From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Tue Oct 30 2001 - 13:21:42 MST
I don't quite think some people quite understood the point of this post...
...I didn't say that Samantha was arguing well, or that she was being
rational, or that she was being polite. I said that I didn't think it was
necessary to go easy on her because no matter what I said or did, or any
of you say or do, I don't expect it to shatter her psyche. That's a real
compliment, but it doesn't mean I think she's perfect, or even good - it
means what it says, and nothing more.
It so happens that a lot of people who'd I'd thought had better-structured
reactions have descended to screaming at each other. This disturbs me.
But worrying about people's feelings being hurt is the wrong reason to
stop; we should rather stop because this is utterly pointless and
generates no useful results or information. People's feelings do get hurt
in the course of useful arguments; this is a useless one, and it is
useless because personal feelings have stopped being collateral damage and
started being the main target.
-- -- -- -- --
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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