(Meta, in case it’s relevant to anyone: it’s felt to me like LW has been deluged in the last few weeks by people saying things that seem very clearly wrong to me (this is not at all specific to this post / discussion), but in such a way that it would take a lot of effort on my part to explain clearly what seems wrong to me in most of the cases. I’m not willing to spend the time necessary to address every such thing or even most of them, but I also don’t have a clear sense of how to prioritize, so I approximately haven’t been commenting at all as a result because it just feels exhausting. I’m making an exception for this post more or less on a whim.)
There’s a lot I like about this post, and I agree that a lot of benquo’s comments were problematic. That said, when I put on my circling hat, it seems pretty clear to me that benquo was speaking from a place of being triggered, and I would have confidently predicted that the conversation would not have improved unless this was addressed in some way. I have some sense of how I would address this in person but less of a sense of how to reasonably address it on LW.
There’s something in Duncan’s proposed norms in the direction of “be responsible for your own triggered-ness.” And there’s something I like about that in principle, but also I think practice almost nobody on LW can do this reliably, including Duncan, and I would want norms that fail more gracefully in the presence of multiple people being triggered and not handling it ideally. At the very least, I want this concept of being triggered to be in common knowledge (I think it’s not even in mutual knowledge at the moment) so we can talk about it when it’s relevant, and ideally I’d want norms that make it okay to say things like “hey, based on X, Y, and Z I suspect you’re currently a little triggered, do you want to slow down this conversation in A, B, or C way?” without this being taken as, like, a horrendous overreaching accusation.
Endorsed as well, although I think I might have a disagreement re: how reasonable it is for the site to expect people to conform to certain very concrete and grokkable standards even while triggered. I would claim, for instance, that even in the Dragon Army posts, where I was definitely triggered, you can’t find any examples of egregious or outright violations of the principles laid out in this essay, and that fewer than 15% of my comments would contain even moderate, marginal violations of them.
I note that this is a prediction that sticks its neck out, if anybody wants to try. I have PDFs of both threads, including all comments, that I share with anyone who requests them.
Highly endorse this. And this is fact might be the entirety of my crux of disagreement.
(expressing wariness about delving into the details here. I am not willing to delve into details that focus on the recent Benquo thread until I’ve had a chance to talk to Ben in more detail. Interested in diving into details re: past discussions I’ve had with Duncan, but would probably prefer to do that in a non-public setting because the nature-of-the-thing makes it harder)
[edit: I think I have cruxes separate from this, but they might be similar/entangled]
I was definitely something like triggered, but as far as I can tell, specific bounded attempts to tell me what I was doing wrong were easy for me to evaluate, and comments that attempted to take my perspective seemed pretty far off and substantially exacerbated this. Notably, I found it comparatively easy to engage with Duncan’s criticisms.
… ideally I’d want norms that make it okay to say things like “hey, based on X, Y, and Z I suspect you’re currently a little triggered, do you want to slow down this conversation in A, B, or C way?” without this being taken as, like, a horrendous overreaching accusation.
That does seem pretty overreaching to me, though. I mean, it would certainly have the effect of “slowing down the conversation”, in that I wouldn’t want to converse with someone who used this sort of rhetorical move!
There has to be some way to add the hypothesis that someone is triggered into the conversation. Like, sure, maybe the given example doesn’t cut it, and maybe it’s hard/tricky/subtle/we won’t get it on the first five tries/no one solution will fit all situations. And maybe you’re pointing at something like, this isn’t really a hypothesis, but is an assertion clothed so as to be sneakily defensible.
But people do get triggered, and LessWrong has got to be the kind of place where that, itself, can be taken as object—if not by the person who’s currently in the middle of a triggered state, then at least by the people around them.
There has to be some way to add the hypothesis that someone is triggered into the conversation. … But people do get triggered, and LessWrong has got to be the kind of place where that, itself, can be taken as object—if not by the person who’s currently in the middle of a triggered state, then at least by the people around them.
I don’t agree with this at all. In fact, I’d say precisely the opposite: Less Wrong has got to be exactly the kind of place where “someone is triggered” should not be added into the conversation—neither by the “triggered” person, nor by others.
My emotional state is my own business. If we are having a conversation on Less Wrong, and I do something which violates some norm, by all means confront me about that violation. I will not use being “triggered” as an excuse, a justification, or even a thing that you have any obligation at all to consider; in return, you will not psychoanalyze me and ask things like whether I am “triggered”. That is—or, rather, that absolutely should be—the social contract.
On Less Wrong (or any similar forum), the interface that we implement is “person who does not, in the context of a conversation/debate/discussion/argument, have any emotional states that have any bearing on how the interaction proceeds”. You can have all the emotional states you want; but they are implementation details, which I should not see. In another context—perhaps even another discussion, here on Less Wrong—we can discuss those emotional states just like we can discuss anything else. But implementation details must not ever affect the integrity of the interface. Likewise, my implementation details are none of your business. Obey the Law of Demeter.
Maybe this “social contract” is a fine thing for LessWrong to uphold.
But rationalists should not uphold it, in all places, at all times. In fact, in places where active truth-seeking occurs, this contract should be deliberately (consensually) dropped.
Double Cruxing often involves showing each other the implementation details. I open up my compartments and show you their inner workings. This means sharing emotional states and reactions. My cruxes are here, here, and here, and they’re not straightforward, System-2-based propositions. They are fuzzy and emotionally-laden expectations, movies in my head, urges in my body, visceral taste reactions.
The sixth virtue is empiricism. The roots of knowledge are in observation and its fruit is prediction. What tree grows without roots? What tree nourishes us without fruit? If a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound? One says, “Yes it does, for it makes vibrations in the air.” Another says, “No it does not, for there is no auditory processing in any brain.” Though they argue, one saying “Yes”, and one saying “No”, the two do not anticipate any different experience of the forest. Do not ask which beliefs to profess, but which experiences to anticipate. Always know which difference of experience you argue about. Do not let the argument wander and become about something else, such as someone’s virtue as a rationalist. Jerry Cleaver said: “What does you in is not failure to apply some high-level, intricate, complicated technique. It’s overlooking the basics. Not keeping your eye on the ball.” Do not be blinded by words. When words are subtracted, anticipation remains.
That is, ultimately, about implementation details (and sharing them). It’s about phenomenology. And that extends to the subjective experience of not only the five senses, but emotions, thoughts, and unnamed aspects of experience.
If you don’t want to open up your implementation details to me, that is cool. But we’re not going to go to the depths of truth-seeking together without it. Which, again, might be fine for this forum, but I don’t think that makes this place “better” for truth-seeking; I think it makes it worse.
Double Cruxing often involves showing each other the implementation details.
Then chalk up another reason to disdain Double Cruxing.
If you don’t want to open up your implementation details to me, that is cool. But we’re not going to go to the depths of truth-seeking together without it.
This (“go to the depths of truth-seeking together”) is certainly an attitude that I would not like to see become prevalent on Less Wrong.
(Noting disagreement with your position here, and willingness to expand on that at some other point in time when there are not 5 discussions going on on LW that I feel like I want to participate in more. Rough model outline is something like: “I think close friendships and other environments with high barriers to entry can indeed strongly benefit from people modeling each other’s implementation details. Most of the time when environments with a lower standard of selection or trust try to do this, it ends badly, though it’s not obvious to me that they always have to go badly, or whether there are hypothetical procedures or norms that allow this conversation to go well even in lower-trust environments, though I haven’t yet seen such a set of norms robustly in action.”)
Sure; this is certainly a conversation I’m open to having, and I do understand the limitations of time and attention. What you just outlined is also helpful; I look forward to when you have the chance to expand on it.
Something that I guess I’ve never quite gotten is, in your view Said, what is Less Wrong for? In 20 years if everything on LW went exactly the way you think is ideal, what are the good things that would have happened along the way, and how would we know that we made the right call?
(I have my own answers to this, which I think I’ve explained before but if I haven’t done a clear enough job, I can try to spell them out)
That’s a good question, but a tricky one to answer directly. I hope you’ll forgive me if (à la Turing) I substitute a different one, which I think sheds light on the one you asked:
In the time Less Wrong has existed, what has come out of it, what has happened as a result, that is good and positive; and, contrariwise, what has happened that is unfortunate or undesirable?
