content warning: Zack Davis. so of course this is merely the intro to Zack’s unquenchable outrage at Yudkowsky using the pronouns that someone wants to be called by
content warning: Zack Davis. so of course this is merely the intro to Zack’s unquenchable outrage at Yudkowsky using the pronouns that someone wants to be called by
So, I was morbidly curious about what Zack has to say about the Brennan emails (as I think they’ve been under-discussed, if not outright deliberately ignored, in lesswrong discussion), I found to my horror I actually agree with a side point of Zack’s. From the footnotes:
Of course, Zack’s ultimate conclusion on this subject is the exact opposite of the correct one I think:
Gee Zack, I wonder why so many people misread Scott? …Its almost like he is intentionally misleading about his true views in order to subtly shift the Overton window of rationalist discourse and intentionally presents himself as simply committed to charitable discourse while actually having a hidden agenda! And the bloated length of Scott’s writing doesn’t help with clarity either. Of course Zack, who writes tens of thousands of words to indirectly complain about perceived hypocrisy of Eliezer’s in order to indirectly push gender essentialist views, probably finds Scott’s writings a perfectly reasonable length.
Edit: oh and a added bonus on the Brennan Emails… Seeing them brought up again I connected some dots I had missed. I had seen (and sneered at) this Yud quote before:
But somehow I had missed or didn’t realize the subtext was the emails that laid clear Scott’s racism:
Hmm… I’m not sure to update (usage of rationalist lingo is deliberate and ironic) in the direction of “Eliezer is stubbornly naive on Scott’s racism” or “Eliezer is deliberately covering for Scott’s racism”. Since I’m not a rationalist my probabilities don’t have to sum to 1, so I’m gonna go with both.