The Nonlinear Library LW - Less Wrong automated systems are inadvertently Censoring me by Roko
Feb 21, 2024
01:49
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Less Wrong automated systems are inadvertently Censoring me, published by Roko on February 21, 2024 on LessWrong.
Just a short post to highlight an issue with debate on LW; I have recently been involved with some interest in the debate on covid-19 origins on here. User viking_math posted a response which I was keen to respond to, but it is not possible for me to respond to that debate (or any) because the LW site has rate-limited me to one comment per 24 hours because my recent comments are on -5 karma or less.
So, I feel that I should highlight that one side of the debate (my side) is simply not going to be here. I can't prosecute a debate like this.
This is funnily enough an example of brute-force manufactured consensus - there will be a debate, people will make points on their side and the side I am arguing for will be missing, so observers will conclude that there are no valid counterarguments rather than that there are, but they were censored.
I think this is actually quite a good model of how the world has reached the wrong conclusion about various things (which may include covid-19 origins, assuming that covid-19 was actually a lab leak which is not certain). This is perhaps even more interesting than whether covid-19 came from a lab or not - we already knew before 2019 that bioerror was a serious risk.
But I feel that we underestimate just how powerful multiple synergistic brute-force consensus mechanisms are at generating an information cascade into the incorrect conclusion.
I'm sure these automated systems were constructed with good intentions, but they do constitute a type of information cascade mechanism - people choose to downvote, so you cannot reply, so it looks like you have no arguments, so people choose to downvote more, etc.
Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org
Just a short post to highlight an issue with debate on LW; I have recently been involved with some interest in the debate on covid-19 origins on here. User viking_math posted a response which I was keen to respond to, but it is not possible for me to respond to that debate (or any) because the LW site has rate-limited me to one comment per 24 hours because my recent comments are on -5 karma or less.
So, I feel that I should highlight that one side of the debate (my side) is simply not going to be here. I can't prosecute a debate like this.
This is funnily enough an example of brute-force manufactured consensus - there will be a debate, people will make points on their side and the side I am arguing for will be missing, so observers will conclude that there are no valid counterarguments rather than that there are, but they were censored.
I think this is actually quite a good model of how the world has reached the wrong conclusion about various things (which may include covid-19 origins, assuming that covid-19 was actually a lab leak which is not certain). This is perhaps even more interesting than whether covid-19 came from a lab or not - we already knew before 2019 that bioerror was a serious risk.
But I feel that we underestimate just how powerful multiple synergistic brute-force consensus mechanisms are at generating an information cascade into the incorrect conclusion.
I'm sure these automated systems were constructed with good intentions, but they do constitute a type of information cascade mechanism - people choose to downvote, so you cannot reply, so it looks like you have no arguments, so people choose to downvote more, etc.
Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org