Thank you, this comment helped me understand your position quite a bit. You’re right, discussing conflict theories are not inherently costly, it’s that they’re often costly because powerful optimization pressures are punishing discussion of them.
I strongly agree with you here:
I am advocating a conflict theory, rather than a mistake theory, for why discussions of conflict can be bad. I think, if you consider conflict vs mistake theories, you will find that a conflict theory makes better predictions for what sorts of errors people make in the course of discussing conflict, than a mistake theory does.
This is also a large part of my model of why discussions of conflict often go bad—power struggles are being enacted out through (and systematically distorting the use of) language and reasoning.
(I am quite tempted to add that even in a room with mostly scribes, given the incentive on actors to pretend to be scribes, can make it very hard for a scribe to figure out whether someone is a scribe or an actor, and this information asymmetry can lead to scribes distrusting all attempts to discuss conflict theories and reading such discussions as political coordination.
Yet I notice that I pretty reflexively looked for a mistake theory there, and my model of you suggested to me the hypothesis that I am much less comfortable with conflict theories than mistake theories. I guess I’ll look out for this further in my thinking, and consider whether it’s false. Perhaps, in this case, it is way easier than I’m suggesting for scribes to recognise each other, and the truth is we just have very few scribes.)
The next question is under what norms, incentives and cultures can one have discussions of conflict theories where people are playing the role of Scribe, and where that is common knowledge. I’m not sure we agree on the answer to that question, or what the current norms in this area should be. I’m working on a longer answer, maybe post-length, to Zach’s comment below, so I’ll see if I can present my thoughts on that.
Thank you, this comment helped me understand your position quite a bit. You’re right, discussing conflict theories are not inherently costly, it’s that they’re often costly because powerful optimization pressures are punishing discussion of them.
I strongly agree with you here:
This is also a large part of my model of why discussions of conflict often go bad—power struggles are being enacted out through (and systematically distorting the use of) language and reasoning.
(I am quite tempted to add that even in a room with mostly scribes, given the incentive on actors to pretend to be scribes, can make it very hard for a scribe to figure out whether someone is a scribe or an actor, and this information asymmetry can lead to scribes distrusting all attempts to discuss conflict theories and reading such discussions as political coordination.
Yet I notice that I pretty reflexively looked for a mistake theory there, and my model of you suggested to me the hypothesis that I am much less comfortable with conflict theories than mistake theories. I guess I’ll look out for this further in my thinking, and consider whether it’s false. Perhaps, in this case, it is way easier than I’m suggesting for scribes to recognise each other, and the truth is we just have very few scribes.)
The next question is under what norms, incentives and cultures can one have discussions of conflict theories where people are playing the role of Scribe, and where that is common knowledge. I’m not sure we agree on the answer to that question, or what the current norms in this area should be. I’m working on a longer answer, maybe post-length, to Zach’s comment below, so I’ll see if I can present my thoughts on that.