Everywhere I Look, I See Kat Woods
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New Comment
(Disclaimer: I previously interned at Non-Linear)
Different formats allow different levels of nuance. Memes aren't essays and they shouldn't try to be.
I personally think these memes are fine and that outreach is too. Maybe these posts oversimplify things a bit too much for you, but I expect that average person on these subs probably improves the level of their thinking from seeing these memes.
If, for example, you think r/EffectiveAltruism should ban memes, then I recommend talking to the mods.
Can't relate. Don't particularly care for her content (tho audibly laughed at a couple examples that you hated), but I have no aversion to it. I do have aversion to the way you appealed to datedness as if that matters. I generally can't relate to people who find cringiness in the way you describe significantly problematic, really.
People like authenticity, humility, and irony now, both in the content and in its presentation.
I could literally care less, omg--- but im unusually averse to irony. Authenticity is great, humility is great most of the time, why is irony even in the mix?
Tho I'm weakly with you that engagement farming leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
I’ve noticed lately /r/singularity has been much more safety-pilled compared to six months ago. I think this should be welcomed.
This post feels like divisiveness bait (tyranny of small differences etc) to split communities that are starting to group together, which is to be expected when even traditionally very accelerationist communities are less so now looking at the facts and bump against capital inertia.
Also, this whole saga feels bot-ish and manufactured, but that’s just a vibe…
At a glance, this seems like a high-risk high-reward tactic. I approve of this if this is in fact effective at changing people's minds, and disapprove of this if this is in fact making people cringe and become biased against the ideas she's trying to spread.
My immediate impression was that it's mostly the latter. I agree that these memes seem kind of cringe, especially if they're being spread in communities that are hostile to AI Safety takes and dislike this kind of content (which my cursory familiarity with r/singularity suggests)...
... but glancing at the karma ratings her posts receive, it doesn't seem that she's speaking to a hostile audience using takes that don't land with them. I think most of her posts have at least an average karma rating for a given community, some of them are big hits, and the comments are frequently skeptical but rarely outright derisive. This isn't a major indicator and I've only spent ~5 minutes looking through them, but it does look like it's working.
@KatWoods, do you have any more convincing metrics you're using to evaluate the efficiency of your, ah, propaganda campaign? Genuinely interested in how effective it is.
Well put and I agree.
Karma is tricky as a measure because subreddits are non-stationary. In particular, I feel like the "vibes" of all the subreddits I listed were different 6+ months ago, and they are becoming more homogenous (in part due to power users such as Kat Woods). I don't know of a way to view what the "hot" page of any given subreddit would have looked like at some previous point in time, so it's hard to find data to understand subreddit culture drift. Anyway, the high karma is also consistent with selection effects, where the users who do not like this content bounce off, and only the users that do stick around those subreddits in the long term.
I'm quite uncertain whether Kat's posts are a net good or net bad. But on a meta level, I'm strongly in favor of this type of post existing (meaning this one here, not Kat's posts). Trends that change the vibe or typical content of a platform are a big deal and absolutely worth discussing. And if a person is a major contributor to such a change, imo that makes her a valid target of criticism.
I also dislike many of the posts you included here, but I feel like this is perhaps unfairly harsh on some of the matters that come down to subjective taste; while it's perfectly reasonable to find a post cringe or unfunny for your own part, not everyone will necessarily agree, and the opinions of those who enjoy this sort of content aren't incorrect per se.
As a note, since it seems like you're pretty frustrated with how many of her posts you're seeing, blocking her might be a helpful intervention; Reddit's help page says blocked users' posts are hidden from your feeds.
So I'm new here and this website is great because it doesn't have bite-sized oversimplifying propaganda. But isn't that common everywhere else? Those posts seem very typical for reddit and at least they're not outright misinformation.
Also I... don't hate these memes. They strike me as decent quality. Memes aren't supposed to make you think deeply about things.
Edit: searched Kat Woods here and now feel worse about those posts
(I am not a huge fan of this post, but I think it's reasonable for people to care about how society orients towards x-risk and AI concerns, and as such to actively want to not screen off evidence, and take responsibility for what people affiliated with you say on the internet. So I don't think this is great advice.
