From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Thu Sep 19 2002 - 12:41:33 MDT
Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
>
> ### The first use of a highly derogatory term, like "troll", is by
> definition an unprovoked attack. Nothing should provoke a polite person to
> utter it, short of profanity and invective, which was not used by Lee. The
> author of the first message in a thread is also by definition the one who
> started it.
Um... actually, while at first I thought about doing so, I am no longer
interested in defending Lee at this point, even though I don't think he's
in the wrong. I want to know what it is that causes some people to
undergo the MASSIVE SPONTANEOUS ALLERGIC REACTION to someone's existence,
where all of a sudden - or maybe it builds up slowly and then explodes, I
don't know - *everything* the allergen does is wrong, and moreover, they
are *convinced* that the allergen is doing it on *purpose*, or at the very
least is an asshole doing it "unintentionally" for reasons of a deep and
severe personality flaw. I had hypotheses for why this sometimes happens
to me. Those hypotheses all got shot to hell when it started happening to
Lee.
Now, it's not just *one* person undergoing this allergic reaction. There
are several people. They all agree with each other. They are not stupid.
None of them have a past history of being easily ticked off. On the
other hand, there's an equal and opposite bunch of people, who are not
stupid, who are not known for excessive tolerance, who cannot begin to
figure out what the allergen is doing wrong.
What does that leave? I don't know. What do Lee and I have in common
besides a declarative interest in rationality? Or maybe I shouldn't be
the one looking for similarities. What *flaws* do Lee and I have in common?
-- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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