I agree that there is value in common-knowledge building, but there is a difference between doing something that feels social-miasma or simulacrum-level 3 shaped where you assert that “WE ALL AGREE THAT X” vs. you argue that something is a good idea, and you currently believe lots of other people believe the same.
I think coordinating against dishonest practices is important, but I don’t think in order to do that we have to move away from just making primarily factual statements or describing your own belief state, and have to invent some kind of group-level belief.
Where do you think I make any claims that “everyone agrees X” as opposed to “I think X”? In fact, rereading my own writing, I think I was quite clear that everything therein was my view and my view alone.
We must be very clear: fraud in the service of effective altruism is unacceptable
There is no “I think” here, no “I believe”. At least to me it feels very much like a warcry instead of a statement about the world.
to make clear that we don’t support fraud in the service of effective altruism.
This is also a call to action to change some kind of collective belief. I agree that you might have meant “we individually don’t support fraud”, but the “in the service of effective altruism” gives me a sense of this being a reference to a collective belief of effective altruism.
I do agree you have overall been pretty clear, and I appreciate the degree to which you ground things in your personal beliefs, but I do think the title as well as the central call to action of the post goes against that.
I agree that the title does directly assert a claim without attribution, and that it could be misinterpreted as a claim about what all EAs think should be done rather than just what I think should be done. It’s a bit tricky because I want the title to be very clear, but am quite limited in the words I have available there.
I think the latter quote is pretty disingenuous—if you quote the rest of that sentence, the beginning is “I think the best course of action is”, which makes it very clear that this is a claim about what I personally believe people should do:
Right now, I think the best course of action is for us—and I mean all of us, anyone who has any sort of a public platform—to make clear that we don’t support fraud in the service of effective altruism.
To be clear, “in the service of effective altruism” there is meant to refer to fraud done for the purpose of advancing effective altruism, not that we have an obligation to not support fraud and that obligation is in the service of effective altruism.
Edit: To make that last point more clear, I chainged “to make clear that we don’t support fraud in the service of effective altruism” to “to make clear that we don’t support fraud done in the service of effective altruism”.
I still get a strong feeling of group think every time I see the title of the post, and feel a strong sense of something invading into my thought-space in a way that feels toxic to me. For some reason this feels even stronger in the Twitter post you made:
I don’t know, I just feel like this is some kind of call-to-action that is trying to bypass my epistemic defenses.
The Twitter post is literally just title + link. I don’t like Twitter, and don’t want to engage on it, but I figured posting this more publicly would be helpful, so I did the minimum thing to try to direct people to this post.
From my perspective, I find it pretty difficult to be criticized for a “feeling” that you get from my post that seems to me to be totally disconnected from anything that I actually said.
Yeah, I am sorry. Like, I don’t think I currently have the energy to try to communicate all the subtle things that feel wrong to me about this, but it adds up to something I quite dislike.
I wish I had a more crystallized quick summary that I expect to cross the inferential distance quickly, but I don’t currently.
FWIW when I first saw the title (on the EA Forum) my reaction was to interpret it with an implicit “[I think that] We must be very clear: fraud in the service of effective altruism is unacceptable”.
Things generally don’t just become true because people assert them to be—surely people on LW know that. I think habryka’s concern that not including “I think” in the title is a big deal is overblown. Dropping “I think” from the title is reasonable IMO to make the title more concise; I don’t anticipate it degrading the culture of LW. I also don’t see how it “bypasses epistemic defenses.” If the lack of inclusion of an “I think” in your title will worsen readers’ epistemics, then those readers seem to be at great risk of getting terrible epistemics from seeing any news headlines.
I don’t mean to say that there’s not value in using more nuanced language, including “I think” and similar qualifications to be more precise with ones words, just that I think the karma/vote ratio your post received is an over-reaction to concern about posts of your style degrading the level one “Attempt to describe the world accurately” culture of LW.
IDK where habryka is coming from, but to me the post is good, and the title is fine but gives a twinge from the words “We” and “must” and those words together. (Also the phrase “is unacceptable” also is implicitly speaking from a social-collective-objective perspective, if you know what I mean. Which is fine, but it contributes to the twinge.) Things that would, to me, decrease the twinge:
EAs should be....
EA must unambiguously not accept fraud...
That’s a low-character-count way to be a bit more specific about who We is, to whom something Is Unacceptable. It’s maybe not what you really mean, maybe you really mean something more complicated like “people who want to ambitiously do good in the world” or something, and you don’t have a low-character way to say that, and “We” is aspirationally pointing at that.
In the post you clarify
we—as people who unknowingly benefitted from it and whose work for the world was potentially used to whitewash it
and say
Right now, I think the best course of action is for us—and I mean all of us, anyone who has any sort of a public platform—to make clear that we don’t support fraud done in the service of effective altruism.
Which is reasonable. The title though, by touching on the We, seems to me to “make it” a “decision that is the group’s decision”.
it sure is a call to action, your epistemic defenses had better be good enough to figure out that it is a good one, because it is, and it is correct to pressure you about it. the fact that you’re uncertain about whether I am right does not mean that I am uncertain. it is perfectly alright to say you’re not sure if I’m right. but being annoyed at people for saying you should probably come to this conclusion is not reasonable when that conclusion is simply actually objectively justified—instead say you will have to think about it because you aren’t sure if you see the justification yet, or something, and remember that you don’t get to exclude comments from affecting your reputation, ever. if there’s a way you can encode your request for courtesy about required updates that better clarifies that you are in fact willing to make updates that do turn out to be important and critical moral cooperation policy updates, then finding that method of phrasing may in fact be positive expected value for the outside world because it would help people request moral updates of each other in ways that are not pushing too hard. but it is often correct to push. do not expect people to make an exception because the phrasing was too much pressure.