I am actively subscribed to lots of people who I expect to say wrong and dumb things, because it's important to me that I correct people and avoid misunderstandings, especially when someone might mistake my opinion for the opinion of the people saying dumb stuff)
I think you should uplevel the discourse by changing the title of the post and maybe deleting it. You're just allowing vibes-based bullying, which is pretty toxic. Here's why:
She elevated Kat's name to the headline; used the entire post to insult her writing; drew on ageist tropes and perjoratives like "cringe" to make her case; explicitly chose to share the message not with the writing's intended audience but rather an in-group who shares a distaste for lower-brow content; did so in an effort to rile up pressure to change the behavior on the other site; which was an all the more potent strike considering the context that Kat is already a well-known figure who presumably cares about her standing among LW/EA communities.
If she didn't want this to be a personal attack, she could have made many different choices along the way, which she obviously did not, the most prominent being posting on Reddit rather than here and not putting her name in the headline, on top of what someone else has pointed out was "unnecessarily harsh tone" and what I will deem as uncharitable motivations like being "grumpy" about the vibes and mounting this attack for "fun", a far more viscious kind of engagement bait than the memes she criticized.
I personally found the memes funny. To address your objection:
Overall, the content she posts feels like engagement bait. It feels like it is trying to convince me of something rather than make me smarter about something. It feels like it is trying to convey feelings at me rather than facts. It feels like it is making me stupider.
To give an analogy, it feels like PETA content. When I initially went vegan, it wasn’t PETA content that convinced me. It was Brian Tomasik content and videos of grinding male chicks. While it’s true that I am "out of distribution" so to speak, popular consensus is that PETA’s attempts at memetic content are mostly cringe. Kat Woods, why would you want to make content like that?
The goal of rationalist community is to make people smarter and more rational. Thus we have a norm: we should aim to explain and not persuade. This isn't a norm in a wider world; persuading other people to your point of view is a socially acceptable way to achieve your goals. It seems to me you are trying to enforce lesswrong norms outside of lesswrong; why?
The goal of AI safety isn't to make people smarter, it is to prevent unsafe AI from being deployed. Conveying feelings isn't inherently bad. I would agree that manipulating people's feelings to change their beliefs contrary to facts is bad. But that is not the only possible purpose of conveying feelings. People can be moved to act by feelings, we often feel better when we know that others share our feelings, and we can get along better if we understand each other's feelings and don't hurt them, and humor is valuable in its own right. I also wouldn't say that these posts you sited are all feelings based, many of them are debunking faulty arguments that many people make. That's just valid discourse.
The goal of PETA isn't to be popular, it is to protect animals. Here are their accomplishments as listed on their website (I trust they're not lying):
- PETA persuaded more than a dozen companies, including Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson, to make the abusive and pointless forced swim test a thing of the past. Laboratories conduct these experiments by dosing mice, rats, guinea pigs, gerbils, or hamsters with a test substance, dropping them into inescapable containers of water, and watching as the petrified animals frantically look for an escape. See other victories for animals who are used in experiments.
- In 1995 after two years of negotiations with—and more than 400 demonstrations against—the company worldwide, McDonald’s became the first fast-food chain to agree to make basic welfare improvements for farmed animals. Now, thanks largely to PETA’s outreach and persistence, you can’t visit a fast-food restaurant without seeing a vegan option, whether it’s Burger King’s or Carl’s Jr.’s animal-free burgers, Del Taco’s vegan beef burritos, or WaBa Grill’s plant-based steak bowls. The vegan revolution is here.
- Undercover investigations of pig-breeding factory farms in North Carolina and Oklahoma revealed horrific conditions and daily abuse of pigs, including the fact that one pig was skinned alive, leading to the first-ever felony indictments of farm workers. See other victories for animals who are used for food.
- After persistent campaigning by PETA U.S., other PETA entities, and our supporters around the world, Canada Goose joined the ever-growing list of top fashion brands that have sworn off fur, including Prada, Coach, Versace, Michael Kors, Balmain, Gucci, Calvin Klein, and Burberry. And we’re toppling other industries, too. After we released the results of PETA Asia’s investigation into the angora rabbit fur industry, more than 100 major brands suspended their use of the material, including Gap, H&M, Ralph Lauren, Topshop, UNIQLO, and Zara. And following the release of the first-of-its-kind undercover PETA investigation into one of the world’s largest alpaca-fleece producers, we persuaded more than 65 companies to make the compassionate decision to ban the material. See other victories for animals exploited for fashion.
