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E Pur Si Muove

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: E Pur Si Muove

#551

Post by scrollaway »

nine_k wrote: post #295
hellcow wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We need to accept that some of these ideas ... are inherently dangerous. This line of reasoning leads to censorship. It's the same line of reasoning used by every dictator and demagogue as well as China today. Why? The idea of democracy seems dangerous to a king. Ideas are not dangerous. Ideas are never dangerous. Ideas acted upon might cause danger or harm, but an idea itself never does, never has, and never will…

Yes, some ideas are inherently dangerous. An idea of atoms splitting leads to an atomic bomb, for instance. Some substances, tools, machines, etc are also inherently dangerous, and can't be made not to be. Does this mean that we should never use a saw, light a fire, or discuss [insert a controversial topic here]? Somehow people came up with protocols to work with inherently dangerous material things that lower the ri…

> Yes, some ideas are inherently dangerous. An idea of atoms splitting leads to an atomic bomb, for instance.

You're missing the parent's point. An idea not being acted upon is not dangerous. The idea of splitting atoms is not dangerous and the atomic bomb is not dangerous: An atomic bomb getting built (the idea being acted upon) is dangerous.

Why are full disclosure policies recommended by security researchers? Why is open source healthy for security in general? Why is "security through obscurity" frowned upon? Because it is important to be able to discuss threats in order to better protect yourself from them.

Burying your head in the sand is just a shitty tactic for dealing with danger. Being able to discuss controversial ideas is extremely important, whether it's to better protect yourself from them (eg. extreme-right ideology) or to independently research facts hidden from you by people who don't have your best interests in mind (eg. north korean censorship).

And let's be honest here, from what I've seen of my (left leaning) twitter feed, Sam is being attacked extremely harshly for his "controversial" post. If people here think that the article is wrong, this is a terrible way to prove it so.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#552

Post by marme »

Buldak wrote: post #514

The author says that it's safer to discuss "controversial" ideas in Beijing than America, but I wonder if that's partly because the ideas in question aren't actually controversial in Beijing. Presumably the ideas the author has in mind are those that might be interpreted to impugn certain disadvantaged groups. But if I found it more easy to say "gay people are degenerates" in Beijing, I don't think I would take that…

this is exactly the case. Try saying "taiwan is an independent country" in beijing and see how well that statement is received

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#553

Post by ak_yo »

prepend wrote: post #518
macrael wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

But isn’t it simplistic to equate all transphobic people with murderers who commit violence against trans people? Would you also be scared of working with men because they typically commit homicides more than women? I think being afraid of your life simply because someone is a bigot who hasn’t exhibited any violent behavior is on you, not the bigot. A small number of bigots are violent and dangerous, that doesn’t mea…

I'd encourage you to think of this from the perspective of the person who's fearing for their life. It's rational to assume that the likelihood of someone potentially harming you is much higher if they're vocally expressing hatred about your identity.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#554

Post by Dove »

We have something to learn from the church here.

For long decades, the Protestants and Catholics did bloody battle for dominance of Europe. It seems silly to those now who think religion is a trivial lifestyle choice, but the lesson is to be learned by viewing this from their perspective. To them, each saw the other as putting the immortal souls of the masses in grave danger. The stakes could not possibly be higher, which is why the solution was so hard to see.

Freedom of religion is a very, very counterintuitive idea if you think religion is deadly important.

The churches agreed to live together in peace, not because they concluded their cause was unimportant, but because they could see resolving their disputes with blows was error-prone and cruel. The best way forward, the best chance truth had, the most just and practical way to live, is to commit to resolving these conflicts with words only.

The idea was so successful that today we would not think even of dragging someone out of a cult against their will. Even if a religious idea is obviously bad, we are committed to opposing it with words only because the lesson of history is that the alternative is so much worse.

It's a lesson we need to learn in politics.

We are not at the point where opposing political views generate open warfare, but I wonder more and more if we might be heading in that direction. But we do oppose each other in ways we wouldn't tolerate in a religious context: we ostracize and chase away people with unpopular views from various societies, either virtual or physical. We organize campaigns of legal or personal harassment. We organize economic pressure to attack the livelihoods of individuals whose views we find offensive.

All of these tactics run the same moral risk that physical warfare does: if you turn out to be wrong, you have done a grave injustice. And someone is wrong. You can't be sure it isn't you. Therefore, to prevent society being an awful place to pursue your conscience, none of us should do these things.

Worse, a campaign against an idea that consist of anything other than criticizing the idea runs the risk of being wrong. Strenuous debate is the arena in which truth has the best chance, so it is where we should all agree to fight.

We need to learn the lesson the church learned centuries ago. We need to commit to fighting our political battles with words only, not because they are so unimportant that we can tolerate error, but because they are too important to let the strong and popular hold sway.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#555

Post by DoreenMichele »

prepend wrote: post #518
macrael wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

But isn’t it simplistic to equate all transphobic people with murderers who commit violence against trans people? Would you also be scared of working with men because they typically commit homicides more than women? I think being afraid of your life simply because someone is a bigot who hasn’t exhibited any violent behavior is on you, not the bigot. A small number of bigots are violent and dangerous, that doesn’t mea…

But isn’t it simplistic to equate all transphobic people with murderers who commit violence against trans people?