Here’s my list, which I expect does not match anyone else’s in every detail, but the broad outlines of which seem to me to be clearly reasonable. These lists are in no particular order, and include great and small things alike:
Pros
The Sequences
Certain other posts or sequences, such as many of Scott’s posts, Alicorn’s “luminosity” sequence, and a small handful of others
Interesting/useful new results in, e.g., decision theories
The recruitment of talented mathematicians/etc. to MIRI, and their resulting work on the alignment problem and related topics
The elevation of the AI alignment problem into mainstream consciousness
“Three Worlds Collide” (and, more broadly, the genre of “rationalist fiction”, which certainly includes a lot of dross, but also some gems, and breaks some fruitful new ground in fiction-space)
Certain elements of the online “rationalist diaspora”, such as the truly wonderful Slate Star Codex and a tiny handful of other worthy blogs, and certain chat rooms and similar online spaces
The Kocherga anticafe (which has no analogues in the United States—itself a fact which deserves serious consideration!) and the surrounding social activities; also, similar (though, to my knowledge, all smaller-scale) endeavors elsewhere
The concept of effective altruism
Cons
Almost everything which (to my knowledge) takes place in both the Bay Area and the New York rationalist communities (meaning no offense to many people involved in the latter, at least some of whom are—at least in my limited experience—genuinely decent folks)
Almost all “rationalist communities” in the United States in general
The concept of the “rationalist community”, period
The vast mass of sheer nonsense that deluged Less Wrong for the half-decade (at least!) leading up to the creation of Less Wrong 2.0
Assorted absurdities and scandals involving various mythical reptiles
The promotion and increasing acceptance of certain reckless and harmful behaviors
The promotion and increasing acceptance of certain anti-epistemologies
Almost everything that CFAR does and has done
The Effective Altruism movement
It’s hard to say what Less Wrong is for; but what I, personally, would want out of this site, is more of the things on the former list, and no more of the things on the latter. If, in 20 years, the list of Pros has expanded greatly, with more of the same; and the list of Cons has not only not been added to, but the current entries on it forgotten and passed into misty memory, left far behind and overshadowed by the Pros—well, I, at least, will say that you made all the right calls.
4. The recruitment of talented mathematicians/etc. to MIRI, and their resulting work on the alignment problem and related topics
5. The elevation of the AI alignment problem into mainstream consciousness
Cons
1. 2. rationalist communities
8. Almost everything that CFAR does and has done
9. The Effective Altruism movement
Just want to note that I think you may be underestimating the extent to which these things on your Cons list have contributed to these things on your Pros list.
For example:
The EA movement funds MIRI and other AI Safety efforts.
More generally, CFAR and the rationalist community have served as a funnel for MIRI.
The Future of Life Institute (which has promoted and helped fund work on the alignment problem) was founded by CFAR alumni who knew each other from the Boston rationalist community.
If the point is “the Cons are not all bad; they are partly good, to the extent that they contribute to (or are perhaps even necessary for?) the Pros”, then—granted.
If the point is “the Cons are not bad at all, and the reasons for considering them to be bad do not exist, because of the fact that they also contribute to the Pros”, then that is revealed to be manifestly incoherent as soon as it’s made explicit.
If the point is something else entirely, then I reserve judgment until clarification.
If you found out some of those cons (or some close version of them) were necessary in order to achieve those pros, would anything shift for you?
For instance, if you see people acting to work on/improve/increase the cons… would you see those people as acting badly/negatively if you knew it was the only realistic way to achieve the pros?
(This is just in the hypothetical world where this is true. I do not know if it is.)
Like, what if we just live in a “tragic world” where you can’t achieve things like your pros list without… basically feeding people’s desire for community and connection? And what if people’s desire for connection often ends up taking the form of wanting to live/work/interact together? Would anything shift for you?
(If my hypothetical does nothing, then could you come up with a hypothetical that does?)
If you found out some of those cons (or some close version of them) were necessary in order to achieve those pros, would anything shift for you?
This question is incomplete. The corrected version would read:
“If you found out some of those cons (or some close version of them) were necessary in order to achieve some of those pros, would anything shift for you?”
Given this, the answer is “of course, and it would depend on which Cons were necessary in order to achieve which Pros”.
Now, you said that your question is a mere hypothetical, but let’s not obfuscate: clearly, if not you, then at least other folks here, think that your hypothetical scenario describes reality. But as Ray commented elsethread, this is hardly the ideal context to hash out the details of this topic. So I won’t. I will, however, ask you this:
Do you think that some of the Cons on my list are necessary in order to achieve some of the Pros? (No need to provide details on which, etc.)
If the point is “the Cons are not all bad; they are partly good, to the extent that they contribute to (or are perhaps even necessary for?) the Pros”, then—granted.
Yes, this is the point. (I wouldn’t personally put it quite that way, since by my own evaluation the things I mentioned—EA, CFAR, rationalist communities—are much better than “not all bad” makes it sound. But yes, it seems like someone who values the things on your pros list should at least think that those things are not all bad.)
then—granted.
For clarity—when you say, “granted”, do you mean, “Yes, I already believed that, and I stand by my pros and cons list, as written.” Or do you mean, “Good point. You’ve given me an update, and I would no longer endorse the statement, ‘Almost everything CFAR has done belongs on the con side of a pros-and-cons list.’”?
If the former (such that you would still endorse the “Almost everything...” statement), I would challenge whether that position is consistent with both 1) highly valuing the things on your pros list, and also 2) having an accurate view of the facts on the ground of what CFAR is trying to accomplish and has actually accomplished.
I could see that position being consistent if you thought CFAR’s other actions were highly negative. But my guess is that you see them being closer to useless (and widely overvalued), rather than so negative as to make their positive contributions a rounding error.
In any case, I’m happy to table that debate if you’d like, as has been suggested in other comments.
For clarity—when you say, “granted”, do you mean, “Yes, I already believed that, and I stand by my pros and cons list, as written.” Or do you mean, “Good point. You’ve given me an update, and I would no longer endorse the statement, ‘Almost everything CFAR has done belongs on the con side of a pros-and-cons list.’”?
The middle way, viz.:
Good point. You’ve given me an update, and I would still endorse the statement, ‘Almost everything CFAR has done belongs on the con side of a pros-and-cons list.’
… I would challenge whether that position is consistent with both 1) highly valuing the things on your pros list, and also 2) having an accurate view of the facts on the ground of what CFAR is trying to accomplish and has actually accomplished.
A reasonable challenge—or, rather, half of one; after all, what CFAR “is trying to accomplish” is of no consequence. What they have accomplished, of course, is of great consequence. I allow that I may have an inaccurate view of their accomplishments. I would love to see an overview, written by a neutral third party, that summarizes everything that CFAR has ever done.
I could see that position being consistent if you thought CFAR’s other actions were highly negative. But my guess is that you see them being closer to useless (and widely overvalued), rather than so negative as to make their positive contributions a rounding error.
I’m afraid your guess is mistaken (though I would quibble with the “rounding error” phrasing—that is a stronger claim than any I have made).
A reasonable challenge—or, rather, half of one; after all, what CFAR “is trying to accomplish” is of no consequence. What they have accomplished, of course, is of great consequence.
That’s fair. I include the “trying” part because it is some evidence about the value of activities that, to outsiders, don’t obviously directly cause the desired outcome.
(If someone says their goal is to cause X, and in fact they do actually cause X, but along the way they do some seemingly unrelated activity Y, that is some evidence that Y is necessary or useful for X, relative to if they had done Y and also happened to cause X, but didn’t have causing X as a primary goal.
In other words, independently of how much someone is actually accomplishing X, the more they are trying to cause X, the more one should expect them to be attempting to filter their activities for accomplishing X. And the more they are actually accomplishing X, the more one should update on the filter being accurate.)
I don’t think that I agree with this framing. (Consider the following to be a sort of thinking-out-loud.)
