Above is a typical sample of what’s been filling my inbox, all day every day. The emailers first ask me for reasoned dialogue—then, if I respond, they hit me with this stuff. I’m …
Apparently we get a shout-out? Sharing this brings me no joy, and I am sorry for inflicting it upon you.
On one side, we have a trolley problem thought experiment involving hypothetical children tied to hypothetical train tracks and some people sending him rude emails. On the other side, we have actual dead children and actual hospitals and apartments reduced to rubble. I wonder which side is more convincing to me?
It’s the same pattern of thought as rationalists with AI, trying to fit everything they see into their apocalypse narrative while ignoring the real harms. Rationalists talk a good game about evidence, but what I see them do in practice is very different. First, use mental masturbation (excuse me, “first principles”) to arrive at some predetermined edgy narrative, and then cherry pick and misinterpret all evidence to support it. It is very important that the narratives are edgy, otherwise what are we even writing 10,000 word blog posts for?
The slight of hand is that he considers all Jewish hostages to be his last child, and all Palestinian bystanders to be the children of his enemy. Humanism is seeing them all as your children. Scott seems to have discovered what we might call “race-ism.”
On one side, we have a trolley problem thought experiment involving hypothetical children tied to hypothetical train tracks and some people sending him rude emails. On the other side, we have actual dead children and actual hospitals and apartments reduced to rubble. I wonder which side is more convincing to me?
It’s the same pattern of thought as rationalists with AI, trying to fit everything they see into their apocalypse narrative while ignoring the real harms. Rationalists talk a good game about evidence, but what I see them do in practice is very different. First, use mental masturbation (excuse me, “first principles”) to arrive at some predetermined edgy narrative, and then cherry pick and misinterpret all evidence to support it. It is very important that the narratives are edgy, otherwise what are we even writing 10,000 word blog posts for?
The slight of hand is that he considers all Jewish hostages to be his last child, and all Palestinian bystanders to be the children of his enemy. Humanism is seeing them all as your children. Scott seems to have discovered what we might call “race-ism.”