angry people partitioned into angry groups, yelling at each other and confirming their own biases
A part of this is irrationality, which could be fixed by teaching rationality, at least to people with sufficiently high IQ, somehow, maybe...
But another part is rewards. As you said, the shouty passionate people tend to dominate. And that doesn’t only mean winning an abstract argument, but also… getting power, getting resources, getting laid.
Without changing the reward system—without dramatically reducing the rewards for (the right kind of) insanity—people are not going to embrace sanity. Why should they?
On the other hand, the problem is partially solving itself. For example, and average lobbyist is probably more sane than an average politically mindkilled person screaming in the mob… and the average lobbyist also happens to have more power. Yeah, this solution is far from perfect, but it still works better than having everything decided by the best screamer and their followers.
An alternative solution seems to be democracy all the way down, like in Switzerland. If you give people opportunity to vote about local things, if they fuck up something, they are personally going to suffer, but they are probably going to survive it, and the next time they may be smarter. On the other hand, if you only give them voice on national scale, when they fuck up something, everyone is going to suffer, and then someone else will try to fix the problem—so the feedback is not targeted on those who need it most, and the stakes are too high. When you think about it, it’s insane that we have people who most of the time have zero power, and then once in a few years we give them power to turn the whole country upside-down; how are they supposed to learn their power responsibly? (Most people can’t think rationally, but most of them are able to pattern-match to things that burned them in the past.)
Rational debate is nice—I share your aesthetics—but what is the incentive to join it?
Rationally designed institutions would make people first prove themselves on a smaller scale, and only then give (some of them?) power on a larger scale. Then we would still have many technical problems to solve (such as how to prevent people cheating, how to prevent them achieving short-term success with long-term failure, etc.), but at least we would go approximately the right direction. Feedback, and practice. Existing examples are: Switzerland-style democracy, army, meritocratic open-source software project, and to some degree lobbyism. (I am not endorsing any of them specifically, just pointing towards the thing they have in common.)
When designing your own institution—even if it is a local LW group (and perhaps especially there; where else should we practice our art of rationality?) -- you should consider this. Make people prove themselves in small things before you give them a voice in large things. Somehow. For example, create two types of membership: the inner circle which either prepares the meetup room and cleans it afterwards, or prepares lectures on topics interesting to other people; and the outer circle which has no duties, and also no voting rights. People will willingly sort themselves out. (Related: “Require contributions in advance”.)
This may feel unfair. But giving people who don’t give a fuck about something (and therefore will optimize for something else, such as being popular or getting lulz on expense of someone else) equal decision power, is insane. Especially if those people will make decisions according to their whims or applause lights, and then someone else will have to do the hard work anyway.
The unfairness happens when people get locked out of this system artificially. For example, if you set up the system so that in theory “by proving yourself in small things you will be given power in greater things”, but in practice some people are actually not allowed to prove themselves in the small things. -- For example, if someone who personally hates you, also happens to evaluate how you do the small things, and fails you regardless of your work. Or if doing the small things also requires resources that you don’t have (and instead of “this guy didn’t have resources to try doing the small things” the system labels you “this guy failed at the small things”). -- If you care about fairness, fix this, but don’t throw away the whole idea of rewarding responsibility. And yeah, it is difficult to do this the fair way. Some people have genuine disadvantages; some people only pretend to have disadvantages to avoid having to do their homework; etc. You will never be 100% sure. Still, on average this system works; and if you try to avoid it, either your project will collapse, or an alternative shadow system will emerge.
The problem is with incentives.
A part of this is irrationality, which could be fixed by teaching rationality, at least to people with sufficiently high IQ, somehow, maybe...
But another part is rewards. As you said, the shouty passionate people tend to dominate. And that doesn’t only mean winning an abstract argument, but also… getting power, getting resources, getting laid.
Without changing the reward system—without dramatically reducing the rewards for (the right kind of) insanity—people are not going to embrace sanity. Why should they?
On the other hand, the problem is partially solving itself. For example, and average lobbyist is probably more sane than an average politically mindkilled person screaming in the mob… and the average lobbyist also happens to have more power. Yeah, this solution is far from perfect, but it still works better than having everything decided by the best screamer and their followers.
An alternative solution seems to be democracy all the way down, like in Switzerland. If you give people opportunity to vote about local things, if they fuck up something, they are personally going to suffer, but they are probably going to survive it, and the next time they may be smarter. On the other hand, if you only give them voice on national scale, when they fuck up something, everyone is going to suffer, and then someone else will try to fix the problem—so the feedback is not targeted on those who need it most, and the stakes are too high. When you think about it, it’s insane that we have people who most of the time have zero power, and then once in a few years we give them power to turn the whole country upside-down; how are they supposed to learn their power responsibly? (Most people can’t think rationally, but most of them are able to pattern-match to things that burned them in the past.)
Rational debate is nice—I share your aesthetics—but what is the incentive to join it?
Rationally designed institutions would make people first prove themselves on a smaller scale, and only then give (some of them?) power on a larger scale. Then we would still have many technical problems to solve (such as how to prevent people cheating, how to prevent them achieving short-term success with long-term failure, etc.), but at least we would go approximately the right direction. Feedback, and practice. Existing examples are: Switzerland-style democracy, army, meritocratic open-source software project, and to some degree lobbyism. (I am not endorsing any of them specifically, just pointing towards the thing they have in common.)
When designing your own institution—even if it is a local LW group (and perhaps especially there; where else should we practice our art of rationality?) -- you should consider this. Make people prove themselves in small things before you give them a voice in large things. Somehow. For example, create two types of membership: the inner circle which either prepares the meetup room and cleans it afterwards, or prepares lectures on topics interesting to other people; and the outer circle which has no duties, and also no voting rights. People will willingly sort themselves out. (Related: “Require contributions in advance”.)
This may feel unfair. But giving people who don’t give a fuck about something (and therefore will optimize for something else, such as being popular or getting lulz on expense of someone else) equal decision power, is insane. Especially if those people will make decisions according to their whims or applause lights, and then someone else will have to do the hard work anyway.
The unfairness happens when people get locked out of this system artificially. For example, if you set up the system so that in theory “by proving yourself in small things you will be given power in greater things”, but in practice some people are actually not allowed to prove themselves in the small things. -- For example, if someone who personally hates you, also happens to evaluate how you do the small things, and fails you regardless of your work. Or if doing the small things also requires resources that you don’t have (and instead of “this guy didn’t have resources to try doing the small things” the system labels you “this guy failed at the small things”). -- If you care about fairness, fix this, but don’t throw away the whole idea of rewarding responsibility. And yeah, it is difficult to do this the fair way. Some people have genuine disadvantages; some people only pretend to have disadvantages to avoid having to do their homework; etc. You will never be 100% sure. Still, on average this system works; and if you try to avoid it, either your project will collapse, or an alternative shadow system will emerge.