[Caveat: Apart from reading roughly five posts and discussion threads about Maple over the years recently, I have no further context and so am one of the least informed people commenting here. But I think that's okay because my comment will be about how I think your post comes across to onlookers.]

Even though you're overall critical of Maple, I still get the impression that the closeness to them has negatively affected your judgment about some things. But maybe I misread the point of the post. To me, it sounds like you're saying that, while, your impression of Maple is that they traumatize a bit too many people and they don't seem to produce sufficiently many "saints" (or, as early indicators of success: "micro saints") for these methods to be worth it, you think it's important (so I infer?) that critics should engage with Maple on the object level of the strategy/path to impact that they're pursing, because that strategy (of producing saints to help save the world) was possibly worth trying ex ante? In other words, critics shouldn't sneer at the strategy itself but rather have to at least consider (problems with) its execution? 

Assuming the above is an accurate paraphrase, my reply would be that, no, that sort of strategy never made much sense in the first place, and obviously so. You don't save the world by doing inward-looking stuff at a monastery, and "path to impact through producing saints" seems doubtful because: 

(1), people who greatly inspire others almost never started out as followers in a school for how to become inspiring (this is similar to the issues with CFAR, although I'd say it was less outlandish to assume that rationality is teachable rather than sainthood).
(2), even if you could create a bunch of particularly virtuous and x-risk-concerned individuals, the path to impact would remain non-obvious from there, since they'd neither be famous nor powerful nor particularly smart or rational or skilled, so how are they going to have an outsized impact later? 

Overall, this strategy does not warrant the "under steep tradeoffs, we should be more willing to accept the costs of harming people" outlook. 

I feel like if the recruitment and selling point was less about "come here to have tons of impact," and more about "have you always thought about joining a monastery, but you're also into rationality and x-risks reduction?," then this would be more okay and safer? A group oriented that way would maybe also be more generally relaxed and "have Slack," and would be more alarmed if they were causing harm rather than trying to justify it via the potential of having impact. So, I feel like the points you raise sort-of-in-defense of Maple make things worse because all these attempts of explaining how the mission is important for world-saving are what adds pressure to the Maple environment. 

Thank you for posting this!

I've not been to MAPLE, but have met Soryu several times and have spoken to many people who have been.

In addition to everything you mention, I think outsiders to Zen and Buddhism in general may not appreciate how weird it is that Soryu is not a lineage holder.

Zen, like many religions, claims its teachers have authority because they have been trained in an unbroken chain of transmission traced back to the founder, in this case the Buddha. The first millennium of dharma transmission claims are arguably based in fact but the specific record is mythical, but they're probably accurate after the 8th century. This is somewhat similar to the situation in Catholicism, where the first 200 years or so of apostolic transmission claims are suspect, but get more reliably after, apparently firmed up to defeat the Gnostic heresy.

Traditionally, it's pretty common that anyone leading anything in Zen has dharma transmission. In Japan, even the lowliest temple priest has received transmission, though not permission to teach. Soryu, to the best of my knowledge, is in the opposite situation: he received some limited permission to teach (though the bounds of that permission are unclear to me), but did not receive transmission, so he cannot be said to be fully initiated into the lineage in which he trained and thus can't pass it on.

What this effectively means is that he teaches based on charismatic authority. This is not unheard of in religions, though it is unusual within Zen. A great many religions rely on charismatic authority in some form, though the strongest version of it I'm familiar with is in Evangelical Christianity. Some forms of Buddhism even rely heavily on charismatic authority, although it is usually made verified by other teachers granting assent that someone has, say, uncovered a dharma treasure that was transmitted directly to their mind.

I bring all this up just to make it clear that Soryu is a very non-traditional "Zen" teacher, though as noted, MAPLE is careful to avoid making any untrue claims about their lineage (though I expect outsiders to get confused!). I'm not sure if it's good or bad that he doesn't have transmission. For me, it put me off personal interest in getting too involved with MAPLE because it made it harder for me to trust that he knew what he was doing. That doesn't mean he doesn't, just that I can't fall back on transmission as evidence that he should be trusted even when things seem like they are going sideways (not that teachers with transmission have never done anything wrong, but it means he doesn't get to start from a place of trust granted to him by another teacher).

It's interesting that humans seem to have independently invented monasticism, complete with robes and chanting and vows of poverty, at least 3 times, so, well, something is "working" about it one way or the other.

"Something is working" in the sense that this is at least a somewhat naturally-occurring strategy that's a successful enough meme as to not die out immediately. Not in the sense that this is good for the participants involved, or for the broader community it's a part of to tolerate. 

Extractive and oppressive institutions and stationary bandits have also been independently invented hundreds of times by people. They surely "work" well for those elites reaping the benefits of others' labor and resources. They surely work poorly for the vast majority of the population.

