5 ms·

'First, the rhetoric of some of the most wealthy & powerful people in the history of the world being "unable to say" things is ridiculous.' I read this first l

'First, the rhetoric of some of the most wealthy & powerful people in the history of the world being "unable to say" things is ridiculous.' I read this first line and already knew I disagreed with this essay. Speech is the one thing that can equalize rich and poor, and has the ability to evaporate decades of work and reputation. I generally don't like much coming out of the Bay Area right now, and have an especial distate for YC's contributions to this mess, but I am impressed with Sam Altman's essay. He's going to get a lot of backlash for it, but I believe he is correct.

fossuser 9y ago
This article is basically case in point for me. "why it's dangerous and wrong" "most awful example" "become actually dangerous, in ways he is unwilling or unable to understand" The author intentionally (mis)interprets sama's writing in the least charitable way and then spends the rest of it arguing a strawman (with insults sprinkled throughout) ending with a comparison to nazis. If I wasn't sure I agreed with Sama before, I'm definitely more inclined to now.
rtpg 9y ago
> Speech is the one thing that can equalize rich and poor, and has the ability to evaporate decades of work and reputation. I feel like this is a bit of a passive way of saying this. If someone says something, _they said it_. It evaporates their reputation because _they did something_. And when saying things, it's to communicate the idea to others. I don't really think that speech exists in a vacuum. If you know saying something to somebody could offend them, you're kinda signing up to the criticism. It feels like a lot of the essay is trying to say "we should listen to other people with controversial opinions." We were doing this in another domain for a while, with sexism. A lot of us have just nodded and grimaced when our coworkers would make "those comments". When we'd see the berating of female colleagues. Even the words already had such an obvious effect. I'm not saying "ban bad speech", but I do think as society we should be reinforcing the fact that words _are_ important, especially in this political climate. And that people are responsible for what they say. And... you can always apologize and change! And the world will be better for it.
- aestetix 9y ago
  That's not entirely true. What if you get misquoted in a newspaper? By the time the newspaper prints the correction, the damage has already been done.
  - rtpg 9y ago
    Sure, some damage might have been done. But this feels pretty orthogonal, more of a problem of newspaper interests or simply the difficulty of cutting down text into smaller pieces. We all should be making sure we're hearing stuff properly. I don't think many of these things are _really_ about misunderstanding, but it has happened. Inversely, just because the speaker says "I meant X, but I didn't mean for it to offend" doesn't completely absolve the person. The words have meanings, and if you want to share you ideas, it's important to do it properly (just like you should know how to drive before going out there with your car).
    - aestetix 9y ago
      I was more using that as an example to separate speech from the person saying it. In terms of speech that offends, we can only control what we say, not what people think about it, nor whether their thought is reasonable. Therefore, punishing someone for what they say because it offended someone seems pretty illogical, unless you can make a damned good case, based on context, that it was probably going to offend. A simple way to resolve that question is to ask the person who said it, "Why did you say that?" If they have a response that is not "because I wanted to offend" that is also reasonable, then I'd suggest the onus falls at least equally on the person who claims offense.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- nv-vn 9y ago