Suppose that activity Y is, to an outsider (e.g., me), neutral in value—neither beneficial nor harmful. You come to me and say: “I have done thing X, which you take to be beneficial; as you have observed, I have also been engaging in activity Y. I claim that Y is necessary for the accomplishment of X. Will you now update your evaluation of Y, and judge it no longer as neutral, but in fact as positive (on account of the fact—which you may take my word, and my accomplishment of X, as evidence—that Y is necessary for X)?”
My answer can only be “No”. No, because whatever may or may not be necessary for you to accomplish outcome X, nonetheless it is only X which is valuable to me. How you bring X about is your business. It is an implementation detail; I am not interested in implementation details, when it comes to evaluating your output (i.e., the sum total of the consequences of all your actions).[1]
Now suppose that Y is not neutral in my eyes, but rather, of negative value. I tally up your output, and note: you have caused X—this is to your credit! But, at the same time, you have done Y—this I write down in red ink. And again you come to me and say: “I see you take X to be positive, but Y to be negative; but consider that Y is necessary for X [which, we once again assume, I may have good reason to trust is the case]! Will you now move Y over to the other side of the ledger, seeing as how Y is a sine qua non of X?”
And once again my answer is “No”. Whatever contribution Y has made to the accomplishment of X, I have already counted them—they are included in the value I place on X! To credit you again for doing Y, would be double-counting.[2] But the direct negative value of Y to me—that part has not already been included in my evaluation of X; so indeed I am correct in debiting Y’s value from your account.
And so, in the final analysis, all questions about what you may or may not have been “trying” to do—and any other implementation details, any other facts about how you came by the outcomes of your efforts—simply factor out.
Of course your implementation details may very well be of interest to me when it comes to predicting your future output; but that is a different matter altogether!
Note, by the way, that this formulation entirely removes the need for me to consider the truth of your claim that Y is necessary for X. Once again we see the correctness of ignoring implementation details, and looking only at outcomes.
It seems like there’s a consistent disagreement here about how much implementation details matter.
And I think it’s useful to remember that things _are_ just implementation details. Sometimes you’re burning coal to produce energy, and if you wrap up your entire thought process around “coal is necessary to produce energy” you might not consider wind or nuclear power.
But realistically I think implementation details do matter, and if the best way to get X is with Y… no, that shouldn’t lead you to think Y is good in-and-of-itself, but it should affect your model of how everything fits together.
Understanding the mechanics of how the world works is how you improve how the world works. If you abstract away all the lower level details you lose the ability to reconfigure them.
I don’t disagree with what you say, but I’m not sure that it’s responsive to my comments. I never said, after all, that implementation details “don’t matter”, in some absolute sense—only (here) that they don’t matter as far as evaluation of outcomes goes! (Did you miss the first footnote of the grandparent comment…?)
Understanding the mechanics of how the world works is how you improve how the world works. If you abstract away all the lower level details you lose the ability to reconfigure them.
Yes, of course. But I am not the one doing any reconfiguring of, say, CFAR, nor am I interested in doing so! It is of course right and proper that CFAR employees (and/or anyone else in a position to, and with a motivation to, improve or modify CFAR’s affairs) understand the implementation details of how CFAR does the things they do. But what is that to me? Of academic or general interest—yes, of course. But for the purpose of evaluation…?
It seemed like it mattered with regard to the original context of this discussion, where the thing I was asking was “what would LW output if it were going well, according to you?” (I realize this question perhaps unfairly implies you cared about my particular frame in which I asked the question)
If LessWrong’s job was to produce energy, and we did it by burning coal, pollution and other downsides might be a cost that we weigh, but if we thought about “how would we tell things had gone well in another 20 years?”, unless we had a plan for switching the entire plant over to solar panels, we should probably expect roughly similar levels of whatever the costs were (maybe with some reduction based on efficiency), rather than those downsides disappearing into the mists of time.
(I realize this question perhaps unfairly implies you cared about my particular frame in which I asked the question)
Sure, but more importantly, what you asked was this:
In 20 years if everything on LW went exactly the way you think is ideal, what are the good things that would have happened along the way, and how would we know that we made the right call?
[emphasis mine]
Producing energy by burning coal is hardly ideal. As you say upthread, it’s well and good to be realistic about what can be accomplished and how it can be accomplished, but we shouldn’t lose track of what our goals (i.e., our ideals) actually are.
I’m not too worried about the conversation continuing in the manner is has, but I’m pretty sure I’ve now covered everything I had to say before actually drilling down into the details.
There may need to be more buckets than “pro” and “con.”
I propose “negative,” “neutral,” “positive,” “instrumental,” and “detrimental.”
Thus you can get things like “negative and yet instrumental” or “positive and yet detrimental,” where the first word is the thing taken reasonably in isolation and judged against a standard of virtue or quality, and the second word is the ramifications of the thing’s existence in the world in a long-term consequentialist sense.
(So returning to my favorite local controversy, punching people is Negative, but it’s possible that punch bug might consequentially be Instrumental for societies filled with good people that are overall on board with nonviolence and personal sovereignty.)
Other categorizations might do better to clarify cruxes … this was my attempt to create a paradigm that would allow you to zero in on the actual substance of disagreement.
You’re talking about means and ends (which, in a consequentialist framework, are, of course, just “ends” and “other ends”).
(Your example may thus be translated as “punching people is negative ceteris paribus, as it has direct, immediate, negative effects; however, the knock-on effects, etc., may result in consequences which, when all aggregated and integrated over some suitable future period, are net positive”. Of course this gets us into the usual difficulties with aggregation, both intra-personally and interpersonally, but these may probably be safely bracketed… at least, provisionally.)
I’m talking about you and ESRogs zeroing in on where you disagree, because at least one of you is wrong and has a productive opportunity to update. Sorry if the example of punch bug was distracting, but I suspect fairly strongly that it is inappropriate and oversimplified to just have a pros-and-cons list in the case of these large evaluations you’re making—not least because in a black-or-white dichotomy, you lose resolution on the places where your assumptions actually differ.
Confused and curious about why you put Kocherga in positives and all other rationalist social/community/meatspace things in negatives. I don’t think the difference between the two is that large. (I’m a Bay Area rationalist-type person who has been to a couple of things at Kocherga)
The thing is that “rationalist social/community/meatspace things” is a wrong category. It lumps together things that are very different.
In general, the way that “rationalists” use the word (and concept) “community” leads them into error, of exactly this sort. That makes it difficult to discuss this sort of thing productively.
Unfortunately, untangling this is beyond the scope of a comment thread, especially a borderline-off-topic one like this. At some point I may attempt it, in top-level-post form.
I’m really curious about the cons (even 5 where I’m only aware of one scandal). Can you link to some existing explanations, provide a summary of why you think each item on your cons list is bad, and/or write up your thoughts in detail at some point?
Hmm. I’m not sure that would be a great idea. For all that I disagree strongly (to say the least) with much of what I listed, still it seems to me that most of the folks involved aren’t bad people; it doesn’t quite feel right to write up a “this is everything I think is bad about Less Wrong and everyone involved with it” sort of essay. Part of the reason I hesitate is that I don’t have all that much skin in the game; I am not really a member of any of these “rationalist communities”, so in a sense my criticisms will be those of an outsider. How much value is there, in such a thing? I don’t know. Certainly many of those who are closer to the things than I am, have had harsh enough things to say, on all the subjects I listed. It hardly seems necessary for me to add to that.
I wrote the grandparent comment in order to communicate, to Ray (and the rest of the LW team, and any others who may be in a position to affect the future of Less Wrong), what my views on this matter are. It seems to me that I’ve succeeded in that. So, as to your question… meaning no disrespect at all, I’d prefer, if possible, not to turn this discussion into an airing of dirty laundry.
Certainly many of those who are closer to the things than I am, have had harsh enough things to say, on all the subjects I listed. It hardly seems necessary for me to add to that.
Can you (or anyone else) link to such complaints? (For example I don’t think I’ve ever seen a complaint that almost all “rationalist communities” in the United States or the concept of “rationalist community” is harmful on net.)
I wrote the grandparent comment in order to communicate, to Ray (and the rest of the LW team, and any others who may be in a position to affect the future of Less Wrong), what my views on this matter are.
