I agree with most of this review, and also didn’t really like this post when it came out.
I think the first one could plausibly be a reason that we would want to promote this on LW. Unfortunately, I think it is wrong: I do not think that people should usually feel upon themselves the burden of bucking bad incentives. There are many, many bad incentives in the world; you cannot buck them all simultaneously and make the world a better place. Rather, you need to conform with the bad incentives, even though it makes your blood boil, and choose a select few areas in which you are going to change the world, and focus on those.
Just for the record, and since I think this is actually an important point, my perspective is that indeed people cannot take on themselves the burden of bucking bad all bad incentives, but that there are a few domains of society where not following these incentives is much worse than others and where I currently expect the vast majority of contributors to be net-negative participants because of those incentives (and as such establishing standards of “deal with it or leave it” is a potentially reasonable choice).
I think truth-seeking institutions are one of those domains, and that in those places, slightly bad incentives seem to have larger negative effects, and also that it is very rarely worth gaining other resources in exchange for making your truth-seeking institutions worse.
For almost any other domain of the world (with the notable exception of institutions that are directly responsible for handling highly dangerous technologies), I am much less worried about incentives and generally wouldn’t judge someone very much for conforming to most of them.
I agree with most of this review, and also didn’t really like this post when it came out.
Just for the record, and since I think this is actually an important point, my perspective is that indeed people cannot take on themselves the burden of bucking bad all bad incentives, but that there are a few domains of society where not following these incentives is much worse than others and where I currently expect the vast majority of contributors to be net-negative participants because of those incentives (and as such establishing standards of “deal with it or leave it” is a potentially reasonable choice).
I think truth-seeking institutions are one of those domains, and that in those places, slightly bad incentives seem to have larger negative effects, and also that it is very rarely worth gaining other resources in exchange for making your truth-seeking institutions worse.
For almost any other domain of the world (with the notable exception of institutions that are directly responsible for handling highly dangerous technologies), I am much less worried about incentives and generally wouldn’t judge someone very much for conforming to most of them.