- After 36 years of protests from PETA members and supporters against Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, it stopped using animals in its shows. Ringling is planning its return to the big top, without animals—sending a powerful message to the entire industry and echoing what we’ve been saying for decades: Animals don’t belong in the circus or in any other form of entertainment. In a landmark case, our Endangered Species Act (ESA) lawsuit against Tiger King villain Tim Stark and Indiana roadside zoo Wildlife in Need succeeded—setting a precedent that premature separation of lion, tiger, and lion/tiger hybrid cubs and mothers; declawing; and cub-petting violate federal law. We also played an integral role in a major victory when the U.S. Department of Justice seized 69 protected big cats from Lauren and Jeff Lowe, operators of Tiger King Park in Oklahoma, and won its own ESA lawsuit against the Lowes. See other victories for animals used for entertainment.
- PETA persuaded Mobil, Texaco, Pennzoil, Shell, and other oil companies to cover their exhaust stacks after showing how millions of birds and bats had become trapped in the shafts and been burned to death. See other victories for wildlife.
- Thanks to PETA’s lengthy campaign to push PETCO to take more responsibility for the animals in its stores, the company agreed to stop selling large birds and to make provisions for the millions of rats and mice in its care. See other victories for abused companion animals.
It seems what PETA does works.
But honestly, is this content for the greater good? Are the clickbait titles causing people to earnestly engage? Are peoples’ minds being changed? Are people thinking thoughtfully about the facts and ideas being presented?
If this looks a lot like brand memeing or PETA advocacy, I'd expect it to work about as well. Meaning at least somewhat well. What makes you think it doesn't work, apart from your own feelings? I'm not a subscriber to the subreddits and I don't know what their vibe or level of seriousness is, so the memes may indeed be out of place on some of these subreddits. I have no opinion on that. I agree it would be good if someone collected data and learned which advocacy methods are most effective.
What would I do instead
Maybe you should do it.
This is gonna sound mean, but the quality of EA-oriented online spaces has really gone downhill in the last 5 years. I barely even noticed Kat Woods' behavior, because she is just one more in a sea of high volume, low quality content being posted in EA spaces.
That's what I've given up mostly on EA sites and events, other than attending EA Global (can't break my streak), and just hang out here on Less Wrong where the vibes are still good and the quality bar is higher.
Strong-downvoted.
She’s all over the EA and AI-related subreddits /r/singularity, /r/artificial, /r/ArtificialIntelligence, /r/ChatGPT, /r/OpenAI, /r/Futurology
In other words, everywhere but here. Since that’s the case, it would be better to take your fight to those places. Ms. Woods’s only post on Less Wrong in the past year was a short notice about o3 safety testing sign-ups, which was unobjectionable.
I don’t like the vibes.
I was thinking the same thing. This post badly, badly clashes with the vibe of Less Wrong. I think you should delete it, and repost to a site in which catty takedowns are part of the vibe. Less Wrong is not the place for it.
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1I was thinking the same thing. This post badly, badly clashes with the vibe of Less Wrong. I think you should delete it, and repost to a site in which catty takedowns are part of the vibe. Less Wrong is not the place for it.
I think this is a misread of LessWrong's "vibes" and would discourage other people from thinking of LessWrong as a place where such discussions should be avoided by default.
With the exception of the title, I think the post does a decent job at avoiding making it personal.
Yeah actually the employees of Lightcone have led the charge in trying to tear down Kat. Its you who has the better standards, Maxwell, not this site.
Getting a strong current of “being smart and having interesting and current tastes is more important than trying to combat AI Danger, and I want all my online spaces to reflect this” from this. You even seem upset that Kat is contaminating subreddits that used to not be about Safety with Safety content… Like you’re mad about progress in embrace of AI Safety. You critique her for making millennial memes as if millennials don’t exist anymore (lesswrong is millennial and older) and content should only be for you.
You seem kinda self-aware of this at one point, but doesn’t that seem really petty and selfish of you?
I appreciate how upfront you are here, bc a lot of people who feel the same way disguise it behind moralistic or technical arguments. And your clarity should make it easier for you to get over yourself and come to your senses.
3Thanks for the thoughtful reply. The post is both venting for the fun of it (which, clearly, landed with absolutely nobody here) and earnestly questioning whether the content is net positive (which, clearly, very few interpreted as being earnest):
But honestly, is this content for the greater good? Are the clickbait titles causing people to earnestly engage? Are peoples’ minds being changed? Are people thinking thoughtfully about the facts and ideas being presented?
