As the wiki link points out, the word “ideology” has a fairly neutral sense in which it simply refers to “a way of looking at things”, which seems to reflect Byrnema’s focus on the underlying assumptions this community brings to things.
I don’t think it’s a stretch to suggest that many of us here probably do share particular ways of looking at things. It’s possible that these general ways of looking-at-things do in fact let us track reality better than other ways of looking-at-things; but it’s also possible that we have blind spots, and that our shared “ideology” may sometimes get in the way of the x-rationality we aspire to.
‘Ideology’ may have a fairly neutral sense (of “a way of looking at things”), but I don’t think that is what it usually means to people, or is how it’s used in the original post. “A burgeoning ideology needs a lot of faithful support in order to develop” isn’t true of all “way[s] of looking at things”.
“The ideology needs a chance to define itself as it would define itself, without a lot of competing influences watering it down, adding impure elements, distorting it.” implies that there’s isn’t much that can be done to defend or reject views other than by having sheer numbers, and I don’t think that’s (so much) the case here.
But I do take byrnema’s point that the community does need an initial period to define itself. What this actually reminds me more of is the development of new paradigms. As Kuhn hasdescribed, it takes a while for a new paradigm to muster all the resources it needs to fully define and justify itself, and for a fair while it will be unfairly attacked by others who judge it by the tools and criteria of the old paradigm(s).
For most people in society, the sort of viewpoint embodied in LW (which you can see as like a new paradigm) is quite different to how they are used to seeing things (which you can see as like an old paradigm).
‘Ideology’ may have a fairly neutral sense (of “a way of looking at things”), but I don’t think that is what it usually means to people, or is how it’s used in the original post.
Shouldn’t we be working on being better at ignoring social signaling than this?
Why are you assuming that ‘ideology’, even given the social-signaling meaning of it, is a bad thing, rather than just a thing?
(Thank you for providing a good example of something I’ve been trying to find a way to point out for the last few days.)
hi, sorry but I’m not clear on how the social signaling you mention relates to my comment.
I didn’t think my comment said anything about ideology being bad, though if you’re interested in my opinion on it, here it is. I take ideology to be where your belief in something is less about you believing it is actually true, and more to do with other factors such as ‘because i want to be part of the group who holds these views’. (please take that description of ideology with a grain of salt… i find it very difficult to describe it briefly). I think that can have negative consequences.
Ideology, given the social-signaling meaning, is taken to be anti-rational, so naturally it would be something of an insult around here.
I’m not sure that social signaling is strictly the point here—insofar as language is only useful intersubjectively, I would instead suggest that we should attempt to communicate a point in a way that leads to the least confusion rather than insisting that we try to drop all the connotations we have had ingrained for the duration of our lives.
In part, I think this is why we use jargon—we are defining new words with none of the connotations of the old ones, and this might be helpful in moving us past the effects of those connotations.
My point wasn’t about whether ‘ideology’ was intended to mean a concept that could be taken as insulting or not. My point was that reacting to it as if it was an insult, and getting defensive, is significantly less rational than taking a more neutral stance.
If the claim that there’s an ideology here is false, examine the poster’s motivation and react appropriately. Taking offense is a subset of this option, which I’d consider valid if they appear to have been malicious, but that doesn’t seem to have been the case, and even if it was, taking offense would probably not be the best reaction to the situation.
If the claim is true (which I think it is), examine the situation to determine if that’s a useful or harmful aspect (I think it’s at least partly useful; the coherent ideology makes it easier for new members to get started—but the negative could easily outweigh the positive at higher levels of rationality… but then, learning enough epistemic hygiene to break out of ideologies is a big enough part of that that it may be moot… dunno. ask someone who’s further along than I am.) and react appropriately, by either working on a solution or (if necessary) defending the status quo. Taking offense or picking nits about the original comment seems pretty pointless, in this case, when there are better angles of the situation to be working on, and comes across like you’re trying to deny a fact.
