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Comment by dang | Hacker News Reader

I'm sorry but I don't understand that.

Are you asking about how one can possibly be "curious" in the face of a catastrophe like this, and what that even means? I think that's a legit question. If curiosity means a detached-technical attitude, that is not an appropriate response to this topic and could in some forms even be monstrous. But that's not what I mean here. What I do mean, I tried to describe at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38616823 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38616662. It has to do with being open to others.

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> Are you asking about how one can possibly be "curious" in the face of a catastrophe like this, and what that even means?

I am asking: can you be curious about whether it may have be possible for these (and future) deaths to be avoided, had some humans acted differently than they had?

I suspect this may seem like a very strange question, and I propose that that is an artifact of the problem.

> If curiosity means a detached-technical attitude, that is not an appropriate response to this topic...

Here you are representing a subjective belief as knowledge, on a matter where people's lives are at stake. Can you be curious about whether this approach as a moderator on a website frequented by some of the most powerful minds on the planet may be preventing lives from being saved, or whether it is part of the underlying causality of why these powerful minds can't keep it together when discussing topics like this (which may also contribute to the causality underlying deaths)?

As a random bystander I find your comments extremely hard to comprehend. It's not really the vocabulary, although it could do to be less lofty. I think part of it is sentences like this:

> Can you be curious about whether this approach as a moderator on a website frequented by some of the most powerful minds on the planet may be preventing lives from being saved?

This sounds to me, and maybe I'm wrong, like you have some sort of pre-formed opinion about what Dang et al are doing, but are choosing to cast it in the lens of "can you be curious" as a way of avoiding just directly saying what you think.

> This sounds to me, and maybe I'm wrong, like you have some sort of pre-formed opinion about what Dang et al are doing

I certainly do. And, it is worth noting that while all beliefs are opinions, not all are merely opinion.

Is your read on me better than mine on you? How much experience do you have in the domain?

> but are choosing to cast it in the lens of "can you be curious" as a way of avoiding just directly saying what you think.

My strategy is to use deliberately unusual language in order to break people out of System 1 / LLM / Colloquial mode.

Clearly it is not working, have you any advice for me now that we've at least somewhat, perhaps, broken the 4th wall?

Reminder: thousands have died already, more will (presumably) in the short run, and MANY more in the long run. I appreciate this may not be a pleasant experience, but the stakes are not exactly low.

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