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E Pur Si Muove

blog.samaltman.com

431–440 of 853 posts

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#431

Sam Altman is an idiot. The tolerance for "gay people are evil" has, more than once, led to "gay people must die". In fact, it is an inescapable consequence - if you declare people evil, you do declare you want to rid the world of them. And coming from that point: You are still free to say this, of course. And everybody in the Bay Area is free to say it, too. But there are consequences to your speech . And the conseq…

You know that Altman himself is gay, right?

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just classified a statement that includes "probably" as absolutist. Perhaps you should reexamine it and consider whether your own context is causing you to interpret it slightly differently than intended.

You can't just throw 'probably' in clearly inflammatory statements and expect the reader to pick up the burden of proof.

Could you please explain why you consider it to be inflammatory? I'm at a loss as to why you consider it to be so, when it's probably not.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how they justify it, but empirically it doesn't seem to be the case. E.g. liberals are pretty tolerant of minority groups with more extreme opinions than average conservatives. E.g. muslims are pretty strongly against homosexuals among other things. But they don't receive anywhere near the same level of hate and vitriol even moderate conservatives will get. I think it's just based on how much of a threat a gro…

> liberals are pretty tolerant of minority groups with more extreme opinions than average conservatives. E.g. muslims are pretty strongly against homosexuals among other things. But they don't receive anywhere near the same level of hate and vitriol even moderate conservatives will get. This is because American Muslims are nowhere near powerful enough to write their prejudices into law, whereas conservatives control…

I mentioned that theory in my comment. It doesn't explain everything though. A conservative in California has basically zero voting power and is vastly outnumbered by liberals. Ostracizing conservatives from the tech industry isn't actually helping their cause. And is actively hurting it by giving the other conservatives fuel for a victim narrative.

In fact that's the biggest problem. These two groups completely hate each other, but live in separated regions. If they were completely mixed together geographically there would be no issue. People fired from liberal run companies could just go work at conservative run ones. We would have conservative social networks and liberal ones, and the "free market of free speech" argument would actually work.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just classified a statement that includes "probably" as absolutist. Perhaps you should reexamine it and consider whether your own context is causing you to interpret it slightly differently than intended.

You can't just throw 'probably' in clearly inflammatory statements and expect the reader to pick up the burden of proof.

It's an opinion. Opinions require no proof, no matter how controversial.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but this isn't about presenting an argument, the one example given in this blog post is about someone working towards a goal. If that goal is unethical and the person is working towards it we should be able to call them unethical. It's not about whether Hitler is saying medical care is good, it's about whether someone working to exterminate the Jews can be called unethical.

Everyone has done something that caused harm at some point. If that is the bar to declare a person unethical then we all are. In this framework you are right but it makes the label useless. Most people would require action which creates direct (not second order as in this example) harm of a large magnitude before applying the label to a person. In any case labels mean different things to different people in emotional…

>Most people would require action which creates direct (not second order as in this example) harm of a large magnitude before applying the label to a person.

That doesn't make any sense. If I directly try to eradicate the Jews I'm immoral, if my actions just have a second or third order effect of eradicating the Jews then I'm not? Most people probably use the direct vs second order distinction when it's themselves who are doing something unethical via second order effects but that's just to save some cognitive dissonance. If I know my actions have second order effects of hurting lots of people and I still do it that's unethical.

>In any case labels mean different things to different people in emotionally charged subjects. Which is why they don't have a place in honest debate.

Reality isn't an honest debate, reality is realpolitik. People are likely to be emotionally charged when they're told that it's okay they're being hurt because it's just a second order effect after all. Learn to deal with that emotion and argue against it, not make posts on the internet opining for something which never existed.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#436
> To get the really good ideas, we need to tolerate really bad and wacky ideas too.

part of the problem is demand for applications for theoretical research done at universities. You can't just do research on wacky ideas because the money you need to do the research have deliverables attached.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#437
post #147

http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html is very relevant about how we got here. As Paul Graham said then, the biggest threats to free thought and speech come from people who have just enough power to enforce taboos, and not enough to be confident in their power. In this case the political ideology that is stifling thought is one that has nationwide lost Congress, the Senate and the Presidency. Which naturally results in a…

Well, another way of putting it is "Liberals are tolerant of anything except intolerance" If I want to be a tolerant and accepting person, do I have to accept someone who wants to deny a group of people to marry the person they love? Do I have to tolerate someone who wants to control a woman's body? This is similar to a love of freedom; I want everyone to have freedom, but that means having to restrict the freedom to…

That is not another way of putting it.

That is a very different statement that comes from you defining conservatives as being against what you are for. But that is generally not the case. They are for something different than you are, and sometimes it comes into opposition with what you want.

This is in principle no different a substitution than pro-life people defining pro-choice ones as pro-murder. Obviously you see why that one is unfair. Can you see why the other is as well?

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how they justify it, but empirically it doesn't seem to be the case. E.g. liberals are pretty tolerant of minority groups with more extreme opinions than average conservatives. E.g. muslims are pretty strongly against homosexuals among other things. But they don't receive anywhere near the same level of hate and vitriol even moderate conservatives will get. I think it's just based on how much of a threat a gro…

But there are muslims who don't hate gay people or who find their relationship to islam to have nothing to do with gay rights. I'm not sure you will find many liberals who are hunky dory with muslims who hate gay people, but instead they will say that it is not okay to hate a muslim person when you don't know their personal stance on things like gay marriage.

There are plenty of moderate conservatives and christians that don't hate gay people either. I'm not sure what your point is. My point is that, statistically, a Muslim is much more likely to have extreme beliefs on social issues.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#439
post #177
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my perspective, I don't want to work in an environment where people are voicing their opinion that (e.g.) gay marriage is illegitimate or wrong. How am I supposed to work with someone who thinks a huge part of my life is immoral? I would have an incredibly hard time believing that that person was taking me seriously, really wanted to work with me, wasn't going to undercut me, or trusted me. It's not that you can…

I work with vegans who think the fact that I use and consume animal products is immoral. They regularly make smug or passive-aggressive comments. And frankly I don't give a shit, and it doesn't stop us from working together.

There is not a long history of vegans killing people for their meat eating beliefs. You are wrong to equate the two.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_violence_against_LG...

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#440
Funny, I experience exactly the opposite moving to SF from Zurich (Switzerland). I could write the same blog post but replace SF with Zurich and it would work for my experience.

I would like to see data on this. This seems like a very anectodal post (and I think the controversial comments underline it).

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