  There's a difference to me between truly abusive comments and offensive opinions. I wouldn't argue in favor of workplace sexism (at least my definition of it), but if someone gives their genuine opinion then it should be tolerated to the extent that we should listen, allow them to speak, and then engage in dialog if we disagree. If they're making abusive comments for the sake of hurting another person, that is an entirely different matter. I don't think that's what the author had in mind either based on the examples given in the first blog post.
Avshalom 9y ago
Money has always been able to amplify or suppress speech, even before the supreme court rule that it was speech. Toilets, death, pant legs: these are among the things that equalize the rich and the poor. Speech is not and has never been one of those things.
kajecounterhack 9y ago
> Speech is the one thing that can equalize rich and poor, and has the ability to evaporate decades of work and reputation. Unconsidered speech from the rich and influential can disproportionately hurt the poor and disadvantaged. For example, the US President is not a shining example of "using influence for good." His behavior and speech has lowered the bar across the board for how we expect our politicians to behave, has given confidence to racists and those who would commit hate crimes, and has claimed all criticism to be invalid with faulty reasoning. A major fault in @sama's essay is a false dichotomy: that we must choose between some sad world of uncontested ideas (even if they have major faults e.g hurting marginalized groups in society a la "gay people are evil" -- his example not mine) and one where innovation can happen. It paints political correctness (which is a movement couched in concern for peoples' well-being) as being antithetical to being able to make technological / societal progress. This is just not true. In fact you NEED a world where people give a shit about each other so that people who would otherwise be excluded by jerks and awful behavior can be productive, moving us forward. And he uses Galileo, who was silenced by religious elements, as a comparison point vs a small group of startup ideas perhaps lambasted by media for being out of touch. It's not an accurate comparison. "When we move from strenuous debate about ideas to casting the people behind the ideas as heretics, we gradually stop debate on all controversial ideas." I'm curious to hear just which cases comprise his experience of valid ideas being cast as heretical. Is it unscientific for me to not "strenuously debate" with someone who is a flat earther out of judgement for how well my time is spent? And does it hurt progress for society to brand flat earthers as unscientific (which influences our "worth my time" metric)? I don't think it is. There's a lack of nuance in Sam's argument.
- aestetix 9y ago
  "A major fault in @sama's essay is a false dichotomy: that we must choose between some sad world of uncontested ideas (even if they have major faults e.g hurting marginalized groups in society a la "gay people are evil" -- his example not mine) and one where innovation can happen. It paints political correctness (which is a movement couched in concern for peoples' well-being) as being antithetical to being able to make technological / societal progress." But that is precisely what is happening. The aim of political correctness seems to be to make things "safer" for other people. I would argue that safety and freedom are inversely related: a free society is inherently unsafe. But in the same way that we learn and get stronger by making mistakes, I think that erring on the side of freedom helps to strengthen individuals in the long term. The other issue that comes up with these topics is arbitration. If you're going to cast a safety net across speech, you have to figure out who decides what the standards are, and how they are enforced. And if you disagree with those standards, what recourse do you have?