When your life is on the line, it is generally wise to err on the side of caution. If you assume someone openly transphobic is a threat to your life and you are wrong, you are at worst being rude to them. If you assume they aren't a threat to you and are wrong, you may end up dead (or maimed or otherwise egregiously harmed).

With those stakes on the table, the only logical thing to do is to vet people you can trust, not give assholes the benefit of the doubt that maybe they are merely assholes and won't violently assault and/or murder you.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#556

Post by CalChris »

dang wrote: post #520
CalChris wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lived in the South and I know what y’all means. Given what Altman was writing about I’ll put this down as unintentional irony.

I'm sure you know more about the American South than I do. But the point is that you're damaging HN by taking this thread in a significantly worse direction. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15926503 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15927904 are not helping. Please stop this now.

Dude, you are not making any sense. I cited a CIA report on Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Explain yourself.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#557

Post by 0xBABAD00C »

Houshalter wrote: post #378
cortesoft wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'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…

> I think it's just based on how much of a threat a group is.

I don't think this is the reason. The offending group could be arbitrarily big or small. Today's true problems (from the perspective of likelihood of affecting the civilization or the planet) and today's problems that dominant ideologies care about and feel threatened by, are two completely different things, sometimes laughably so.

I think it's entirely about signaling, and that applies to all sides. When a person or movement or another social entity claims they care about X, the real information the entity is conveying is "caring about X is now the color of our flag, raise a flag of the same color if you're one of us". The actual issue of X is largely irrelevant and can even revert if necessary (i.e. if the signal becomes too unreliable to detect potential members). At least this is what I've noticed across cultures, ideologies, languages, continents..

Edit: Incidentally, that's also why you hear complaints about double standards all the time (how come Europeans don't criticize it when... how come Feminists are silent when... how come Conservatives are nowhere to be found when...). Logical consistency is rarely a useful signal as people are not well-tuned for detecting it and have great capacity for bypassing it: by applying self-deception, compartmentalization, a host of biases, and by building narratives and simple models in their heads while ignoring all evidence to the contrary. It's difficult to think of even one group that enforces logical consistency as its signal (maybe logicians? who knows?)

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#558

Post by dguaraglia »

conanbatt wrote: post #511
dguaraglia wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damore was fired not because his science was flawed, but because he made himself essentially impossible to work with. Would you be "scared" if someone refuses to take a shower for months on end and a company decides to fire them?

I disagree entirely and vehemently to what you are saying. > he made himself essentially impossible to work with Who told you this? Im sure there were 100's of engineers, including female co-workers, at google that would have worked with him. But lets play along, lets say that effectively no single person at google would voluntarily let himself work with Damore. Why do you think that is? Because 99.9% disagree with h…

> But lets play along, lets say that effectively no single person at google would voluntarily let himself work with Damore. Why do you think that is? Because 99.9% disagree with his essay? Or because he became a target for scorn in the public eye that overpunished him?

I'll give you a hint: if you are a female engineer, and you are put as a report for Damore, would you ever have a lingering feeling he might be biased against you if he decided to promote your male peer instead of you?

Do you think that consists a liability for the company? Does the company own the onus of making sure Damore doesn't put them in a position where they might be sued for gender discrimination?

> He was not fired because he wrote a shabby essay. He did not get fired for writing the essay itself.

Wrong. He was fired because he publicly said "fuck it, I don't believe that women are equal and you have to suck it up." That's his prerogative, but doesn't entitle him to a job anywhere.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#559

Post by methodover »

munin wrote: post #481
Cshelton wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add to that as someone who grew up in Dallas, Texas, has lived in what many consider the most "liberal" parts of the U.S., and now back in Dallas (Texas forever); The thing I hear the most from people who have moved to Dallas recently or visiting is "Everyone here is so nice". I hear it all the time. Even work colleges who are in town for business. I heard one say a few weeks ago how nice people are here after som…

> The thing I hear the most from people who have moved to Dallas recently or visiting is "Everyone here is so nice" I lived in Dallas, it was the only place I've lived where people would yell "faggot" at me on the street. People there aren't that friendly if you look different.

All these people saying SF is less tolerant than the Deep South are almost certainly not gay.

I came out in college in a big city in TX and it was fucking brutal.

Someone who thinks SF is intolerant has no fucking clue what real intolerance looks like.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#560

Post by pavlov »

simonbyrne wrote: post #537
Buldak wrote: post #514

The author says that it's safer to discuss "controversial" ideas in Beijing than America, but I wonder if that's partly because the ideas in question aren't actually controversial in Beijing. Presumably the ideas the author has in mind are those that might be interpreted to impugn certain disadvantaged groups. But if I found it more easy to say "gay people are degenerates" in Beijing, I don't think I would take that…

Also, perhaps the authors status in San Francisco means that any comments he makes will be more likely to get attention (and hence criticism) than in China.

In China, the author is a visiting foreign multimillionaire — the type of person whose conversation will be enthusiastically received no matter the content.
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