My Interview With Cade Metz on His Reporting About Lighthaven
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Yeah, sounds like a typical reporter perspective - seemingly or genuinely not understanding that there's a difference between what they're thinking and what they're saying, or that small wording changes have big meaning implications for anyone actually trying to learn.
I believe that Cade knows perfectly well what everyone has been saying for years; he's being disingenuous because the object level doesn't matter to him, and the only important thing is ensuring that these weirdos don't get status. He's never once engaged on simulacrum level 1 with this community.
the only important thing is ensuring that these weirdos don't get status
Seems too self-centered to be the real explanation. (Most of the time, people who do things that hurt you aren't doing it because they hate you; it's because you're in the way.)
As a technology reporter whose job is to cover what rich and powerful people in Silicon Valley are up to, the fact that companies your readers have heard of (DeepMind and OpenAI and Anthropic) are causally downstream of this internet ideology that no one has heard of, is itself an interesting story that the public deserves to hear about.
It is a legitimate and interesting story that the public deserves to hear about! The problem, from our perspective, is that he doesn't accept that the object level is a relevant part of the story. He's correct to notice the asymmetry in vibes between people at MATS trying to save the world and people at Meta trying to make money as being "a key part of the debate" as far as the psychology of the participants goes—and by writing a story about that observation, he's done his job as a technology reporter. Simulacrum 1 isn't in scope.
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1I'm guessing you remember this?
People might think Matt is overstating this but I literally heard it from NYT reporters at the time. There was a top-down decision that tech could not be covered positively, even when there was a true, newsworthy and positive story. I'd never heard anything like it. https://x.com/mattyglesias/s/mattyglesias/status/1588190763413868553
The original Matt Yglesias tweet has been deleted, but the Internet Archive has it:
I think a lot of people are totally ignorant of the background dynamic driving the drama around the checkmarks.
But what happened is that a few years ago the New York Times made a weird editorial decision with its tech coverage.
Instead of covering the industry with a business press lens or a consumer lens they started covering it with a very tough investigative lens — highly oppositional at all times and occasionally unfair.
Almost never curious about technology or in awe of progress and potential.
This was a very deliberate top-down decision.
They decided tech was a major power center that needed scrutiny and needed to be taken down a peg, and this style of coverage became very widespread and prominent in the industry.
I forget, have you asked Metz about this?
What makes you describe this as a "typical reporter perspective"? One would expect that people who write for a living are sensitive to the effects of word choices (such that, if they're nudging readers one way or the other, it's probably on purpose rather than on accident).
That was, admittedly, a snarky overgeneralization on my part, sorry.
It may well be on purpose. However, I tend to think in many cases it's more likely a semi-conscious or unconscious-by-long-practice habit of writing what will get people to read and discuss, and not what will get them to understand and learn.
Phrases like "near-religious" and "leap of faith" have different meanings to rationalists, compared to NYT readership. Often rationalists have negative views about religion, and a phrase like "near-religious concerns about X" is taken to mean that the concerns about X are not based on evidence or reason. That's a common meaning. It's not the only one.
In the wider NYT readership, and in the world, there are lots of people with religion and/or faith. This pejorative meaning is not as central, and there is some space for other meanings. For example, a near-religious concern about X might mean:
- X is eschatological. We might say, existential.
- Fighting X is a commandment. We might say, morally demanding.
- X is ineffable. We might say, a singularity.
- X is extremely powerful. We might say, super-intelligent.
- There is a community of people concerned about X that work together. We might say, like herding cats.
Meanwhile another meaning of "near-religious" and "leap of faith" is to mean that a belief is obviously and laughably false, like the dragon in my garage. Or it may mean that the person with that belief is as unworthy of respect as a creationist AGI researcher. Outside rationalist culture these are not common meanings. Again, there are many people with religion and/or faith.
So then if you're a reporter, or a troll, or both, and you want to needle rationalists while appearing even-handed to outsiders, you go with the religious metaphor. This was an old joke when Yudkowsky wrote Is Humanism A Religion-Substitute? in 2008. I'm told that explaining a joke kills it, so perhaps this will help.
1I think he's clearly had a narrative he wanted to spin and he's being very defensive here.
If I wanted to steelman his position, I would do so as follows (low-confidence and written fairly quickly):
- I expect he believes his framing and that he feels fairly confident in it because most of the people he respects also adopt this framing.
- In so far as his own personal views make it into the article, I expect he believes that he's engaging in a socially acceptable amount of editorializing. In fact, I expect he believes that editorializing the article in this way is more socially responsible than not, likely due to the role of journalism being something along the lines of "critiquing power".
- Further, whilst I expect he wouldn't universally endorse "being socially acceptable among journalists" as guaranteeing that something is moral, he'd likely defend it as a strongly reliable heuristic, such that it would take pretty strong arguments to justify departing from this.
- Whilst he likely endorses some degree of objectivity (in terms of getting facts correct), I expect that he also sees neutrality as overrated by old school journalists. I expect he believes that it limits the ability of jouralists to steer the world towards positive outcomes. That is, more of as a consideration that can be overriden, rather than a rule.
Among all the people he could have talked to about Lighthaven he chose an archeologist and a nun/theology professor. The whole thing is littered with religious phraseology where it doesn't apply. That angle is pushed ridiculously hard. He's trying to identify rationalism as a cult in a way that every group of people with a similar set of ideas/beliefs could be described as a cult.
Cade Metz doxxed the slatestarcodex guy, right? My conception going into this was 'this guy pretends to not understand stuff in order to hurt people and enrich himself' and this whole 'the science word sayers are really faith believers' take is pretty clearly more of that.
Invert it, if you like. Feels like, if silicon valley WAS a religious movement, Cade would describe it as cold eyed cynical pragmatism.
I wouldn't pay this scoundrel any more mind. Any engagement you give him will be put to use to the detriment of whoever is currently on his plate.
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