of expertise, and their Internet musings are likely not up to the standards of rigor they would apply in their day jobs. If someone is giving you what sounds like specific legal advice about your specific situation (other than to consult a lawyer), they are probably not a lawyer.
People should consult their own lawyer before taking action on a matter of significance. Ask the lawyer why they are giving the advice they are giving. People are of course free to disregard their lawyer’s advice for any reason they find appropriate, but they should at least know what the “orthodox” advice is and why it is being given.
This seem far too conservative to me. I think the advice from Molly (Open Phil’s lawyer) will likely be substantially better than the advice by random people trying to find their own lawyer (but not having much experience with choosing a good lawyer), even without access to context. Separately, law is not a magical magisterium, and “legal advice” is not a natural category. Many parts of law can be understood to a totally sufficient degree by laymen, and can be explained to each other, and indeed is often superior to talking to lawyer who are often notoriously bad at communicating certain aspects of the law (like the likelihood of enforcement of various laws).
I agree this post has some kind of bad advice, but I also don’t believe this statement. I think there are many non-lawyers whose advice I would trust more than lawyer advice here, and I’ve generally found lawyer advice only a relatively weak guide to whether something is actually a good idea.
I do think it makes sense to say something weaker like “Do not follow advice like this from people who have not done pretty thorough legal research, and seem to have good judgement”.
I think the sort of people who look at this advice and find that it sounded plausible to them, might want to first follow the rule of only taking advice that originated in actual lawyers, because they couldn’t tell which nonlawyers had done real legal research. IDK, I don’t know what it’s like from the inside to read the original post and not scream.
Seems plausible to me, though the notice you posted didn’t really seem to distinguish between different people (and I prefer the world where we don’t say things like “never do X” when actually we only want some fraction of people to never do X, but hope that those people will learn to ignore the notices at the right time).
Hm, I think you may be reading the comment from a perspective of “what actions do the symbols refer to, and what would happen if readers did that?” as opposed to “what are the symbols going to cause readers to do?”[1]
The kinds of people who are able distinguish adequate vs inadequate good judgment shouldn’t be encouraged to defer to conventional signals of expertise. But those are also disproportionately the people who, instead of feeling like deferring to Eliezer’s comment, will respond “I agree, but...”
For lack of a better term, and because there should be a term for it: Dan Sperber calls this the “cognitive causal chain”, and contrasts it with the confabulated narratives we often have for what we do. I think it summons up the right image.
When you read something, aspire to always infer what people intend based on the causal chains that led them to write that. Well, no. Not quite. Instead, aspire to always entertain the possibility that the author’s consciously intended meaning may be inferred from what the symbols will cause readers to do. Well, I mean something along these lines. The point is that if you do this, you might discover a genuine optimiser in the wild. : )
On a matter of significance, one shouldn’t take legal advice for their specific situation from someone off an Internet message board—whether they claim to be a lawyer or not. Even if the poster is a lawyer, they are not your lawyer, they are not speaking to your individual situation, they are probably speaking outside their field of expertise, and their Internet musings are likely not up to the standards of rigor they would apply in their day jobs. If someone is giving you what sounds like specific legal advice about your specific situation (other than to consult a lawyer), they are probably not a lawyer.
People should consult their own lawyer before taking action on a matter of significance. Ask the lawyer why they are giving the advice they are giving. People are of course free to disregard their lawyer’s advice for any reason they find appropriate, but they should at least know what the “orthodox” advice is and why it is being given.
This seem far too conservative to me. I think the advice from Molly (Open Phil’s lawyer) will likely be substantially better than the advice by random people trying to find their own lawyer (but not having much experience with choosing a good lawyer), even without access to context. Separately, law is not a magical magisterium, and “legal advice” is not a natural category. Many parts of law can be understood to a totally sufficient degree by laymen, and can be explained to each other, and indeed is often superior to talking to lawyer who are often notoriously bad at communicating certain aspects of the law (like the likelihood of enforcement of various laws).