Article about LW: Faith, Hope, and Singularity: Entering the Matrix with New York’s Futurist Set

Yeah.

Seriously, why should anyone think that SI is anything more than "narcissistic dilettantes who think they need to teach their awesome big picture ideas to the mere technicians that are creating the future", to paraphrase one of my friends?

This is pretty damn illuminating:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/9gy/the_singularity_institutes_arrogance_problem/5p6a

re: sex life, nothing wrong with it per se, but consider that there's things like psychopathy checklist where you score points for basically talking people into giving you money, for being admired beyond accomplishments, and for sexual promiscuity also. On top of that most people will give you fuzzy psychopathy point for believing the AI to be psychopathic, because typical mind fallacy. Not saying that it is solid science, it isn't, just outlining how many people think.

Maybe the word "evangelical" isn't strictly correct. (A quick Google search suggests that I had cached the phrase from this discussion.) I'd like to point out an example of an incident that leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

(Before anyone asks, yes, we’re polyamorous – I am in long-term relationships with three women, all of whom are involved with more than one guy. Apologies in advance to any 19th-century old fogies who are offended by our more advanced culture. Also before anyone asks: One of those is my primary who I’ve been with for 7+ years, and the other two did know my real-life identity before reading HPMOR, but HPMOR played a role in their deciding that I was interesting enough to date.)

This comment was made by Eliezer under the name of this community in the author's notes to one of LessWrongs's largest recruiting tools. I remember when I first read this, I kind of flipped out. Professor Quirrell wouldn't have written this, I thought. It was needlessly antagonistic, it squandered a bunch of positive affect, there was little to be gained from this digression, it was blatant signaling--it was so obviously the wrong thing to do and yet it was published anyway.

A few months before that was written, I had cut a fairly substantial cheque to the Singularity Institute. I want to purchase AI risk reduction, not fund a phyg. Blocks of text like the above do not make me feel comfortable that I am doing the former and not the later. I am not alone here.

Back when I only lurked here and saw the first PUA fights, I was in favor of the PUA discussion ban because if LessWrong wants to be a movement that either tries to raise the sanity waterline or maximizes the probability of solving the Friendly AI problem, it needs to be as inclusive as possible and have as few ugh fields that immediately drive away new members. I now think an outright ban would do more harm than good, but the ugh field remains and is counterproductive.

[d1]: http://lesswrong.com/lw/9kf/ive_had_it_with_those_dark_rumours_about_our/5raj

Yep.

The Observer isn't the Times... but it also isn't the Inquirer or World Net Daily. But your point is taken. Still, while you're going to get the "wow, these people sure are weird" reaction no matter what but what you want is a "... but maybe have they have point" graf or at least not get called "unhinged". I don't really have anything against the writer-- she does what she does well (the writing is really excellent, I think). And I do think she probably likes the Less Wrong crowd she met. But I think it made the image problem really clear and explicit.

I'm not blaming the journalist. The problem is that the image that was projected (and I'm not close enough to the situation to be comfortable attributing any blame, thus the passive voice) wasn't worth taking seriously.

Which a) is a perspective that could have shown through a bit more in the article and b) is entirely independent of whether or not she or the article takes Less Wrong or SI seriously.

But I did read that earlier and mellowed a bit. Again, I don't fault a gossip writer for writing gossip. That's a separate question from whether or not the story counts as good press.

Writers that tend to get articles published in popular magazines tend to write things that people that read popular magazines tend to want to read. This may or may not be identical to the actual beliefs or feelings of the author.

Wouldn't want to misrepresent anything now.

That is just blatant. It's like a parody of bad journalism.

Today I went to show this to a friend. I remembered reading a more detailed version of the story somewhere and after some searching I found the copy hosted by the good folks at archive.org, which I'm posting here for reference: "How To Be Notorious or Attack of the Tripehounds"

Data point: I was reported-on three times, by a serious newspaper. Most information was wrong or completely made up. Luckily, once they forgot to write my name, and once they wrote it wrong, so it was easier for me to pretend that those two articles were not about me.

Feynman used to hang in topless bars, didn't he?

It's not so much the content as the presentation. The tone is incredibly self-absorbed and condescending. I thought the whole thing was a joke until I encountered the above quoted paragraph with its apparent sincerity. Presumably some of the content is intended to be tongue-in-check and some of it posturing, but it's difficult to separate. There's a compounding weirdness to the whole thing. Fetishes or open relationships or whatever aren't in themselves causes for concern but when somebody is trying to advocate for rationalism and a particular approach to ethics, the sense that you're following them somewhere very strange isn't good to have.