My model of the LW team is that they would disagree with a lot of your cons prior to seeing your views, and seeing your views (without knowing the reasoning behind them) wouldn’t cause them to make a large update in your direction. Would you agree with this, and if so how do you plan to cause them to update or otherwise to accomplish the goal of “the list of Cons has not only not been added to, but the current entries on it forgotten and passed into misty memory, left far behind and overshadowed by the Pros”?
I’d prefer, if possible, not to turn this discussion into an airing of dirty laundry.
Why not? You mentioned “most of the folks involved aren’t bad people” but if they are actually doing bad things surely it doesn’t make sense to let them keep doing those things just to spare their feelings?
FWIW, I appreciated Said giving a response that was a succinct but comprehensive answer – I think further details might make sense as a top-level post but would probably take this thread in too many different directions. I think there’s something useful for people with really different worldviews being able to do a quick exchange of the high level stuff without immediately diving into the weeds.
My model of the LW team is that they would disagree with a lot of your cons prior to seeing your views, and seeing your views (without knowing the reasoning behind them) wouldn’t cause them to make a large update in your direction.
To a first approximation, nothing that anyone ever says to anyone, on any topic on which the target already has any sort of opinion, causes them to make a large update in the speaker’s direction. All we can hope for is small updates (assuming we do not discard the “update” model altogether—which I rather think it’s time we did; but that is a separate discussion).
Why not? You mentioned “most of the folks involved aren’t bad people” but if they are actually doing bad things surely it doesn’t make sense to let them keep doing those things just to spare their feelings?
If others, who are closer to the matter, have already spoken, and more specifically, more critically, and more plainly, then what hope do I have of stopping anyone from doing any bad things? My intent is to do what I can to nudge Less Wrong toward the direction in which I think it should go. That is all. I have no greater ambitions for this discussion.
The Kocherga anticafe (which has no analogues in the United States—itself a fact which deserves serious consideration!) and the surrounding social activities
Is there any chance you could let those of us who speak English but not Russian know what that is?
Okay, largely convinced, given stronger norms around what sorts of behavior are okay and what aren’t. I think I was thinking that openly addressing triggered-ness as object would be a helpful in finding the best way to return a conversation to normalcy.
I still don’t like the idea of having a particular set of hypotheses being taboo; I can buy an instrumental argument that we might want to make an exception around triggeredness that’s similar to the exceptions around positing that someone might have a lot of unacknowledged racist biases—
(I think we stay away from that on consequentialist grounds and not because we don’t form and check those hypotheses in subtle ways)
—but in general I think LW should be a place where there’s always a correct, dispassionate, epistemically careful, and socially neutral way to say pretty much anything.
But overall, I like your … Turing test? … argument. “If it’s posting like a LWer, and replying like a LWer, and acting like a LWer, then it’s a LWer; doesn’t matter what its internal state is.” I’d be willing to give up a small swath of conversational space, to purchase that. Indeed, other people misreading me as triggered and playing status games (when that wasn’t my experience and the comments I’m making aren’t evidence for that hypothesis except circumstantially/via pattern-matching) has been a big headache for me.
“If it’s posting like a LWer, and replying like a LWer, and acting like a LWer, then it’s a LWer; doesn’t matter what its internal state is.” I’d be willing to give up a small swath of conversational space, to purchase that.
Indeed.
I still don’t like the idea of having a particular set of hypotheses being taboo; I can buy an instrumental argument that we might want to make an exception around triggeredness that’s similar to the exceptions around positing that someone might have a lot of unacknowledged racist biases—
Exactly. We can make it even more stark:
“Have you considered that maybe you only think that because you’re just really stupid? What’s your IQ?”
“Have you considered that maybe you’re a really terrible person and a sociopath or maybe just evil?”
[to a woman] “You seem angry, is it that time of the month for you?”
etc.
We don’t say these sorts of things. Any of them might be true. But we don’t say them, because even if they are true, it’s none of our business. Really, the only hypothesis that needs to be examined for “why person X is saying thing Y” is “they think that it’s a good idea to say thing Y”.
Note that this is a very broad class of hypotheses. It’s much broader, in particular, than merely “person X thinks that thing Y is [insofar as it constitutes any sort of proposition(s)] true”. It excludes only things where you say something, not because you’re consciously choosing to say it in the service of some conversational (or other) goal, but because you’re compelled to say it, by forces outside of your control.
And maybe you are. But to the extent that you do not choose to say a thing, but are compelled to say it, we—your interlocutors—are not interacting with you. Rather, we are interacting with the abstract person-interface which “you” are implementing, which—by specification—chooses to say and do things, and is not compelled to do anything.
“Have you considered that maybe you’re a really terrible person and a sociopath or maybe just evil?”
I’ll note that, empirically, we do say these things. Or at least, people say them to me, and they’re net upvoted, and no one takes a public stance against it, mods included. And I’m not just referring to benquo or to the overt troll in the original Dragon thread, either.
(There’s a BIG difference between, e.g., Ray silently private messaging Benquo, and Ray saying out loud in the thread “I’m privately messaging Benquo about this.”)
(I am curious of examples of this, either here or via PM. I think I basically agree with you that there were multiple period in which we haven’t been able to reliably moderate all content on LW, but I also care about setting the historical record straight, and right now we have a bunch more resources for moderation available than we had over the last few weeks, so it might still be the correct call to add mod annotations to those threads, saying that these things are over the line. I have somewhat complicated feelings about writing publicly that we are in a private conversation with someone, since that does tend to warp expectations a bunch, but I am still pretty open to making it a policy that when we ping users about infractions in private, that we also make a relevant note on the thread, and that the benefits might just reliably outweigh the costs here.)
The vast majority of the examples are in the two Dragon Army threads, one from LW1 and the other from LW2, which are now Gone. I am willing to share the PDFs with you (Ray already has them), but in this case there’s no useful retroactive action.
(The rest are in the thread quoted in this essay, and at my last check (last night) are still un-addressed.)
I don’t remember anything in the second Dragon Army thread that fit this pattern, but it’s been a while and I was pretty busy at the time and don’t think I was able to read everything before the thread got removed, so I would be curious about the pdf.
Agree that there are things unresolved in the thread quoted here. I definitely plan to address them, but currently want to wait until the private conversations we are having with people come to a natural stop.
Interested in more input on this. It seems obvious to me that future readers of the original Dragon Army thread should not think that writing stuff like the numbers guy did, will not result in a ban or punishment. And since I want LessWrong to be a timeless archive, it’s important for historic discussion to be kept similarly curated as present discussion.
If you only plan on annotating past discussions that have long-since died, I mind a lot less. But for a discussion that is still live or potentially live, it feels like standing on a platform and shouting through a loudspeaker. I’d advocate for only annotating comments without any activity within the past X months.
Ah, yes. I was thinking of all the old stuff that is much older than that (such as the original DA thread). Anything that’s still active should have different policies.
I suspect all mods would prefer that you and I not directly engage just yet, until there’s structure in place for a facilitated and non-weaponized conversation.
The comment I was responding to was attributing an opinion to me. A norm (even a temporary one) in which you can do that, but I can’t ask for evidence, seems like it ends up allowing whichever of us is more interested in the exercise to snipe at the other unchallenged pretty much indefinitely.
I’m not interested in sniping at you right now, I’m just interested in people parsing the literal comment of my comments (and your posts) and not attributing to me things that I did not in fact say.
A norm (even a temporary one) in which you can do that, but I can’t ask for evidence, seems like it ends up allowing whichever of us is more interested in the exercise to snipe at the other unchallenged pretty much indefinitely.
To be clear on my view (as a mod), it is fine for you to ask for evidence (note that habryka did as well, earlier), and also fine for Duncan to disengage. I suspect that the world where he disengages is better than the one where he responds, primarily because it seems to me like handling things in a de-escalatory way often requires not settling smaller issues until more fundamental ones are addressed.
I do note some unpleasantness here around the question of who gets “the last word” before things are handled a different way, where any call to change methods while a particular person is “up” is like that person attempting to score a point, and I frown on people making attempts to score points if they expect the type of conversation to change shortly.
As a last point, the word “indefinitely” stuck out to me because of the combination with “temporary” earlier, and I note that the party who is more interested in repeatedly doing the ‘disengage until facilitated conversation’ move is also opening themselves up to sniping in this way.
