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The first statement is categorically false or otherwise implies the author's engaging in "no true Scotsman" fallacy; and, in the second quote, how he can disentangle biological from cultural and social causes with such absolute conviction is mystifying. Stating opinions as facts in such a way is a kind of sophistry, and ironically this tendency limits one's ability to reach deeper truth.
>Women will never make up a significant portion of self-made billionaires or outstanding philosophers, but they can get a majority of BAs. Academia practices affirmative action in everything from admissions to journal submissions and citations practices, artificially reducing the natural male advantage at higher levels of ability.
He doesn't have to disentangle the two completely, he just strongly believes that there's a non-trivial biological contribution to these outcomes. Which already puts his views "well outside the liberal mainstream".
How does this kind of talk not set of fallacy alarm bells for everyone? Claiming someone is smart and therefore right is like sophistry 101.
Lol. “Only people who agree with me are capable of rational thought and discussion.” The philosophy of and for internet trolls.
I find this paraphrasing somewhat uncharitable.
Instead, I just read one of worst articles I've read in at least a month, so full of not just poor (and transparently polemical) writing, but poor reasoning and blind dismissal of opposing viewpoints, regurgitation of unsubstantiated bullshit, and more.
If that truly represents the best anyone can do in defense of Less Wrong / EA, then it would appear that the complaints about both are substantive.
I hope that is not the case.
Most charitable foundation on the left and the right may focus on one problem but make nods to it's connections to others. I know a lot of lesswrong people acknowledge climate change is real and Covid is a problem but raise the point that "this is so important we have to ignore other potential problems" but by doing this they alien those who might care about their important problem.
It's funny 'cause Eliezer and other have realized that the way corporations go about things means they won't care about safety here, just as they don't about safety anywhere else (say East Palestine). Yet these people have burned all bridges with those who are generally concerned about corporate behavior.
(I'm personally not as concerned only because I'd see AGI as further than they imagine but if GPT-X could unsafe, then Eliezer's correct you might as well dig a hole somewhere).
Well, because there's the obvious risk that EA/rationalists just become another blue tribe identity group if the focus on actual effective altruism is replaced with unquestionable dogmas, which is really the only way you get stuff like people believing that climate change is going to lead to civilizational collapse by the end of the century or that donating to BLM is a good use of charity dollars or whatever. I don't know where the margin of optimal pandering is here, but I'm pretty sure that bending the knee to whatever the blue tribe's moral panic du jour is is going too far.
>Lol really?? You're comparing some bad PR incidents to the literal unintentional destruction of life on Earth
Your reply is a perfect example of the blind spot the quote from the article is referring to.
"some bad PR incidents" being sexual harassment and assault, facilitated by the in-group doctrine, and the Paperclip Optimizer being a central tenet of the in-group, while for the real world it's a quaint and somewhat interesting hypothetical about a far off future.
So we have real, actual harm hand-waved away by reference to a hypothetical.
Yes, because that harm is not even close to the same order of magnitude as the harm that rationalists are focused on, even if you discount it by a moderate likelihood factor. It doesn't matter if the "real world" sees AI doom as a "quaint and somewhat interesting hypothetical about a far off future" - unless you're actually agreeing with me that this is primarily a PR issue.
When rationalist sexual harassment starts threatening the survival of the human race (in a way other than raising the probability of AI doom via bad PR for rationalists), the tunnel vision critique may become more than laughable.
With more words and more eloquently, but still a perfect example of the same blind spot.