I don’t know. It seems like Kat Woods is spending a lot of time making these posts. Maybe, in true EA spirit, she’s also put effort into quantifying her impact. I want to give Kat Woods the person the benefit of the doubt here. [...] Certainly, personally, her content feels bad for my brain.
There is precedent for brands and/or causes making bad memes and suffering backlash. I mention PETA in the post. Another example is this Pepsi commercial. There is also specifically precedent for memes getting backlash because they are dated, e.g. this Wendy's commercial. You might say that for brands all press is good press, but this seems less true to me when it comes to causes.
I don't know a lot about PETA and whether their animal activism is considered net positive. On the one hand a cursory google seems to say they caused some vegetarian options at fast food restaurants to exist. On the other hand it wouldn't be surprising if they shifted public sentiment negatively towards vegetarianism or veganism. That's what most people think of when they think of PETA.
Anyway, you could imagine something similar happening with AI safety, where sufficiently bad memes cause people to not take it seriously.
I have a history in animal activism (both EA and mainstream) and I think PETA has been massively positive by pushing the Overton window. People think PETA isn't working bc they feel angry at PETA when they feel judged or accused, but they update on how it's okay to treat animals, and that's the point. More moderate groups like the Humane Society get the credit, but it takes an ecosystem. You don't have to be popular and well-liked to push the Overton window. You also don't have to be a group that people want to identify with.
But I don't think PETA's an accurate comparison for Kat. It seems like you're comparing Kat and PETA bc you would be embarrassed to be implicated by both, not bc they have the same tactics or extremity of message. And then the claim that other people will be turned off or misinformed becomes a virtuous pretext to get them and their ideas away from your social group and identity. But you haven't open-mindedly tried to discover what's good for the cause. You're just using your kneejerk reaction to justify imposing your preferences.
There's a missing mood here-- you're not interested in learning if Kat's strategy is effective at AI Safety. You're just asserting that what you like would be the best for saving everyone's lives too and don't really seem concerned about getting the right answer to the larger question.
Again, I have contempt for treating moral issues like a matter of ingroup coolness. This is the banality of evil as far as I'm concerned. It's natural for humans but you can do better. The LessWrong community is supposed to help people not to do this but they aren't honest with themselves about what they get out of AI Safety, which is something very similar to what you've expressed in this post (gatekept community, feeling smart, a techno-utopian aesthetic) instead of trying to discover in an open-minded way what's actually the right approach to help the world.
"The LessWrong community is supposed to help people not to do this but they aren't honest with themselves about what they get out of AI Safety, which is something very similar to what you've expressed in this post (gatekept community, feeling smart, a techno-utopian aesthetic) instead of trying to discover in an open-minded way what's actually the right approach to help the world.
I have argued with this before - I have absolutely been through an open minded process to discover the right approach and I genuinely believe the likes of MIRI, pause AI movements are mistaken and harmful now, and increase P(doom). This is not gatekeeping or trying to look cool! You need to accept that there are people who have followed the field for >10 years, have heard all the arguments, used to believe Yud et all were mostly correct, and now agree with the positions of Pope/Belrose/Turntrout more. Do not belittle or insult them by assigning the wrong motives to them.
If you want a crude overview of my position
- Superintelligence is extremely dangerous even though at least some of MIRI worldview is likely wrong.
- P(doom) is a feeling, it is too uncertain to be rational about, however mine is about 20% if humanity develops TAI in the next <50 years. (This is probably more because of my personal psychology than a fact about the world and I am not trying to strongly pretend otherwise)
- P(doom) if superintelligence was impossible is also about 20% for me, because the current tech (LLM etc) can clearly enable "1984" or worse type societies for which there is no comeback and extinction is preferable. Our current society/tech/world politics is not proven to stable.
- Because of this, it is not at all clear what the best path forward is and people should have more humility about their proposed solutions. There is no obvious safe path forward given our current situation. (Yes if things had gone differently 20-50 years ago there perhaps could be...)
Hey Holly, great points about PETA.
I left one comment replying to a critical comment this post got saying that it wasn't being charitable (which turned into a series of replies) and now I find myself in a position (a habit?) of defending the OP from potentially-insufficiently-charitable criticisms. Hence, when I read your sentence...
There's a missing mood here-- you're not interested in learning if Kat's strategy is effective at AI Safety.