In particular, there is something happening here that I notice myself wanting to narrativize as weaponized disingenuousness (which is probably not Ben’s intention) that’s like …
I’m just interested in people … not attributing to me things that I did not in fact say.
… politely following the rules, over here in this thread, and by example of virtuous action making me seem unreasonable for not wanting to reply …
… whereas over in the other thread, I get the impression that this exact rule is the one he was breaking (e.g. when he explicitly asserted that I want to ghettoize people, when what I said was that we could treat people who found punch bug norms highly costly in a manner analogous to how we treat people with peanut allergies (to the best of my knowledge, there is no ghetto in which we confine people with peanut allergies)).
It reminds me of the phrase peace treaties are not suicide pacts. In fact the norm Ben is pushing for here is one I already follow, the vast majority of the time, except in cases where I see the other person as having already repeatedly demonstrated that they don’t hold themselves to the same standard. I don’t like being made to look bad for having a superseding principle prevent me from proving, in this case, that I am in fact principled in this way, too.
My favorite world would be one in which someone else would reliably make points such as this one, and so I could disengage in this particular likely-to-be-on-tilt case, while also feeling that all the things which “need” to be said will be taken care of.
Duncan’s comment here persuaded me to go search for cases where my use of “ghetto” was ambiguous between quoting Duncan and making a claim about what his proposal implied. I’ve added clarifying notes in the cases that seemed possibly ambiguous to me. If anyone (including but not limited to Duncan) points out cases I’ve missed, and I agree that they’re potentially ambiguous, I’ll be happy to correct those as well.
I still stand by the claim, but it’s important to distinguish that claim from a false impression that Duncan said that he envisioned ghettoes for people who don’t want to play punchbug. He didn’t say that.
One thing that makes Duncan’s criticisms comparatively easy to evaluate here is that he’s grounding things in the object level text with a fairly high degree of precision. I don’t always agree with the criticisms, and sometimes strongly dispute his characterization of what I meant (though that’s at least evidence that something I wrote was unclear), of course.
(Meta, in case it’s relevant to anyone: it’s felt to me like LW has been deluged in the last few weeks by people saying things that seem very clearly wrong to me (this is not at all specific to this post / discussion), but in such a way that it would take a lot of effort on my part to explain clearly what seems wrong to me in most of the cases. I’m not willing to spend the time necessary to address every such thing or even most of them, but I also don’t have a clear sense of how to prioritize, so I approximately haven’t been commenting at all as a result because it just feels exhausting. I’m making an exception for this post more or less on a whim.)
There’s a lot I like about this post, and I agree that a lot of benquo’s comments were problematic. That said, when I put on my circling hat, it seems pretty clear to me that benquo was speaking from a place of being triggered, and I would have confidently predicted that the conversation would not have improved unless this was addressed in some way. I have some sense of how I would address this in person but less of a sense of how to reasonably address it on LW.
There’s something in Duncan’s proposed norms in the direction of “be responsible for your own triggered-ness.” And there’s something I like about that in principle, but also I think practice almost nobody on LW can do this reliably, including Duncan, and I would want norms that fail more gracefully in the presence of multiple people being triggered and not handling it ideally. At the very least, I want this concept of being triggered to be in common knowledge (I think it’s not even in mutual knowledge at the moment) so we can talk about it when it’s relevant, and ideally I’d want norms that make it okay to say things like “hey, based on X, Y, and Z I suspect you’re currently a little triggered, do you want to slow down this conversation in A, B, or C way?” without this being taken as, like, a horrendous overreaching accusation.
Endorsed as well, although I think I might have a disagreement re: how reasonable it is for the site to expect people to conform to certain very concrete and grokkable standards even while triggered. I would claim, for instance, that even in the Dragon Army posts, where I was definitely triggered, you can’t find any examples of egregious or outright violations of the principles laid out in this essay, and that fewer than 15% of my comments would contain even moderate, marginal violations of them.
I note that this is a prediction that sticks its neck out, if anybody wants to try. I have PDFs of both threads, including all comments, that I share with anyone who requests them.
I am curious about the trivial inconvenience, here; why not just share the PDFs with a link, instead of requiring people to ask you for them first?
Highly endorse this. And this is fact might be the entirety of my crux of disagreement.
(expressing wariness about delving into the details here. I am not willing to delve into details that focus on the recent Benquo thread until I’ve had a chance to talk to Ben in more detail. Interested in diving into details re: past discussions I’ve had with Duncan, but would probably prefer to do that in a non-public setting because the nature-of-the-thing makes it harder)
[edit: I think I have cruxes separate from this, but they might be similar/entangled]
I was definitely something like triggered, but as far as I can tell, specific bounded attempts to tell me what I was doing wrong were easy for me to evaluate, and comments that attempted to take my perspective seemed pretty far off and substantially exacerbated this. Notably, I found it comparatively easy to engage with Duncan’s criticisms.
That does seem pretty overreaching to me, though. I mean, it would certainly have the effect of “slowing down the conversation”, in that I wouldn’t want to converse with someone who used this sort of rhetorical move!
There has to be some way to add the hypothesis that someone is triggered into the conversation. Like, sure, maybe the given example doesn’t cut it, and maybe it’s hard/tricky/subtle/we won’t get it on the first five tries/no one solution will fit all situations. And maybe you’re pointing at something like, this isn’t really a hypothesis, but is an assertion clothed so as to be sneakily defensible.
But people do get triggered, and LessWrong has got to be the kind of place where that, itself, can be taken as object—if not by the person who’s currently in the middle of a triggered state, then at least by the people around them.
I don’t agree with this at all. In fact, I’d say precisely the opposite: Less Wrong has got to be exactly the kind of place where “someone is triggered” should not be added into the conversation—neither by the “triggered” person, nor by others.
My emotional state is my own business. If we are having a conversation on Less Wrong, and I do something which violates some norm, by all means confront me about that violation. I will not use being “triggered” as an excuse, a justification, or even a thing that you have any obligation at all to consider; in return, you will not psychoanalyze me and ask things like whether I am “triggered”. That is—or, rather, that absolutely should be—the social contract.
On Less Wrong (or any similar forum), the interface that we implement is “person who does not, in the context of a conversation/debate/discussion/argument, have any emotional states that have any bearing on how the interaction proceeds”. You can have all the emotional states you want; but they are implementation details, which I should not see. In another context—perhaps even another discussion, here on Less Wrong—we can discuss those emotional states just like we can discuss anything else. But implementation details must not ever affect the integrity of the interface. Likewise, my implementation details are none of your business. Obey the Law of Demeter.
Maybe this “social contract” is a fine thing for LessWrong to uphold.
But rationalists should not uphold it, in all places, at all times. In fact, in places where active truth-seeking occurs, this contract should be deliberately (consensually) dropped.
Double Cruxing often involves showing each other the implementation details. I open up my compartments and show you their inner workings. This means sharing emotional states and reactions. My cruxes are here, here, and here, and they’re not straightforward, System-2-based propositions. They are fuzzy and emotionally-laden expectations, movies in my head, urges in my body, visceral taste reactions.
That is, ultimately, about implementation details (and sharing them). It’s about phenomenology. And that extends to the subjective experience of not only the five senses, but emotions, thoughts, and unnamed aspects of experience.
If you don’t want to open up your implementation details to me, that is cool. But we’re not going to go to the depths of truth-seeking together without it. Which, again, might be fine for this forum, but I don’t think that makes this place “better” for truth-seeking; I think it makes it worse.
Then chalk up another reason to disdain Double Cruxing.
This (“go to the depths of truth-seeking together”) is certainly an attitude that I would not like to see become prevalent on Less Wrong.
(Noting disagreement with your position here, and willingness to expand on that at some other point in time when there are not 5 discussions going on on LW that I feel like I want to participate in more. Rough model outline is something like: “I think close friendships and other environments with high barriers to entry can indeed strongly benefit from people modeling each other’s implementation details. Most of the time when environments with a lower standard of selection or trust try to do this, it ends badly, though it’s not obvious to me that they always have to go badly, or whether there are hypothetical procedures or norms that allow this conversation to go well even in lower-trust environments, though I haven’t yet seen such a set of norms robustly in action.”)