Let me try to make that clearer: Utilitarianism already has the problem of frequently sounding as if sociopaths are discussing ethics as something entirely abstract. Applying that to relationships, in the form of evangelical polyamory, takes it to another level of squeamishness (as others here have indicated). Seeing those ideas put into practice in the context of the dating profile of a self-professed sadist (who has been accused of wanting to take over the world, no less), replete with technical terminology ("primary", "dance card", etc), condescending advice to prospective conquests to help them overcome their fear of rejection and a general tone of callousness, sends it over the edge. Read straight, the profile could almost serve as a reductio for SIAI-brand ethics and rationality.

I'm also worried about who the intended audience is. Since I can't imagine anyone not deeply immersed in the Less Wrong community responding positively to it, I was left with the sense that perhaps our community's figurehead is (ab)using his position in ways that, as some else put it, "don't help the phyg pattern matching." It's basically an advertisement saying, "I'm a leader in small community x and I'm open to your sexual advances, so don't be shy."

Terrifying? I don't believe you. I believe this was just a word that sprung to mind when you searched for "word with negative connotations that I can use to attempt to discredit Eliezer". Pjeby's commentary of your reply seems spot on.

I suspect that a lot the disagreement in this thread actually stems from what sets off peoples' "squick" reflexes and how strong the reaction is in different individuals. It seems like you and pjeby don't get a strong "squick" reaction from what Eliezer wrote on his profile, whereas scientism does. Compare scientism's and pjeby's reactions--scientism calls the profile "a new level of squeamishness," where pjeby says that this description is "lacking in any explanation for the connotation applied." To people like scientism, it feels obvious that this kind of squickiness is just bad and ugly-looking, but to yourself and pjeby, it doesn't seem so apparent.

Stepping down from the meta-level and returning to the original point: I don't think "terrifying" is necessarily hyperbole. Some people do actually react so strongly to squick that it makes them physically uncomfortable, and uncomfortableness (to whatever degree) is probably what motivated the arguments scientism made, especially the ones that you consider harsh or misrepresentational. (Note that this isn't a defense of those arguments, just speculation about their origin and why you don't agree with them.)

Eliezer's profile is actually a close-to-optimal combination of signalling and screening for someone of Eliezer's strengths and weaknesses.

Yes, it was actually shockingly good presentation, although I guess I shouldn't be surprised after reading HPMOR.

Yes, I know. (BTW, much (most?) of that 14% is due to our different attitudes with alcohol.)

"Why should I believe you when you seem to be amoral?"

If we took this argument seriously, we (at least those of us in the United States) would have to pretend to be Christians, too.

Optimizing your life to minimize the worst that Mrs Grundy can say about you is a losing proposition — even if Mrs Grundy is a trendy New York gossip columnist rather than a curtain-twitching busybody neighbor.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqDFGpd845Y

To be honest, as a long term supporter of SIAI, this sort of social experimentation seems like a serious political blunder.

AFAIK, most of the people in the article are not SI employees, so as a criticism of SI this seems odd. SI can hardly dictate what other people do with their personal lives.

Well, hiding things like this or stopping doing them is possibly even worse as far as image is concerned.

There's also the issue of demonstrating rationality. If they claim to that being rational will change your life and make you happier, but seem to live exactly like everyone else, then their claims hold less force than if being more rational makes you do seemingly weird things. There's arguments to be made that making an effort to tone down the weirdness is counter to the goal of promoting radically different means of thought than most people are used to.

I'm pro-poly, pro-cuddlepiles, and pro-cohabiting, I just think it's silly to do all these things and then act shocked when someone else points out that they are weird.

As noted elsewhere, the article is generally accurate and Eliezer conceded "hatchet job" wasn't really the right word. But "we" includes most of the people featured in the article, many of whom did not know there was a reporter at a party.

Many of the people mentioned are not in the New York group currently; they're in Berkeley. However, New York media stereotypically see the world as revolving around New York.

It seems to me that some of the biggest tension between this article and the way LWers see ourselves is that the article is about people and their human quirks (living arrangements, sexual habits, and physical behavior), with the ideas presented as irrelevant eccentricities. Whereas within the LW-space, the ideas are pretty important. It's like an article about Nikola Tesla that focuses on his affection for pigeons.

How come I don't see an "edited" star in the original comment? Is it because it was edited using Mod Powers?

Are you just speculating, or do you have a strong reason to believe this?

Did you know you can put a "nofollow" attribute on a link and control search ranking that way?

TH