Please bear in mind that I’m using this as an example of this kind of problem; it’s not an especially egregious one, it’s just convenient.
As the wiki link points out, the word “ideology” has a fairly neutral sense in which it simply refers to “a way of looking at things”, which seems to reflect Byrnema’s focus on the underlying assumptions this community brings to things.
I don’t think it’s a stretch to suggest that many of us here probably do share particular ways of looking at things. It’s possible that these general ways of looking-at-things do in fact let us track reality better than other ways of looking-at-things; but it’s also possible that we have blind spots, and that our shared “ideology” may sometimes get in the way of the x-rationality we aspire to.
‘Ideology’ may have a fairly neutral sense (of “a way of looking at things”), but I don’t think that is what it usually means to people, or is how it’s used in the original post. “A burgeoning ideology needs a lot of faithful support in order to develop” isn’t true of all “way[s] of looking at things”.
“The ideology needs a chance to define itself as it would define itself, without a lot of competing influences watering it down, adding impure elements, distorting it.” implies that there’s isn’t much that can be done to defend or reject views other than by having sheer numbers, and I don’t think that’s (so much) the case here.
But I do take byrnema’s point that the community does need an initial period to define itself. What this actually reminds me more of is the development of new paradigms. As Kuhn has described, it takes a while for a new paradigm to muster all the resources it needs to fully define and justify itself, and for a fair while it will be unfairly attacked by others who judge it by the tools and criteria of the old paradigm(s).
For most people in society, the sort of viewpoint embodied in LW (which you can see as like a new paradigm) is quite different to how they are used to seeing things (which you can see as like an old paradigm).
Shouldn’t we be working on being better at ignoring social signaling than this?
Why are you assuming that ‘ideology’, even given the social-signaling meaning of it, is a bad thing, rather than just a thing?
(Thank you for providing a good example of something I’ve been trying to find a way to point out for the last few days.)
hi, sorry but I’m not clear on how the social signaling you mention relates to my comment.
I didn’t think my comment said anything about ideology being bad, though if you’re interested in my opinion on it, here it is. I take ideology to be where your belief in something is less about you believing it is actually true, and more to do with other factors such as ‘because i want to be part of the group who holds these views’. (please take that description of ideology with a grain of salt… i find it very difficult to describe it briefly). I think that can have negative consequences.
Ideology, given the social-signaling meaning, is taken to be anti-rational, so naturally it would be something of an insult around here.
I’m not sure that social signaling is strictly the point here—insofar as language is only useful intersubjectively, I would instead suggest that we should attempt to communicate a point in a way that leads to the least confusion rather than insisting that we try to drop all the connotations we have had ingrained for the duration of our lives.
In part, I think this is why we use jargon—we are defining new words with none of the connotations of the old ones, and this might be helpful in moving us past the effects of those connotations.
My point wasn’t about whether ‘ideology’ was intended to mean a concept that could be taken as insulting or not. My point was that reacting to it as if it was an insult, and getting defensive, is significantly less rational than taking a more neutral stance.
If the claim that there’s an ideology here is false, examine the poster’s motivation and react appropriately. Taking offense is a subset of this option, which I’d consider valid if they appear to have been malicious, but that doesn’t seem to have been the case, and even if it was, taking offense would probably not be the best reaction to the situation.
If the claim is true (which I think it is), examine the situation to determine if that’s a useful or harmful aspect (I think it’s at least partly useful; the coherent ideology makes it easier for new members to get started—but the negative could easily outweigh the positive at higher levels of rationality… but then, learning enough epistemic hygiene to break out of ideologies is a big enough part of that that it may be moot… dunno. ask someone who’s further along than I am.) and react appropriately, by either working on a solution or (if necessary) defending the status quo. Taking offense or picking nits about the original comment seems pretty pointless, in this case, when there are better angles of the situation to be working on, and comes across like you’re trying to deny a fact.
Please bear in mind that I’m using this as an example of this kind of problem; it’s not an especially egregious one, it’s just convenient.