Sure; this is certainly a conversation I’m open to having, and I do understand the limitations of time and attention. What you just outlined is also helpful; I look forward to when you have the chance to expand on it.
Something that I guess I’ve never quite gotten is, in your view Said, what is Less Wrong for? In 20 years if everything on LW went exactly the way you think is ideal, what are the good things that would have happened along the way, and how would we know that we made the right call?
(I have my own answers to this, which I think I’ve explained before but if I haven’t done a clear enough job, I can try to spell them out)
That’s a good question, but a tricky one to answer directly. I hope you’ll forgive me if (à la Turing) I substitute a different one, which I think sheds light on the one you asked:
In the time Less Wrong has existed, what has come out of it, what has happened as a result, that is good and positive; and, contrariwise, what has happened that is unfortunate or undesirable?
Here’s my list, which I expect does not match anyone else’s in every detail, but the broad outlines of which seem to me to be clearly reasonable. These lists are in no particular order, and include great and small things alike:
Pros
The Sequences
Certain other posts or sequences, such as many of Scott’s posts, Alicorn’s “luminosity” sequence, and a small handful of others
Interesting/useful new results in, e.g., decision theories
The recruitment of talented mathematicians/etc. to MIRI, and their resulting work on the alignment problem and related topics
The elevation of the AI alignment problem into mainstream consciousness
“Three Worlds Collide” (and, more broadly, the genre of “rationalist fiction”, which certainly includes a lot of dross, but also some gems, and breaks some fruitful new ground in fiction-space)
Certain elements of the online “rationalist diaspora”, such as the truly wonderful Slate Star Codex and a tiny handful of other worthy blogs, and certain chat rooms and similar online spaces
The Kocherga anticafe (which has no analogues in the United States—itself a fact which deserves serious consideration!) and the surrounding social activities; also, similar (though, to my knowledge, all smaller-scale) endeavors elsewhere
The concept of effective altruism
Cons
Almost everything which (to my knowledge) takes place in both the Bay Area and the New York rationalist communities (meaning no offense to many people involved in the latter, at least some of whom are—at least in my limited experience—genuinely decent folks)
Almost all “rationalist communities” in the United States in general
The concept of the “rationalist community”, period
The vast mass of sheer nonsense that deluged Less Wrong for the half-decade (at least!) leading up to the creation of Less Wrong 2.0
Assorted absurdities and scandals involving various mythical reptiles
The promotion and increasing acceptance of certain reckless and harmful behaviors
The promotion and increasing acceptance of certain anti-epistemologies
Almost everything that CFAR does and has done
The Effective Altruism movement
It’s hard to say what Less Wrong is for; but what I, personally, would want out of this site, is more of the things on the former list, and no more of the things on the latter. If, in 20 years, the list of Pros has expanded greatly, with more of the same; and the list of Cons has not only not been added to, but the current entries on it forgotten and passed into misty memory, left far behind and overshadowed by the Pros—well, I, at least, will say that you made all the right calls.
Just want to note that I think you may be underestimating the extent to which these things on your Cons list have contributed to these things on your Pros list.
For example:
The EA movement funds MIRI and other AI Safety efforts.
CFAR co-runs the AI Summer Fellows Program, which has directly led to several MIRI hires.
More generally, CFAR and the rationalist community have served as a funnel for MIRI.
The Future of Life Institute (which has promoted and helped fund work on the alignment problem) was founded by CFAR alumni who knew each other from the Boston rationalist community.
If the point is “the Cons are not all bad; they are partly good, to the extent that they contribute to (or are perhaps even necessary for?) the Pros”, then—granted.
If the point is “the Cons are not bad at all, and the reasons for considering them to be bad do not exist, because of the fact that they also contribute to the Pros”, then that is revealed to be manifestly incoherent as soon as it’s made explicit.
If the point is something else entirely, then I reserve judgment until clarification.
If you found out some of those cons (or some close version of them) were necessary in order to achieve those pros, would anything shift for you?
For instance, if you see people acting to work on/improve/increase the cons… would you see those people as acting badly/negatively if you knew it was the only realistic way to achieve the pros?
(This is just in the hypothetical world where this is true. I do not know if it is.)
Like, what if we just live in a “tragic world” where you can’t achieve things like your pros list without… basically feeding people’s desire for community and connection? And what if people’s desire for connection often ends up taking the form of wanting to live/work/interact together? Would anything shift for you?
(If my hypothetical does nothing, then could you come up with a hypothetical that does?)
This question is incomplete. The corrected version would read:
“If you found out some of those cons (or some close version of them) were necessary in order to achieve some of those pros, would anything shift for you?”
Given this, the answer is “of course, and it would depend on which Cons were necessary in order to achieve which Pros”.
Now, you said that your question is a mere hypothetical, but let’s not obfuscate: clearly, if not you, then at least other folks here, think that your hypothetical scenario describes reality. But as Ray commented elsethread, this is hardly the ideal context to hash out the details of this topic. So I won’t. I will, however, ask you this:
Do you think that some of the Cons on my list are necessary in order to achieve some of the Pros? (No need to provide details on which, etc.)
(shucks, now I’m kind of ashamed of my own reply to Said above, which is not nearly as skillful as this)
Yes, this is the point. (I wouldn’t personally put it quite that way, since by my own evaluation the things I mentioned—EA, CFAR, rationalist communities—are much better than “not all bad” makes it sound. But yes, it seems like someone who values the things on your pros list should at least think that those things are not all bad.)
For clarity—when you say, “granted”, do you mean, “Yes, I already believed that, and I stand by my pros and cons list, as written.” Or do you mean, “Good point. You’ve given me an update, and I would no longer endorse the statement, ‘Almost everything CFAR has done belongs on the con side of a pros-and-cons list.’”?
If the former (such that you would still endorse the “Almost everything...” statement), I would challenge whether that position is consistent with both 1) highly valuing the things on your pros list, and also 2) having an accurate view of the facts on the ground of what CFAR is trying to accomplish and has actually accomplished.
I could see that position being consistent if you thought CFAR’s other actions were highly negative. But my guess is that you see them being closer to useless (and widely overvalued), rather than so negative as to make their positive contributions a rounding error.
In any case, I’m happy to table that debate if you’d like, as has been suggested in other comments.
The middle way, viz.:
Good point. You’ve given me an update, and I would still endorse the statement, ‘Almost everything CFAR has done belongs on the con side of a pros-and-cons list.’
A reasonable challenge—or, rather, half of one; after all, what CFAR “is trying to accomplish” is of no consequence. What they have accomplished, of course, is of great consequence. I allow that I may have an inaccurate view of their accomplishments. I would love to see an overview, written by a neutral third party, that summarizes everything that CFAR has ever done.
I’m afraid your guess is mistaken (though I would quibble with the “rounding error” phrasing—that is a stronger claim than any I have made).
That’s fair. I include the “trying” part because it is some evidence about the value of activities that, to outsiders, don’t obviously directly cause the desired outcome.
(If someone says their goal is to cause X, and in fact they do actually cause X, but along the way they do some seemingly unrelated activity Y, that is some evidence that Y is necessary or useful for X, relative to if they had done Y and also happened to cause X, but didn’t have causing X as a primary goal.
In other words, independently of how much someone is actually accomplishing X, the more they are trying to cause X, the more one should expect them to be attempting to filter their activities for accomplishing X. And the more they are actually accomplishing X, the more one should update on the filter being accurate.)
I don’t think that I agree with this framing. (Consider the following to be a sort of thinking-out-loud.)
Suppose that activity Y is, to an outsider (e.g., me), neutral in value—neither beneficial nor harmful. You come to me and say: “I have done thing X, which you take to be beneficial; as you have observed, I have also been engaging in activity Y. I claim that Y is necessary for the accomplishment of X. Will you now update your evaluation of Y, and judge it no longer as neutral, but in fact as positive (on account of the fact—which you may take my word, and my accomplishment of X, as evidence—that Y is necessary for X)?”
