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E Pur Si Muove

blog.samaltman.com

61–70 of 853 posts

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#61
It's a bit off. The context is complex. It's true that things are tense these days. But not only SF, everywhere: USA, Europe ..

There are social tectonics at play and the stress causes people to overreact negatively on anything that doesn't solve the current issues.

ps: augmenting intelligence is still weird to me, at least above a certain point, I'm all about balance these days; fix me but I don't need augmented abilities.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#62
post #42

> [1] I am not worried that letting some people on the internet say things like “gay people are evil” is going to convince any reasonable people that such a statement is true. Wait, but why not? Isn't this the crux issue of our time? The Russians and the RNC have spouted fake propaganda so loudly that ~40% of the US believe falsehoods already. And the main reason they believe things that aren't true is because they a…

I think the lies on the internet thing will have to defeat itself. I remember being led astray by internet “wisdom” back in the first dot com bubble. Then I went and tried to apply that knowledge IRL. I don’t remember any single particular example, but I remember feeling downright embarrassed for believing something off the internet. I then learned to always take anything from the internet with hefty doses of salt rocks.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#63
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having an ethical outlook is a great idea. And it's good to criticise ideas you think are unethical. The point of the post is that just because a person presents an unethical idea doesn't make that person universally unethical. The point is to separate the ideas from the person presenting them, so that people can feel free to present novel ideas without fearing damage to their reputation if the ideas are unpopular.

> The entire point of the post is to separate the ideas from the person presenting them. But that wasn't the entire point of the post. The post also didn't like people criticizing life-extending research, when the examples were people criticizing the direction of the research itself. The post was hazy about what, exactly, it wanted people to stop doing, but it seemed to dislike any criticism. Whether the "life extens…

The article made the distinction between criticism of an idea and criticism of the person behind the idea. "Of course we can and should say that ideas are mistaken, but we can’t just call the person a heretic. We need to debate the actual idea." It says right there that criticism of an idea is welcome.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#64
I'm extremely aware of this as someone who is socially conservative in terms of abortion, gay marriage, trans issues, etc (seriously not trying to start a flame war).

It's weird knowing that a large portion of the country has similar values to me, but in a major city I can never mention these things or I'll immediately become unemployable. It doesn't matter that these things have zero impact on my behavior at work; you just can't say that you believe certain things are right/wrong if it goes against norms.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#65
post #43

I wonder how much of this is an outgrowth of the current university campus climate where opinions that don't fit into the predominant liberal worldview can't be voiced. I don't mean this as a criticism of liberals or liberalism specifically here, since I realize many conservatives would do the same about issues they care about if they had the power and numbers to.

In what world are these opinions not voiced? I don't think this argument stands up to empirical scrutiny -- there's an incredibly robust network of vocally conservative student organizations.

See this list and go to the most recent years: https://www.thefire.org/resources/disinvitation-database/

When the list started it was fairly evenly distributed between right and left leaning speakers being disinvited. Now it's much more commonly right leaning speakers.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#66
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having an ethical outlook is a great idea. And it's good to criticise ideas you think are unethical. The point of the post is that just because a person presents an unethical idea doesn't make that person universally unethical. The point is to separate the ideas from the person presenting them, so that people can feel free to present novel ideas without fearing damage to their reputation if the ideas are unpopular.

> The entire point of the post is to separate the ideas from the person presenting them. But that wasn't the entire point of the post. The post also didn't like people criticizing life-extending research, when the examples were people criticizing the direction of the research itself. The post was hazy about what, exactly, it wanted people to stop doing, but it seemed to dislike any criticism. Whether the "life extens…

It's fine to criticise the ethics of the work. Beneficial, in fact. The problem arises when you can't separate the ethics of the work from the ethics of the person doing the work.

When "this is a bad idea, maybe you should stop" becomes "you are a bad person".

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#67
This isn't happening in only SF, or only in tech. It's happening all over, and across the spectrum of ideas.

Is the argument that social media is tearing apart our society correct? I think it goes deeper than that, and that it's tech in general. We've grown impatient with right-swipe, immediate communication (whether through texting or calling on a cell phone; remember when you had to find a phone, or wait until you got to home/work?), immediate gratification. No time or desire to think things through, just react.

The happiest time in the past 25 years was the first half of 2016, when I swore off almost all tech for 7 months, road tripped, and visited with people--strangers--and learned what made them tick. Guess what--not technology. And I was relaxed, happy, free.

Technology isn't the cause of a toxic society, but it definitely is a/the catalyst.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#68
> This is uncomfortable, but it’s possible we have to allow people to say disparaging things about gay people if we want them to be able to say novel things about physics.

What about all the novel things about physics that we won't ever hear from the gay people who are forced out of physics because of a life-threatening climate of hate and bigotry?

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#69
post #52

I wonder how much of this is an outgrowth of the current university campus climate where opinions that don't fit into the predominant liberal worldview can't be voiced. I don't mean this as a criticism of liberals or liberalism specifically here, since I realize many conservatives would do the same about issues they care about if they had the power and numbers to.

> I wonder how much of this is an outgrowth of the current university campus climate where opinions that don't fit into the predominant liberal worldview can't be voiced. This does not seem to match the reality at university campuses - only the caricature by people who find it politically expedient to be seen as persecuted.

Results of this debate disagree with you

https://www.intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/free-speech-th...

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#70
Uh oh, Sam has been "red pilled".

Without providing more examples/specifics, it just reads as a tirade against the boogeyman of "political correctness".

Is he upset that the SF crowd rejected Peter Thiel for endorsing Trump? Or is he upset that Brendan Eich was forced out of Mozilla? Who knows? He's being so coy.

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