...my thought is: Are you sure? When I read the post I remember reading:
But if it’s for the greater good, maybe I should just stop being grumpy.
But honestly, is this content for the greater good? Are the clickbait titles causing people to earnestly engage? Are peoples’ minds being changed? Are people thinking thoughtfully about the facts and ideas being presented?
This series of questions seems to me like it's wondering whether Kat's strategy is effective at AI safety, which is the thing you're saying it's not doing.
(I just scrolled up on my phone and saw that OP actually quoted this herself in the comment you're replying to. (Oops. I had forgotten this as I had read that comment yesterday.))
Sure, the OP is also clearly venting about her personal distaste for Kat's posts, but it seems to me that she is also asking the question that you say she isn't interested in: are Kat's posts actually effective?
(Side note: I kind of regret leaving any comments on this post at all. It doesn't seem like the post did a good job encouraging a fruitful discussion. Maybe OP and anyone else who wants to discuss the topic should start fresh somewhere else with a different context. Just to put an idea out there: Maybe it'd be a more productive use of everyone's energy for e.g. OP, Kat, and you Holly to get on a call together and discuss what sort of content is best to create and promote to help the cause of AI safety, and then (if someone was interested in doing so) write up a summary of your key takeaways to share.)
Yeah, this is the first time I’ve commented on lesswrong in months and I would prefer to just be out of here. But OP was such nasty meangirl bullying that, when someone showed it to me, I wanted to push back.
1If OP was geniunely curious, she could've looked for evidence beyond her personal feelings (e.g. ran an internet survey) and / or asked Kat privately. What OP did here is called "concern trolling".
I agree that that would be evidence of OP being more curious. I just don't think that given what OP actually did it can be said that she wasn't curious at all.
Let's just observe that your "fun" is policing someone's popular memes, on an entirely different social media site that's not LessWrong, because you find them cringe.
And what was all the more "fun" for you was to psychoanalyze and essentially pressure her to cut back with cancel culture tactics.
I say that because if you wanted to question the merits of the content and it being net-positive, wouldn't you just post the memes themselves?
Trying to police a seperate site on LessWrong, and doing so by going after the poster for "fun" on the basis of divergent personal taste, seems not only like the "engagement baiting" you're accusing her of but also legitimately scummy ethics.
If you and the LW forum holds itself to higher standards, I struggle to understand why it's acceptable to have posts that expressly attempts to tarnish someone's reputation largely because you think it's fun to say that their jokes aren't humorous.
expressly attempts to tarnish someone's reputation
I don't think that's accurate. The OP clearly states:
One upfront caveat. I am speaking about “Kat Woods” the public figure, not the person. If you read something here and think, “That’s not a true/nice statement about Kat Woods”, you should know that I would instead like you to think “That’s not a true/nice statement about the public persona Kat Woods, the real human with complex goals who I'm sure is actually really cool if I ever met her, appears to be cultivating.”
What does it mean to tarnish the reputation of someone as a "public figure" and not as a person?
He's a dick politician (but a great husband)?
Consumers are only aware of whatever is publicly known to them, so their reputation is entirely depenedent of what one thinks about the "public figure."
Herego, his actions expressly are meant to tarnish her reputation.
I don't think you're being charitable. There is an important difference between a personal attack and criticism of the project someone is engaging in. My reading of the OP is that it's the latter, while I understand you to be accusing the OP of the former.
He's a dick politician (but a great husband)?
"Dick" is a term used for personal attacks.
If you said "He's a bad politician; He's a good husband and good man, and I know he's trying to do good, but his policies are causing harm to the world" so we really shouldn't support Pro-America Joe (or whatever--assume Pro-America is a cause we support and we just don't agree with the way Joe goes about trying to promote America) then I'd say yes, that's how we criticize Pro-America Joe without attacking him as a person.
This wasn't criticism of just the project (e.g. her content), it was criticism of the person because of the content they make, because let’s be real a personal attack is much more damaging. And yes, it was meant to tarnish her reputation because, well, did you not read the headline of the post?
Sure, consumers may form their opinion of a person, their reputation, based on a composite knowledge of their professional or personal behavior, so the post’s caveat factors in one small way to the equation. But what drove reputation change here much more significantly is browsing name calling Kat in the headline, and orienting the entire post as a complaint towards her.