My answer can only be “No”. No, because whatever may or may not be necessary for you to accomplish outcome X, nonetheless it is only X which is valuable to me. How you bring X about is your business. It is an implementation detail; I am not interested in implementation details, when it comes to evaluating your output (i.e., the sum total of the consequences of all your actions).[1]
Now suppose that Y is not neutral in my eyes, but rather, of negative value. I tally up your output, and note: you have caused X—this is to your credit! But, at the same time, you have done Y—this I write down in red ink. And again you come to me and say: “I see you take X to be positive, but Y to be negative; but consider that Y is necessary for X [which, we once again assume, I may have good reason to trust is the case]! Will you now move Y over to the other side of the ledger, seeing as how Y is a sine qua non of X?”
And once again my answer is “No”. Whatever contribution Y has made to the accomplishment of X, I have already counted them—they are included in the value I place on X! To credit you again for doing Y, would be double-counting.[2] But the direct negative value of Y to me—that part has not already been included in my evaluation of X; so indeed I am correct in debiting Y’s value from your account.
And so, in the final analysis, all questions about what you may or may not have been “trying” to do—and any other implementation details, any other facts about how you came by the outcomes of your efforts—simply factor out.
Of course your implementation details may very well be of interest to me when it comes to predicting your future output; but that is a different matter altogether!
Note, by the way, that this formulation entirely removes the need for me to consider the truth of your claim that Y is necessary for X. Once again we see the correctness of ignoring implementation details, and looking only at outcomes.
It seems like there’s a consistent disagreement here about how much implementation details matter.
And I think it’s useful to remember that things _are_ just implementation details. Sometimes you’re burning coal to produce energy, and if you wrap up your entire thought process around “coal is necessary to produce energy” you might not consider wind or nuclear power.
But realistically I think implementation details do matter, and if the best way to get X is with Y… no, that shouldn’t lead you to think Y is good in-and-of-itself, but it should affect your model of how everything fits together.
Understanding the mechanics of how the world works is how you improve how the world works. If you abstract away all the lower level details you lose the ability to reconfigure them.
I don’t disagree with what you say, but I’m not sure that it’s responsive to my comments. I never said, after all, that implementation details “don’t matter”, in some absolute sense—only (here) that they don’t matter as far as evaluation of outcomes goes! (Did you miss the first footnote of the grandparent comment…?)
Yes, of course. But I am not the one doing any reconfiguring of, say, CFAR, nor am I interested in doing so! It is of course right and proper that CFAR employees (and/or anyone else in a position to, and with a motivation to, improve or modify CFAR’s affairs) understand the implementation details of how CFAR does the things they do. But what is that to me? Of academic or general interest—yes, of course. But for the purpose of evaluation…?
It seemed like it mattered with regard to the original context of this discussion, where the thing I was asking was “what would LW output if it were going well, according to you?” (I realize this question perhaps unfairly implies you cared about my particular frame in which I asked the question)
If LessWrong’s job was to produce energy, and we did it by burning coal, pollution and other downsides might be a cost that we weigh, but if we thought about “how would we tell things had gone well in another 20 years?”, unless we had a plan for switching the entire plant over to solar panels, we should probably expect roughly similar levels of whatever the costs were (maybe with some reduction based on efficiency), rather than those downsides disappearing into the mists of time.
[edit: mild update to first paragraph]
Sure, but more importantly, what you asked was this:
[emphasis mine]
Producing energy by burning coal is hardly ideal. As you say upthread, it’s well and good to be realistic about what can be accomplished and how it can be accomplished, but we shouldn’t lose track of what our goals (i.e., our ideals) actually are.
Okay, coolio.
I’m not too worried about the conversation continuing in the manner is has, but I’m pretty sure I’ve now covered everything I had to say before actually drilling down into the details.
There may need to be more buckets than “pro” and “con.”
I propose “negative,” “neutral,” “positive,” “instrumental,” and “detrimental.”
Thus you can get things like “negative and yet instrumental” or “positive and yet detrimental,” where the first word is the thing taken reasonably in isolation and judged against a standard of virtue or quality, and the second word is the ramifications of the thing’s existence in the world in a long-term consequentialist sense.
(So returning to my favorite local controversy, punching people is Negative, but it’s possible that punch bug might consequentially be Instrumental for societies filled with good people that are overall on board with nonviolence and personal sovereignty.)
Other categorizations might do better to clarify cruxes … this was my attempt to create a paradigm that would allow you to zero in on the actual substance of disagreement.
Let’s not reinvent the wheel here.
You’re talking about means and ends (which, in a consequentialist framework, are, of course, just “ends” and “other ends”).
(Your example may thus be translated as “punching people is negative ceteris paribus, as it has direct, immediate, negative effects; however, the knock-on effects, etc., may result in consequences which, when all aggregated and integrated over some suitable future period, are net positive”. Of course this gets us into the usual difficulties with aggregation, both intra-personally and interpersonally, but these may probably be safely bracketed… at least, provisionally.)
I’m talking about you and ESRogs zeroing in on where you disagree, because at least one of you is wrong and has a productive opportunity to update. Sorry if the example of punch bug was distracting, but I suspect fairly strongly that it is inappropriate and oversimplified to just have a pros-and-cons list in the case of these large evaluations you’re making—not least because in a black-or-white dichotomy, you lose resolution on the places where your assumptions actually differ.
Confused and curious about why you put Kocherga in positives and all other rationalist social/community/meatspace things in negatives. I don’t think the difference between the two is that large. (I’m a Bay Area rationalist-type person who has been to a couple of things at Kocherga)
The thing is that “rationalist social/community/meatspace things” is a wrong category. It lumps together things that are very different.
In general, the way that “rationalists” use the word (and concept) “community” leads them into error, of exactly this sort. That makes it difficult to discuss this sort of thing productively.
Unfortunately, untangling this is beyond the scope of a comment thread, especially a borderline-off-topic one like this. At some point I may attempt it, in top-level-post form.
I’m really curious about the cons (even 5 where I’m only aware of one scandal). Can you link to some existing explanations, provide a summary of why you think each item on your cons list is bad, and/or write up your thoughts in detail at some point?
Hmm. I’m not sure that would be a great idea. For all that I disagree strongly (to say the least) with much of what I listed, still it seems to me that most of the folks involved aren’t bad people; it doesn’t quite feel right to write up a “this is everything I think is bad about Less Wrong and everyone involved with it” sort of essay. Part of the reason I hesitate is that I don’t have all that much skin in the game; I am not really a member of any of these “rationalist communities”, so in a sense my criticisms will be those of an outsider. How much value is there, in such a thing? I don’t know. Certainly many of those who are closer to the things than I am, have had harsh enough things to say, on all the subjects I listed. It hardly seems necessary for me to add to that.
I wrote the grandparent comment in order to communicate, to Ray (and the rest of the LW team, and any others who may be in a position to affect the future of Less Wrong), what my views on this matter are. It seems to me that I’ve succeeded in that. So, as to your question… meaning no disrespect at all, I’d prefer, if possible, not to turn this discussion into an airing of dirty laundry.
Can you (or anyone else) link to such complaints? (For example I don’t think I’ve ever seen a complaint that almost all “rationalist communities” in the United States or the concept of “rationalist community” is harmful on net.)
My model of the LW team is that they would disagree with a lot of your cons prior to seeing your views, and seeing your views (without knowing the reasoning behind them) wouldn’t cause them to make a large update in your direction. Would you agree with this, and if so how do you plan to cause them to update or otherwise to accomplish the goal of “the list of Cons has not only not been added to, but the current entries on it forgotten and passed into misty memory, left far behind and overshadowed by the Pros”?
Why not? You mentioned “most of the folks involved aren’t bad people” but if they are actually doing bad things surely it doesn’t make sense to let them keep doing those things just to spare their feelings?
FWIW, I appreciated Said giving a response that was a succinct but comprehensive answer – I think further details might make sense as a top-level post but would probably take this thread in too many different directions. I think there’s something useful for people with really different worldviews being able to do a quick exchange of the high level stuff without immediately diving into the weeds.
To a first approximation, nothing that anyone ever says to anyone, on any topic on which the target already has any sort of opinion, causes them to make a large update in the speaker’s direction. All we can hope for is small updates (assuming we do not discard the “update” model altogether—which I rather think it’s time we did; but that is a separate discussion).