fossuser 9y ago

This article is basically case in point for me. "why it's dangerous and wrong" "most awful example" "become actually dangerous, in ways he is unwilling or unable to understand" The author intentionally (mis)interprets sama's writing in the least charitable way and then spends the rest of it arguing a strawman (with insults sprinkled throughout) ending with a comparison to nazis. If I wasn't sure I agreed with Sama before, I'm definitely more inclined to now.

rtpg 9y ago

> Speech is the one thing that can equalize rich and poor, and has the ability to evaporate decades of work and reputation. I feel like this is a bit of a passive way of saying this. If someone says something, _they said it_. It evaporates their reputation because _they did something_. And when saying things, it's to communicate the idea to others. I don't really think that speech exists in a vacuum. If you know saying something to somebody could offend them, you're kinda signing up to the criticism. It feels like a lot of the essay is trying to say "we should listen to other people with controversial opinions." We were doing this in another domain for a while, with sexism. A lot of us have just nodded and grimaced when our coworkers would make "those comments". When we'd see the berating of female colleagues. Even the words already had such an obvious effect. I'm not saying "ban bad speech", but I do think as society we should be reinforcing the fact that words _are_ important, especially in this political climate. And that people are responsible for what they say. And... you can always apologize and change! And the world will be better for it.

aestetix 9y ago
That's not entirely true. What if you get misquoted in a newspaper? By the time the newspaper prints the correction, the damage has already been done.
- rtpg 9y ago
  Sure, some damage might have been done. But this feels pretty orthogonal, more of a problem of newspaper interests or simply the difficulty of cutting down text into smaller pieces. We all should be making sure we're hearing stuff properly. I don't think many of these things are _really_ about misunderstanding, but it has happened. Inversely, just because the speaker says "I meant X, but I didn't mean for it to offend" doesn't completely absolve the person. The words have meanings, and if you want to share you ideas, it's important to do it properly (just like you should know how to drive before going out there with your car).
  - aestetix 9y ago
    I was more using that as an example to separate speech from the person saying it. In terms of speech that offends, we can only control what we say, not what people think about it, nor whether their thought is reasonable. Therefore, punishing someone for what they say because it offended someone seems pretty illogical, unless you can make a damned good case, based on context, that it was probably going to offend. A simple way to resolve that question is to ask the person who said it, "Why did you say that?" If they have a response that is not "because I wanted to offend" that is also reasonable, then I'd suggest the onus falls at least equally on the person who claims offense.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
nv-vn 9y ago
There's a difference to me between truly abusive comments and offensive opinions. I wouldn't argue in favor of workplace sexism (at least my definition of it), but if someone gives their genuine opinion then it should be tolerated to the extent that we should listen, allow them to speak, and then engage in dialog if we disagree. If they're making abusive comments for the sake of hurting another person, that is an entirely different matter. I don't think that's what the author had in mind either based on the examples given in the first blog post.

Avshalom 9y ago

Money has always been able to amplify or suppress speech, even before the supreme court rule that it was speech. Toilets, death, pant legs: these are among the things that equalize the rich and the poor. Speech is not and has never been one of those things.

kajecounterhack 9y ago

> Speech is the one thing that can equalize rich and poor, and has the ability to evaporate decades of work and reputation. Unconsidered speech from the rich and influential can disproportionately hurt the poor and disadvantaged. For example, the US President is not a shining example of "using influence for good." His behavior and speech has lowered the bar across the board for how we expect our politicians to behave, has given confidence to racists and those who would commit hate crimes, and has claimed all criticism to be invalid with faulty reasoning. A major fault in @sama's essay is a false dichotomy: that we must choose between some sad world of uncontested ideas (even if they have major faults e.g hurting marginalized groups in society a la "gay people are evil" -- his example not mine) and one where innovation can happen. It paints political correctness (which is a movement couched in concern for peoples' well-being) as being antithetical to being able to make technological / societal progress. This is just not true. In fact you NEED a world where people give a shit about each other so that people who would otherwise be excluded by jerks and awful behavior can be productive, moving us forward. And he uses Galileo, who was silenced by religious elements, as a comparison point vs a small group of startup ideas perhaps lambasted by media for being out of touch. It's not an accurate comparison. "When we move from strenuous debate about ideas to casting the people behind the ideas as heretics, we gradually stop debate on all controversial ideas." I'm curious to hear just which cases comprise his experience of valid ideas being cast as heretical. Is it unscientific for me to not "strenuously debate" with someone who is a flat earther out of judgement for how well my time is spent? And does it hurt progress for society to brand flat earthers as unscientific (which influences our "worth my time" metric)? I don't think it is. There's a lack of nuance in Sam's argument.

aestetix 9y ago
"A major fault in @sama's essay is a false dichotomy: that we must choose between some sad world of uncontested ideas (even if they have major faults e.g hurting marginalized groups in society a la "gay people are evil" -- his example not mine) and one where innovation can happen. It paints political correctness (which is a movement couched in concern for peoples' well-being) as being antithetical to being able to make technological / societal progress." But that is precisely what is happening. The aim of political correctness seems to be to make things "safer" for other people. I would argue that safety and freedom are inversely related: a free society is inherently unsafe. But in the same way that we learn and get stronger by making mistakes, I think that erring on the side of freedom helps to strengthen individuals in the long term. The other issue that comes up with these topics is arbitration. If you're going to cast a safety net across speech, you have to figure out who decides what the standards are, and how they are enforced. And if you disagree with those standards, what recourse do you have?