You think I’m being uncharitable? I think you’re being so charitable towards one passing caveat you're ignoring the obvious goal here: to bully someone to get in line on another forum, largely because she doesn’t like the vibes and it’s fun to do. And that’s why I think this is so inappropriate for this forum.
And yes, it was meant to tarnish her reputation because, well, did you not read the headline of the post?
[...]
But what drove reputation change here much more significantly is browsing name calling Kat in the headline
The headline I see is "Everywhere I Look, I See Kat Woods". What name is this calling Kat? Am I missing something?
And why do you think that you can infer that the OP's intent was to tarnish Kat's peraonal reputation from that headline? That doesn't make any sense.
Anyway, I don't know the OP, but I'm confident in saying that the information here is not sufficient to conclude she was making a personal attack.
If she said that was her intent, I'd change my mind. Or if she said something that was unambiguously a personal attack I'd change my mind, but at the moment I see no reason not to read the post as well meaning innocent criticism.
And that’s why I think this is so inappropriate for this forum.
I also don't think it's very appropriate for this forum (largely because the complaint is not about Kat's posting stlye on LessWrong). I didn't downvote it because it seemed like it had already received a harsh enough reaction, but I didn't upvote it either.
I'm confident in saying that the information here is not sufficient to conclude she was making a personal attack.
A wild claim to make about a post that explictly centers around shaming Kat for her posting style predominantly because it's "cringe", by putting her name in the headline (what I meant by name-calling) and orienting the entire argument around her. If it wasn't meant to tarnish her reputation, why not instead make the post about just her issues with the disagreeable content?
If she said that was her intent, I'd change my mind. Or if she said something that was unambiguously a personal attack I'd change my mind, but at the moment I see no reason not to read the post as well meaning innocent criticism...I also don't think it's very appropriate for this forum.
If intent was determined solely by someone's words than I'd agree with you that her caveat made in passing indicates well-meaningness, but the standard you've set for determining intent is as naive as believing when someone says "I like you as a person" before they knock you out with a punch that they do not intend to cause you harm.
Even by her own words this is not "innocent criticism", because she states that she dislikes the "deluge of posts" and her "futile downvotes accomplish nothing, so instead I am writing this blog post" which indicate she elevated her response to bring about behavior change, not by using the methods native to Reddit, but rather by leaning on those friendly to her position in the group to shame Kat into compliance.
Before you misquote me as analogizing this post to a punch, let me be clear that I'm merely observing you are clinging so minutely to small signals that are arguably misdirections, that you're missing the extent to which browsing's post is more than "inappropriate" as you acknowledge, because as I said it amounts to bullying someone to get in line on another forum, because it's fun to do. Why don't you hold yourself to a higher standard?
by putting her name in the headline (what I meant by name-calling)
Gotcha, that's fair.
If it wasn't meant to tarnish her reputation, why not instead make the post about just her issues with the disagreeable content?
I can think of multiple possible reasons. E.g. If OP sees a pattern of several bad or problematic posts, it can make sense to go above the object-level criticisms of those posts and talk about the meta-level questions.
but the standard you've set for determining intent is as naive as
Maybe, but in my view accusing someone of making personal attacks is a serious thing, so I'd rather be cautious, have a high bar of evidence, and take an "innocent until proven guilty" approach. Maybe I'll be too charitable in some cases and fail to condemn someone for making a personal attack, but that's worth it to avoid making the opposite mistake: accusing someone of making a personal attack who was doing no such thing.
because it's fun to do
That stated fun motivation did bother me. Obviously given that people feel the post is attacking Kat personally making the post for fun isn't a good enough reason. However, I do also see the post as raising legitmate questions about whether the sort of content that Kat produces and promotes a lot of is actually helping to raise the quality of discourse on EA and AI safety, etc, so it's clearly not just a post for fun. The OP seemed to be fustrated and venting when writing the post, resulting in it having an unnecessarily harsh tone. But I don't think this makes it amount to bullying.
Why don't you hold yourself to a higher standard?
I try to. I guess we just disagree about which kind of mistake (described above) is worse. In the face of uncertainty, I think it's better to caution on the side of not mistakenly accusing someone of bullying and engaging in a personal attack than on the side of mistakenly being too charitable and failing to call out someone who actually said something mean (especially when there are already a lot of other people in the comments like you doing that).
Let me get this straight.