I agree that there is value in common-knowledge building, but there is a difference between doing something that feels social-miasma or simulacrum-level 3 shaped where you assert that “WE ALL AGREE THAT X” vs. you argue that something is a good idea, and you currently believe lots of other people believe the same.
I think coordinating against dishonest practices is important, but I don’t think in order to do that we have to move away from just making primarily factual statements or describing your own belief state, and have to invent some kind of group-level belief.
Where do you think I make any claims that “everyone agrees X” as opposed to “I think X”? In fact, rereading my own writing, I think I was quite clear that everything therein was my view and my view alone.
I think the title is the biggest problem here:
There is no “I think” here, no “I believe”. At least to me it feels very much like a warcry instead of a statement about the world.
This is also a call to action to change some kind of collective belief. I agree that you might have meant “we individually don’t support fraud”, but the “in the service of effective altruism” gives me a sense of this being a reference to a collective belief of effective altruism.
I do agree you have overall been pretty clear, and I appreciate the degree to which you ground things in your personal beliefs, but I do think the title as well as the central call to action of the post goes against that.
I agree that the title does directly assert a claim without attribution, and that it could be misinterpreted as a claim about what all EAs think should be done rather than just what I think should be done. It’s a bit tricky because I want the title to be very clear, but am quite limited in the words I have available there.
I think the latter quote is pretty disingenuous—if you quote the rest of that sentence, the beginning is “I think the best course of action is”, which makes it very clear that this is a claim about what I personally believe people should do:
To be clear, “in the service of effective altruism” there is meant to refer to fraud done for the purpose of advancing effective altruism, not that we have an obligation to not support fraud and that obligation is in the service of effective altruism.
Edit: To make that last point more clear, I chainged “to make clear that we don’t support fraud in the service of effective altruism” to “to make clear that we don’t support fraud done in the service of effective altruism”.
I still get a strong feeling of group think every time I see the title of the post, and feel a strong sense of something invading into my thought-space in a way that feels toxic to me. For some reason this feels even stronger in the Twitter post you made:
I don’t know, I just feel like this is some kind of call-to-action that is trying to bypass my epistemic defenses.
The Twitter post is literally just title + link. I don’t like Twitter, and don’t want to engage on it, but I figured posting this more publicly would be helpful, so I did the minimum thing to try to direct people to this post.
From my perspective, I find it pretty difficult to be criticized for a “feeling” that you get from my post that seems to me to be totally disconnected from anything that I actually said.
Yeah, I am sorry. Like, I don’t think I currently have the energy to try to communicate all the subtle things that feel wrong to me about this, but it adds up to something I quite dislike.
I wish I had a more crystallized quick summary that I expect to cross the inferential distance quickly, but I don’t currently.
FWIW when I first saw the title (on the EA Forum) my reaction was to interpret it with an implicit “[I think that] We must be very clear: fraud in the service of effective altruism is unacceptable”.
Things generally don’t just become true because people assert them to be—surely people on LW know that. I think habryka’s concern that not including “I think” in the title is a big deal is overblown. Dropping “I think” from the title is reasonable IMO to make the title more concise; I don’t anticipate it degrading the culture of LW. I also don’t see how it “bypasses epistemic defenses.” If the lack of inclusion of an “I think” in your title will worsen readers’ epistemics, then those readers seem to be at great risk of getting terrible epistemics from seeing any news headlines.
I don’t mean to say that there’s not value in using more nuanced language, including “I think” and similar qualifications to be more precise with ones words, just that I think the karma/vote ratio your post received is an over-reaction to concern about posts of your style degrading the level one “Attempt to describe the world accurately” culture of LW.
IDK where habryka is coming from, but to me the post is good, and the title is fine but gives a twinge from the words “We” and “must” and those words together. (Also the phrase “is unacceptable” also is implicitly speaking from a social-collective-objective perspective, if you know what I mean. Which is fine, but it contributes to the twinge.) Things that would, to me, decrease the twinge:
EAs should be....
EA must unambiguously not accept fraud...
That’s a low-character-count way to be a bit more specific about who We is, to whom something Is Unacceptable. It’s maybe not what you really mean, maybe you really mean something more complicated like “people who want to ambitiously do good in the world” or something, and you don’t have a low-character way to say that, and “We” is aspirationally pointing at that.
In the post you clarify
and say
Which is reasonable. The title though, by touching on the We, seems to me to “make it” a “decision that is the group’s decision”.
it sure is a call to action, your epistemic defenses had better be good enough to figure out that it is a good one, because it is, and it is correct to pressure you about it. the fact that you’re uncertain about whether I am right does not mean that I am uncertain. it is perfectly alright to say you’re not sure if I’m right. but being annoyed at people for saying you should probably come to this conclusion is not reasonable when that conclusion is simply actually objectively justified—instead say you will have to think about it because you aren’t sure if you see the justification yet, or something, and remember that you don’t get to exclude comments from affecting your reputation, ever. if there’s a way you can encode your request for courtesy about required updates that better clarifies that you are in fact willing to make updates that do turn out to be important and critical moral cooperation policy updates, then finding that method of phrasing may in fact be positive expected value for the outside world because it would help people request moral updates of each other in ways that are not pushing too hard. but it is often correct to push. do not expect people to make an exception because the phrasing was too much pressure.