[Link] "An OKCupid Profile of a Rationalist"

I can imagine there's a threshold of bad behavior past which an SIAI staff member's personal life becomes a topic for Less Wrong discussion. Eliezer's OKCupid profile failing to conform to neurotypical social norms is nowhere near that line. Downvoted.

I'm pretty uncomfortable with... well, just about everything in this post.

First, even assuming that lots of commenters at Marginal Revolution "reacted negatively" to the profile, I find it hard to believe that it could really have much effect on the general LW project of "raising the sanity waterline." Fine, Eliezer talks about some personal things that most people wouldn't mention publicly and, surprise surprise, some people have a sharp reaction to that. But how many out there are really going to think "oh my, this 'rationality' business sounded okay, but now that I've seen this dating profile, not so much." Yes, I realize that's an exaggeration, and yes, I understand there can be small, even unconscious effects at the margins. But come on, anyone seriously put off by something this harmless probably wasn't a very promising rationalist anyway.

Second, who's to say whether the net effect is negative? This is just speculation on my part, but I imagine a lot of people who read something like this (even some of those who purport to act "shocked" or whatever) would actually think "wow, that sounds pretty cool -- wish my life were more like that." Just looking at the anecdotal evidence from the four comments quoted above, the first suggests he doesn't get laid, the second suggests he does, and the fourth notes that reading the profile helped uncover a source of pleasure the person hadn't notice before. Only the third comment -- invoking the "cult leader" concept -- redounds to the detriment of the community itself. And lots of people are going to think that anyway, so I don't see much in the way of an additional problem here. If anything, maybe this makes us look cool and into kinky stuff?

Third, come on, is this really something that needs to get hashed out on a LW post? To whatever extent Eliezer wants privacy, can't we just let him date in peace? A sexual fetish isn't the kind of thing that truth can destroy (let's be honest, that section is 90% of the "controversy" here), and presumably, most of us are fighting for a world that's more open, more tolerant, and just straight-up more fun when it comes to sex and relationships. It would be pretty sad if, in pursuit of that goal, our community required its more prolific members to pretend to the contrary. If my expectations are wrong and this OKCupid profile really becomes a major problem, well, I guess Eliezer will have to decide how to deal with it. But I seriously doubt we're at that point, and I kind of hope we can just drop it.

From my perspective, if you are in a place of prestige and you want to avoid damage to your image, hiding your quirks is maximizes the chance that they will be discovered in a way that precludes you controlling the how it is released. If image malpractice is the issue, keeping this in the open is an inoculation against more damaging future revelation. The trade-off is that you may lose credibility up front. Given EY's eschewing of the "normal" routes to academic success, and the profound strangeness that a some of the ideas we take for granted have at first blush to anyone who hasn't read the sequences, I don't thing OK cupid is doing much damage.

Finally, I noticed when I first read this that the article gave me the squicks. In trying to compare the feeling to a known quantity, I realized it was analogous to when my religious parents would scandalously tell me of a couple who are "shacking up". The feeling of someone sharing psudo-private information in a way that does not explicitly make a value judgement, certainly does implicitly. I rather doubt that was your intention, however, you might want to be aware of the reaction, if it was not intended.

tl,dr; EY's just this guy, you know?

To the extent that we didn't notice anything strange about LW's figurehead having this OKCupid profile

Who's this we? You're imbuing the community with a hivemind it doesn't possess.

I'm sure that many LW readers, if they saw the profile, would have thought it weird, inept or off-putting. Others would see it neutrally as direct, to the point, and possibly effective. Others yet might find it awesome and intriguing. But nearly everyone, I'd wager, would see it as EY's private matter.

Look, RMS had a weird little personal ad on his website for a long time (might still be there as far as I know). I don't think it ever hurt the credibility of the organization he's figureheaded, the FSF. Some other things he's said and done probably did, by the way, but not the way he chose to seek romantic companionship.

"Omega stands by Yudkowsky in widening scandal"

Eliezer's talked some about the constraints he's under that keep him from going along with the usual norms of public relations, it would probably be good for someone to link to those comments so this doesn't become a circle jerk of "hah Eliezer isn't good at public relations" and its ripostes.

Prediction: from here on, every time (well, 20% of the time) Eliezer says anything about orgasms or bdsm, people will snigger (or snigger harder than they would without this post).

BUT otherwise it'll all be just fine. So there, dealt with like in a middling SF drama series - no consequences except for another quirk following Eliezer around. Yay.

I'm curious as to why you seem to think that this community has the right to critique aspects of the personal life of one of its members regardless of that person's consent.

Now, I'm no expert in social norms, but I think that rudeness, arrogance, presumptuousness, and a lack of regard for privacy all reflect more poorly on the rest of us than a somewhat out of the ordinary dating profile. I believe this constitutes a case of overstepping your boundaries

In short, this post is asinine and makes you sound like a jerk; downvoted.

If you think this is evidence of "active image malpractice", then I think you're just miscalibrated in your expectations about how negative the comments on typical blog posts are. He didn't even get accused of torturing puppies!

This is basically an oblique way of saying we care more about local cultural oddities than spreading rationality. This seems trivially true.

Rationalists SHOULD be weird. Otherwise what's the point? If we say we do things in a better way throughout our lives, and yet end up acting just like everyone else, why should anyone pay attention? If the rational thing to do was the normal thing to do lesswrong would be largely irrelevant. I'm confident Eliezer's profile is well optimized for his romantic purposes.

Athrelon, this post was idiotic. If you had taken just a few minutes to think before making this post, you would have realized that the best course of action would have been to send a private message with a sincere tone to EY regarding this, instead of spreading the very information that you claim you don't want spread, with a smug air of superiority.

Downvoted.

(I will retract this comment if you truthfully reply to it and indicate that you did PM EY first, and that his reply warranted this post.)

EDIT: Softened language.

TIL: OkCupid says I'm a 95% match with Eliezer. Too bad I'm a straight male :(

89% match (and most of that 11% is due to our different attitudes on alcohol)? Too bad we're both straight males and we're 10^4 km apart...

There appear to be two major strains of response to this post:

1. There is no PR disadvantage to having an OKCupid profile like this
2. To the extent that there is such a tradeoff, the freedom to broadcast sexual weirdness is a deontological good ("can't we just let him date in peace?") and weighing it against institutional effectiveness is a taboo tradeoff.

The first response seems a case of wishful thinking - as though by believing really hardthat others share our local values, and outgroupping those who disagree with us, we could make it a PR positive.

The second is exactly analogous to an anti-abortion activist who opposes teaching birth control. It's not incoherent, really, but it does demonstrate that we place a higher value on loud sexual weirdness than our nominal goals, at this margin.