The product of monasteries is saints, at least in small quantities.

How quaint. The product of extractive and oppressive institutions is renaissance princes, at least in small quantities. How small? Basically irrelevant in the grand scheme of things compared to everything negative that results from them.^[1] 

The analogy is left to the reader.

But, what's distinctive about these traditions is that they create people (not every monk, certainly, but a relatively consistent minority, in institutions that sometimes last millennia) capable of outstanding displays of virtue as understood by the broader culture, not just their monastic order, and still recognizable for what they are by us, today, in a foreign culture.

Likely nothing more than a collider effect caused by religion impacting both the creation of these cults and the cultural perception of what being virtuous means.

A monk that self-immolates or spends his whole life separated from civilization is "virtuous" because we are told by culture he's virtuous. Not because his actions bring about goodness for others. It's almost the quintessential example of broad indoctrination.

(Fine yes, some people think this is just false, but their arguments insofar as they have them smell like cope. I haven't seen anti-safetyist arguments that actually address the technical claims made by Eliezer etc.)

Ah yes, never seen arguments that actually address the claims. Except for this, this, this, this, this, this, etc. 

Oh wait, those don't count, you say? They don't address the real arguments? I'll leave you this classic 1a3orn post to chew on.

The culture feels something like "confused," or that it's forgotten, or at least is quickly forgetting, what all this (being, joy, love, etc.) was for. I don't have narrow claims about the nature of value in principle, but when I look at what we're all doing with our time and attention and care, it usually feels monstrous and insane.

This is abstract vagueposting that's not sufficiently concrete to be thought of as true or false. 

What "culture"? Who doesn't know what positive emotions are for? AI researchers? Alignment researchers? Rationalists? The outside world? All of these groups seem to have a pretty high desire for enjoyment.

On value in principle, the abstractions that are en vogue (usually assuming that value will be straightforwardly tractable to reductionism, or even that we're almost there, etc.) seem just transparently wrong to me, yes, on the basis of my """meditation practice.

Same here. There are words, and they individually make sense. But when put together, the whole doesn't, at least without having already been exposed to a lot more of your verbiage and thinking. There's some other ontology you have that needs to be explained before outsiders can make sense of what you're saying.

One common feature of critiques of Maple which is especially frustrating to me, especially from ex Maplers, is that they can only be made by recourse to some secular liberal scientism, and refuse to meet Maple and Soryu, as they say, "where they're at." 

Meeting bad and dumb things "where they're at" is bad and dumb. Meeting good and smart things "where they're at" is good and smart. If Maple can't tell its story without immediately coming into conflict with secular liberal science, then that's Maple's problem.

Science and secularism and focusing on the cake are good, actually. Just about the best things a community can possibly embrace. To the extent Maple disagrees with this, it should be criticized and ostracized and everyone should stay as far away from it as possible.

1. ^{^}

   Also, many of those renaissance princes are actually horrible people... oh, wait, many of the supposed "saints" are horrible people too!

One common feature of critiques of Maple which is especially frustrating to me, especially from ex Maplers, is that they can only be made by recourse to some secular liberal scientism, and refuse to meet Maple and Soryu, as they say, "where they're at."

I watched a couple of Soryu's videos, and I came away deeply unimpressed with him as a philosopher (though I don't rule out that he might be masterful along other axes). 

One thing that I found kind of shocking is that he attributes a huge amount of power and influence to the secular humanist ideology (the "religion that rules the world") but then gives completely un-ITT passing not-even-straw-man account of what that ideology is, or what it's proponents would say about specific topics, or why anyone would find it compelling.

Without rewatching it, I believe he states explicitly that "it doesn't make any sense" (because of some circular dependency?) without (apparently) any curiosity about why this ideology rules the world despite not making any sense, or where it's power came from. He seems to just brush past it.

It looked to me like he doesn't understand the ideology that he's critiquing, at least on it's own terms, very well. Which doesn't mean that he doesn't have some good points, but sure makes me less interested. 

(There were also some other signs that his philosophy wasn't very good / he wasn't very interested in bridging to people outside his bubble.)

Is this an example of my failing to meet him where he's at? 

 

This post is not organized well. 

Explain what MAPLE is first?

This is not at all central to the topic of the post, but:

It’s surprising and unusual that eg. MIRI and CFAR were able to say “our research project has failed” and “we fucked up, and also our stuff doesn’t really work that well” respectively, without a complete loss of face.

I’m familiar with MIRI’s public “our research project has failed” commentary. However, I can’t recall any public “we fucked up, and also our stuff doesn’t really work that well” comments from CFAR. Does anyone have any links they can provide for this?