I do think such a system would be really valuable, and is the sort of the thing the LW team should try to build. (I’m mostly not going to respond to this idea right now but I’ve filed it away as something to revisit more seriously with Lightcone. Seems straightforwardly good)
But it feels slightly orthogonal to what I was trying to say. Let me try again.
(this is now official a tangent from the original point, but, feels important to me)
It would be good if the world could (deservedly) trust, that the best x-risk thinkers have a good group epistemic process for resolving disagreements.
At least two steps that seem helpful for that process are:
Articulating clear lists of the best arguments, such that people can prioritize refuting them (or updating on them).
But, before that, there is a messier process of “people articulating half formed versions of those arguments, struggling to communicate through different ontologies, being slightly confused.” And there is some back-and-forth process typically needed to make progress.
It is that “before” step where it feels like things seem to be going wrong, to me. (I haven’t re-read Matthew’s post or your response comment from a year ago in enough detail to have a clear sense of what, if anything, went wrong. But to illustrate the ontology: I that instance was roughly in the liminal space between the two steps)
Half-formed confused arguments in different ontologies are probably “wrong”, but that isn’t necessarily because they are completely stupid, it can be because they are half-formed. And maybe the final version of the argument is good, or maybe not, but it’s at least a less stupid version of that argument. And if Alice rejects a confused, stupid argument in a loud way, without understanding the generator that Bob was trying to pursue, Bob’s often rightly annoyed that Alice didn’t really hear them and didn’t really engage.
Dealing with confused half-formed arguments is expensive, and I’m not sure it’s worth people’s time, especially given that confused half-formed arguments are hard to distinguish from “just wrong” ones.
But, I think we can reduce wasted-motion on the margin.
A hopefully cheap-enough TAP that might help if more people did, might be something like:
<TAP> When responding to a wrong argument (which might be completely stupid, or might be a half-formed thing going in an eventually interesting direction)
<ACTION> Preface response with something like: “I think you’re saying X. Assuming so, I think this is wrong because [insert argument].” End the argument with “If this seemed to be missing the point, can you try saying your thing in different words, or clarify?”
(if it feels too expensive to articulate what X is, instead one could start with something more like “It looks at first glance like this is wrong because [insert argument]” and then still end with the “check if missing the point?” closing note)
I think more-of-that-on-the-margin from a bunch of people would save a lot of time spent in aggro-y escalation spirals.
I’d have to think more about what to do for that case, but, the sort of thing I’m imagining is a bit more scaffolding that builds towards “having a well indexed list of the best arguments.” Maybe briefly noting early on “This essay is arguing for [this particular item in List of Lethalities]” or “This argument is adding a new item to List of Lethalities” (and then maybe update that post, since it’s nice to have a comprehensive list).
This doesn’t feel like a complete solution, but, the sort of things I’d be looking for a cheap things you can add to posts that help bootstrap towards a clearer-list-of-the-best-arguments existing.
I do think such a system would be really valuable, and is the sort of the thing the LW team should try to build. (I’m mostly not going to respond to this idea right now but I’ve filed it away as something to revisit more seriously with Lightcone. Seems straightforwardly good)
But it feels slightly orthogonal to what I was trying to say. Let me try again.
(this is now official a tangent from the original point, but, feels important to me)
It would be good if the world could (deservedly) trust, that the best x-risk thinkers have a good group epistemic process for resolving disagreements.
At least two steps that seem helpful for that process are:
Articulating clear lists of the best arguments, such that people can prioritize refuting them (or updating on them).
But, before that, there is a messier process of “people articulating half formed versions of those arguments, struggling to communicate through different ontologies, being slightly confused.” And there is some back-and-forth process typically needed to make progress.
It is that “before” step where it feels like things seem to be going wrong, to me. (I haven’t re-read Matthew’s post or your response comment from a year ago in enough detail to have a clear sense of what, if anything, went wrong. But to illustrate the ontology: I that instance was roughly in the liminal space between the two steps)
Half-formed confused arguments in different ontologies are probably “wrong”, but that isn’t necessarily because they are completely stupid, it can be because they are half-formed. And maybe the final version of the argument is good, or maybe not, but it’s at least a less stupid version of that argument. And if Alice rejects a confused, stupid argument in a loud way, without understanding the generator that Bob was trying to pursue, Bob’s often rightly annoyed that Alice didn’t really hear them and didn’t really engage.
Dealing with confused half-formed arguments is expensive, and I’m not sure it’s worth people’s time, especially given that confused half-formed arguments are hard to distinguish from “just wrong” ones.
But, I think we can reduce wasted-motion on the margin.
A hopefully cheap-enough TAP that might help if more people did, might be something like:
<TAP> When responding to a wrong argument (which might be completely stupid, or might be a half-formed thing going in an eventually interesting direction)
<ACTION> Preface response with something like: “I think you’re saying X. Assuming so, I think this is wrong because [insert argument].” End the argument with “If this seemed to be missing the point, can you try saying your thing in different words, or clarify?”
(if it feels too expensive to articulate what X is, instead one could start with something more like “It looks at first glance like this is wrong because [insert argument]” and then still end with the “check if missing the point?” closing note)
I think more-of-that-on-the-margin from a bunch of people would save a lot of time spent in aggro-y escalation spirals.
re: top level posts
This doesn’t quite help with when, instead of replying to someone, you’re writing a top-level post responding to an abstracted argument (i.e. The Sun is big, but superintelligences will not spare Earth a little sunlight).
I’d have to think more about what to do for that case, but, the sort of thing I’m imagining is a bit more scaffolding that builds towards “having a well indexed list of the best arguments.” Maybe briefly noting early on “This essay is arguing for [this particular item in List of Lethalities]” or “This argument is adding a new item to List of Lethalities” (and then maybe update that post, since it’s nice to have a comprehensive list).
This doesn’t feel like a complete solution, but, the sort of things I’d be looking for a cheap things you can add to posts that help bootstrap towards a clearer-list-of-the-best-arguments existing.