After she elevates Kat's name to the headline; uses the entire post to insult her writing; draws on ageist tropes and perjoratives like "cringe" to make her case; explicitly chooses to share the message not with the writing's intended audience but rather a specific in-group who shares a distaste for Reddit's lower-brow content; doing so in an effort to rile up pressure to change her behavior on the other site; an all the more potent strike considering the context that Kat is already a well-known figure who presumably cares about her standing among LW/EA communities... you don't believe this is bullying because Browsing dropped a passing caveat that Kat might be nice in personal relations and that her object-level issue was largely that the content checks notes "feels bad for my brain" like the equivalent of eating cheetos.
Huh?
Here's the problem with your view. You're so reluctant to "accuse" someone of a "personal attack" or "bullying" that when it happens, you're lost trying to determine where the behavior lies in gray thresholds of the definition that you ignore the misbehavior in plain sight. That lacks common sense. If she didn't want this to be a "personal attack", she could have made many different choices along the way, which she obviously did not, the most prominent being posting on Reddit rather than here and not putting her name in the headline, on top of what you already pointed out was "unnecessarily harsh tone" and what I will deem shallow and uncharitable motivations like being "grumpy" about the vibes and mounting this attack for "fun", a far more viscious kind of engagement bait than the memes she criticized.
I'm going to withdraw from this comment thread since I don't think my further participation is a good use of time/energy. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and sorry we didn't come to agreement.
When we got drill down into the crux of disagreement you walk away because it's not a good use of time/energy. Of course you're welcome to do that, but unfortunate.
Come on, William. "But they said their criticism of this person's reputation wasn't personal" is not good enough. It's like calling to "no take backs" or something.
Thanks for the feedback, Holly. I really don't want to accuse the OP of making a personal attack if OP's intent was to not do that, and the reality is that I'm uncertain and can see a clear possibility that OP has no ill will toward Kat personally, so I'm not going to take the risk by making the accusation. Maybe my being on the autism spectrum is making me oblivious or something, in which case sorry I'm not able to see things as you seem them, but this is how I'm viewing the situation.
Some of the memes you referenced do seem "cringe" to me, but people have different senses of humor. I'm not sure what the issue is with someone posting memes they personally find funny.
If you disagree with the point that the memes are making, that's different, but can you give an example of something in one of the memes she posted that you thought was invalid reasoning? You called her content "dark arts tactics" and said:
"It feels like it is trying to convince me of something rather than make me smarter about something. It feels like it is trying to convey feelings at me rather than facts."
but you've only explained how it's making you feel instead of what message it's conveying.
Typically I agree with the underlying facts behind her memes! For example I also think AI safety is a pressing issue. If her memes were funny I would instead be writing a post about how awesome it is that Kat Woods is everywhere. My main objection is that I do not like the packaging of the ideas she is spreading. For example the memes are not funny. (See the outline of this post: content, vibes, conduct.)
You asked for an example of Kat Woods content that aims to convince rather than educate. Here is one recent example. I feel like the packaging of this meme conveys: "all of the objections you might have to the idea of X-risk via AI can actually be easily be debunked, therefore you would be stupid to not believe X-risk via AI".
In reality, questions regarding likelihood of x-risk via AI are really tricky. Many thoughtful people have thought about these problems at great length and declared them to be hard and full of uncertainty. I feel like this meme doesn't convey this at all. Therefore, I'm not sure whether it is good for peoples' brains to consume this content. I will certainly say it's not good for my brain to consume this content.
3Kat Woods often doesn’t give proper credit when spreading memes.
Truly wild to expect "memes" to be properly credited.
The rest of the Internet does not work like LessWrong, which is intentionally so, and expecting otherwise is unrealistic.
Here's the thing, just_browsing.
Some people want to stop human extinction from unaligned Artificial Superintelligence that's developed by young men consumed by reckless, misanthropic hubris -- by using whatever persuasion and influence techniques actually work on most people.
Other people want to police 'vibes' and 'cringe' on social media, and feel morally superior to effective communicators.
Kat Woods is the former.
7If you have evidence her communication strategy works, you are of course welcome to provide it. (Also, "using whatever communication strategy actually works" is not necessarily a good thing to do! Lying, for example, works very well on most people, and yet it would be bad to promote AI safety with a campaign of lies).
Would bet on this sort of strategy working; hard agree that ends don't justify the means and see that kind of justification for misinformation/propaganda a lot amongst highly political people. (But above examples are pretty tame.)
Curated and popular this week