If others, who are closer to the matter, have already spoken, and more specifically, more critically, and more plainly, then what hope do I have of stopping anyone from doing any bad things? My intent is to do what I can to nudge Less Wrong toward the direction in which I think it should go. That is all. I have no greater ambitions for this discussion.
Is there any chance you could let those of us who speak English but not Russian know what that is?
Google Translated version of the page
English-language interview with one of Kocherga’s co-founders
Thanks, that was helpful, and I appreciate the question-substitution.
Okay, largely convinced, given stronger norms around what sorts of behavior are okay and what aren’t. I think I was thinking that openly addressing triggered-ness as object would be a helpful in finding the best way to return a conversation to normalcy.
I still don’t like the idea of having a particular set of hypotheses being taboo; I can buy an instrumental argument that we might want to make an exception around triggeredness that’s similar to the exceptions around positing that someone might have a lot of unacknowledged racist biases—
(I think we stay away from that on consequentialist grounds and not because we don’t form and check those hypotheses in subtle ways)
—but in general I think LW should be a place where there’s always a correct, dispassionate, epistemically careful, and socially neutral way to say pretty much anything.
But overall, I like your … Turing test? … argument. “If it’s posting like a LWer, and replying like a LWer, and acting like a LWer, then it’s a LWer; doesn’t matter what its internal state is.” I’d be willing to give up a small swath of conversational space, to purchase that. Indeed, other people misreading me as triggered and playing status games (when that wasn’t my experience and the comments I’m making aren’t evidence for that hypothesis except circumstantially/via pattern-matching) has been a big headache for me.
Indeed.
Exactly. We can make it even more stark:
“Have you considered that maybe you only think that because you’re just really stupid? What’s your IQ?”
“Have you considered that maybe you’re a really terrible person and a sociopath or maybe just evil?”
[to a woman] “You seem angry, is it that time of the month for you?”
etc.
We don’t say these sorts of things. Any of them might be true. But we don’t say them, because even if they are true, it’s none of our business. Really, the only hypothesis that needs to be examined for “why person X is saying thing Y” is “they think that it’s a good idea to say thing Y”.
Note that this is a very broad class of hypotheses. It’s much broader, in particular, than merely “person X thinks that thing Y is [insofar as it constitutes any sort of proposition(s)] true”. It excludes only things where you say something, not because you’re consciously choosing to say it in the service of some conversational (or other) goal, but because you’re compelled to say it, by forces outside of your control.
And maybe you are. But to the extent that you do not choose to say a thing, but are compelled to say it, we—your interlocutors—are not interacting with you. Rather, we are interacting with the abstract person-interface which “you” are implementing, which—by specification—chooses to say and do things, and is not compelled to do anything.
I’ll note that, empirically, we do say these things. Or at least, people say them to me, and they’re net upvoted, and no one takes a public stance against it, mods included. And I’m not just referring to benquo or to the overt troll in the original Dragon thread, either.
(There’s a BIG difference between, e.g., Ray silently private messaging Benquo, and Ray saying out loud in the thread “I’m privately messaging Benquo about this.”)
Well, empirically, we also say the stuff about being triggered. I’m saying that we shouldn’t say either sort of thing.
(I am curious of examples of this, either here or via PM. I think I basically agree with you that there were multiple period in which we haven’t been able to reliably moderate all content on LW, but I also care about setting the historical record straight, and right now we have a bunch more resources for moderation available than we had over the last few weeks, so it might still be the correct call to add mod annotations to those threads, saying that these things are over the line. I have somewhat complicated feelings about writing publicly that we are in a private conversation with someone, since that does tend to warp expectations a bunch, but I am still pretty open to making it a policy that when we ping users about infractions in private, that we also make a relevant note on the thread, and that the benefits might just reliably outweigh the costs here.)
The vast majority of the examples are in the two Dragon Army threads, one from LW1 and the other from LW2, which are now Gone. I am willing to share the PDFs with you (Ray already has them), but in this case there’s no useful retroactive action.
(The rest are in the thread quoted in this essay, and at my last check (last night) are still un-addressed.)
I don’t remember anything in the second Dragon Army thread that fit this pattern, but it’s been a while and I was pretty busy at the time and don’t think I was able to read everything before the thread got removed, so I would be curious about the pdf.
Agree that there are things unresolved in the thread quoted here. I definitely plan to address them, but currently want to wait until the private conversations we are having with people come to a natural stop.
i find this idea very distasteful
Interested in more input on this. It seems obvious to me that future readers of the original Dragon Army thread should not think that writing stuff like the numbers guy did, will not result in a ban or punishment. And since I want LessWrong to be a timeless archive, it’s important for historic discussion to be kept similarly curated as present discussion.
If you only plan on annotating past discussions that have long-since died, I mind a lot less. But for a discussion that is still live or potentially live, it feels like standing on a platform and shouting through a loudspeaker. I’d advocate for only annotating comments without any activity within the past X months.
Ah, yes. I was thinking of all the old stuff that is much older than that (such as the original DA thread). Anything that’s still active should have different policies.
Can you give an example of where I said this?
I suspect all mods would prefer that you and I not directly engage just yet, until there’s structure in place for a facilitated and non-weaponized conversation.
The comment I was responding to was attributing an opinion to me. A norm (even a temporary one) in which you can do that, but I can’t ask for evidence, seems like it ends up allowing whichever of us is more interested in the exercise to snipe at the other unchallenged pretty much indefinitely.
I’m not interested in sniping at you right now, I’m just interested in people parsing the literal comment of my comments (and your posts) and not attributing to me things that I did not in fact say.
To be clear on my view (as a mod), it is fine for you to ask for evidence (note that habryka did as well, earlier), and also fine for Duncan to disengage. I suspect that the world where he disengages is better than the one where he responds, primarily because it seems to me like handling things in a de-escalatory way often requires not settling smaller issues until more fundamental ones are addressed.
I do note some unpleasantness here around the question of who gets “the last word” before things are handled a different way, where any call to change methods while a particular person is “up” is like that person attempting to score a point, and I frown on people making attempts to score points if they expect the type of conversation to change shortly.
As a last point, the word “indefinitely” stuck out to me because of the combination with “temporary” earlier, and I note that the party who is more interested in repeatedly doing the ‘disengage until facilitated conversation’ move is also opening themselves up to sniping in this way.
In particular, there is something happening here that I notice myself wanting to narrativize as weaponized disingenuousness (which is probably not Ben’s intention) that’s like …
… politely following the rules, over here in this thread, and by example of virtuous action making me seem unreasonable for not wanting to reply …
… whereas over in the other thread, I get the impression that this exact rule is the one he was breaking (e.g. when he explicitly asserted that I want to ghettoize people, when what I said was that we could treat people who found punch bug norms highly costly in a manner analogous to how we treat people with peanut allergies (to the best of my knowledge, there is no ghetto in which we confine people with peanut allergies)).
It reminds me of the phrase peace treaties are not suicide pacts. In fact the norm Ben is pushing for here is one I already follow, the vast majority of the time, except in cases where I see the other person as having already repeatedly demonstrated that they don’t hold themselves to the same standard. I don’t like being made to look bad for having a superseding principle prevent me from proving, in this case, that I am in fact principled in this way, too.
My favorite world would be one in which someone else would reliably make points such as this one, and so I could disengage in this particular likely-to-be-on-tilt case, while also feeling that all the things which “need” to be said will be taken care of.
Duncan’s comment here persuaded me to go search for cases where my use of “ghetto” was ambiguous between quoting Duncan and making a claim about what his proposal implied. I’ve added clarifying notes in the cases that seemed possibly ambiguous to me. If anyone (including but not limited to Duncan) points out cases I’ve missed, and I agree that they’re potentially ambiguous, I’ll be happy to correct those as well.
I still stand by the claim, but it’s important to distinguish that claim from a false impression that Duncan said that he envisioned ghettoes for people who don’t want to play punchbug. He didn’t say that.
One thing that makes Duncan’s criticisms comparatively easy to evaluate here is that he’s grounding things in the object level text with a fairly high degree of precision. I don’t always agree with the criticisms, and sometimes strongly dispute his characterization of what I meant (though that’s at least evidence that something I wrote was unclear), of course.
Upvoted, and appreciated on a visceral, emotional level.