What a person takes away from this clip is very telling about how they think and reason about the world. Connor is obsessed with driving the conversation into set-piece simplified thought experiments that ultimately abstract away the most important and relevant details to be considered. Of course in some platonic thought experiment there is an easy answer - no that doesn't map to our actual complicated a social reality. Beff's replies here show he is grounded in the realities of the world and understands things aren't reducible to toy models. The social world doesn't map to reductionist thought experiments, despite being the temptation of every person trained in physics (him and I included). This is a clear and consistent difference between people who have substantively engaged in the world of building things that are long term and difficult demanding projects. It teaches you that the devil is in the details, and not some hypothesized foil in a strawman argument. I think this failure in having an adequate social world model also shines through in Connors interpersonal interactions and his affect, which is entirely dismissive, rude, disingenuous and wholly wrapped up in setting up "gotcha" moments instead of genuine engagement. Truthfully all these clips tell me Connor is an embarrassing representative of the more legitimate discussions to be had and lacks some fundamental emotional maturity and reasons faultily about the world because of it.

Here's my attempt to diagram what Beff is saying about the straightforward question relevant to this debate: > When should we allow widespread access to arbitrarily dangerous technologies? Care to engage object-level? Because this seems obviously bad.

You forgot to include the part where he does answer the questions with a no, the US gov shouldn’t make them open source.

"just boil this complex scenario down to a yes or no answer!"

It’s actually standard procedure for the logic of analyzing complex issues to be factored down into hypotheticals and analogies.

Based Private citizens should be allowed to own nuclear ordinance Especially since the government doesn't make them, private companies do, so it's already basically the case Also this thing used to be the most powerful weapon ever and private individuals owned it all the time

After watching the clip, this feels like a dishonest post

How so?

What a silly question and a deceptive reframing of his response. He said he didn’t know and the Russians and Chinese probably have their hands on it.

You think you saw him dodge the question by saying he doesn’t know and then use a minor detail to refuse to engage with a strong version of it?

Misleading post

Might want to try steelman rather than strawman. Unfollowed

In the above tweet, my goal was to point out that Beff doesn't seem to understand his own claims, so steel manning wasn't my priority for that reason. I am happy to also do a steel manning exercise if you think it's productive. Here goes: We should strive to open source all technology as much as possible, but first, on a case by case basis, make a judgment about how bad the consequences would be if we did so. How's that? The problem I'm seeing is that any good steel-manning seems to just be closer to Connor's stated position than Beff's. Can you give it a try yourself?

It's just information bro, knowing how to build it and actually building it and then using it maliciously are not the same.

Ok, please let me know how to fix this flowchart to faithfully represent the e/acc position.