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comment by [deleted] · 2021-05-07T19:31:06.657Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

All comments deleted?

edit: never mind, looks like hivewired deleted the original post and reposted it. Not sure why.

Replies from: Hivewired, Hivewired
comment by Slimepriestess (Hivewired) · 2021-05-07T20:54:33.933Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

When I get home from work I'm going to fix the original post and delete this one, so this will just be up temporarily, if anyone makes new comments that aren't reposts from the old thread I'll copy them over before deleting.

Replies from: None
comment by [deleted] · 2021-05-07T23:53:07.202Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Thanks. I was quite disappointed to see the discussion on the old post cut short.

comment by Slimepriestess (Hivewired) · 2021-05-07T20:46:08.977Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

That was an accident that has to do with the way it parses updates from WordPress. I had been asked to modify a few things for privacy protection so I moved the post on WordPress to private and moved the post here to my drafts pending edits, I edited the WordPress file on a break at work and moved it back to public and that apparently caused the LW RSS crawler to repost it.

comment by Vanessa Kosoy (vanessa-kosoy) · 2021-05-07T20:41:54.585Z · LW(p) · GW(p)Replies from: Pattern
comment by Pattern · 2021-05-07T23:57:20.880Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

How does one go about making everyone vegan?

comment by Isnasene · 2021-05-07T19:59:14.219Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

since everything was deleted, I'm reposting my comment below. If my comment doesn't make sense, its likely that the above document was edited. Below my original comment, I'll post ChristianKIs reply and my response to it.

--------ORIGINAL COMMENT--------------------------------------

So first off, thanks for sharing -- its really interesting to hear other ppls experience with scrupulosity and Ziz's work. That being said... I have a fair amount of criticism wrt your discussion of Ziz

And look, I don’t have a stake in any of that at this point and I’m not in a position to judge, but I don’t think she’s lying. I don’t think she ever lies, I just think she’s speaking from within her own worldview, the same way that she always does, the same way that everyone always does

Ziz has made a number of specific claims about the rationality community that seem extremely bad to me including (off the top of my head): endemic transphobia in CFAR, sexual misconduct, an attempted cover-up of sexual misconduct endemic (at least at a point) in MIRI. If these occured, they are real concrete events independent of worldview. 

That stuff matters. It mattered enough to me that I've been off this website and un-associated with the rationality community for upwards of a year because I heard about it.

The final Big Idea on Sinceriously is the one which is widely considered to be the most intensely radioactive and results in most of the hostility aimed at her and her followers. This is Ziz’s moral theory, which is, to put it lightly, very extreme.... To her, carnism is a literal holocaust, on ongoing and perpetual nightmare of torture, rape, and murder being conducted on a horrifyingly vast scale by a race of flesh eating monsters.

Just showing up here to preemptively lightly push back on the textual association here between "very extreme moral theory" and "carnism is a literal holocaust." There is a very broad spectrum of moral beliefs that notice that carnism is a literal holocaust and Ziz's philosophy just happens to also be rigorous enough to notice this.

Hm maybe this set me off on defensiveness but, as I continued reading, I couldn't help reinterpret parts of it as a hit piece on Ziz. Here are specific quotes I view as designed to be unjustifiably adversarial (in bold) and my response (in italics) explaining why I perceive them as such:

  • "...is willing to go as far as holding protests at CFAR meetups and trying to create her own vegan torture basilisk to timelessly blackmail carnists into not eating meat."
    (If you buy the game-theory being right and buy that AGI would have correct game-theory, everyone working on AGI is trying to create a torture basilisk of some kind and Ziz's just happens to also be vegan. Seems like summarizing what Ziz is trying to do as "vegan torture basilisk" is just punishing her for explicitly thinking about doing the thing everyone's already doing.)
  • "What’s a few humans killing themselves when the stakes are literally all of sentient life and the future of all sentient life in the universe?"
    (The equivocation between "two people committed suicide because they read sinceriously" and "Ziz killed people" seems rhetorically adversarial here)
  • "This is not to say that you should go out and start using the specific formulation of utilitarianism and timeless decision theory which she does unless you’re also a radical vegan extremist"
    (Ouch lol. I'm a non-radical vegan and see below)
  • "Even being willing to write “my morals just happen to correspond with the most objectively correct version of morality” is a pretty gutsy move to make that seems to imply some degree of grandiosity and disconnection from reality"
    (Arbitrary demand for moral rigor. Note that Ziz's morality doesn't have to be the most objectively correct version for her to act as she does, it just has to beat out the competition -- which isn't hard to do since most ppl like factory farming)

--------CURRENT STATE OF CONVO WITH CHRISTIANKI AS OF POSTING-------------------------------------

ChristianKI responded to comment asking:
"It seems that Ziz has a worldview according to which she's willing to lie when it furthers her goals. Why do you believe her enough at this point?"

My response:

idk if you can read this since the post was deleted but the short answer is that, per the top post, Ziz never lies (for a reasonable definition of what a lie is) and I'm inclined to agree:

And look, I don’t have a stake in any of that at this point and I’m not in a position to judge, but I don’t think she’s lying. I don’t think she ever lies, I just think she’s speaking from within her own worldview, the same way that she always does, the same way that everyone always does.

Moreover, if it is true that Ziz's goals are promoting a vegan singularity, then the specific claims she made about transphobia/cover-ups/etc are extremely sub-optimal for furthering this goal. [Also: My impression is that Ziz lies less often than a normal person for timeless-decision-theory reasons so I think odds are that she isn't.]*

[edited to note parenthetical wasn't in my original response to ChristianKI, which I tried to do like two minutes ago]

Replies from: Pattern
comment by Pattern · 2021-05-07T23:51:24.348Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

'How do you know X isn't lying' is an isolated demand for rigor.

Replies from: None
comment by [deleted] · 2021-05-08T00:14:06.262Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I don't think so, ziz kind of has a reputation as a manipulator and lying tends to go hand in hand with that. It seems like a reasonable question to me.