Actually, on second thought, I’m doubling down on “doesn’t matter.”
(Or, “the degree to which it matters is horribly un-coupled from your intuitions about it.”)
The discussions that first crystalized “demon thread” for me were related to the Effective Altruism world—people were making controversial claims, people and organization’s relative status was at stake. And I felt compelled to log in and slog through the comments myself....
...and then I looked at the effective-altruism.com front page, and all the other threads that were not about juicy social drama… but where the thing at stake was “which intervention will actually save lives / bring about great value to the world if people donated money to it, in a community that is about donating money or taking actions on things that matter.”
And on one hand, it would have been a lot of less-fun effort to think about the actual “effective altruism” discussions. And there’s some case to be made that my marginal contribution wouldn’t have affected anything.
But, on the other hand… the social stakes in the Drama Thread didn’t actually affect me, and in some cases, didn’t affect anyone I cared about.
There were some people for whom the drama was object-level relevant, and maybe it was right for them to wade in. But it was clearly a waste of my time. I just got swept up into it because of an illusion of mattering.
There are different degrees of mattering, and not mattering. There’s:
“Literally the President or Congress or Leaders of the industry would have to be paying attention for you for this internet argument to matter.” They won’t, so it doesn’t matter. At all.
“Literally millions of people would need to work in tandem for this social norm to matter.” But you aren’t strategically engaging millions of people or working in-concert with organizers who are, so it won’t matter. At all.
A smallish-dunbar-ish number of people will in fact be affected by this thing, but not anyone you directly care about. Your intuition that this matters isn’t wrong per se but I’m pretty sure if you optimized for things-that-matter-to-you you’d be doing something else.
(if you have a wide circle of concern, something that looks more like Classic Effective Altruism. If you have smaller circle of concern, something that looks more like spending time on people closest to you and disengaging from people who make you unhappy. “Medium circles of concern” might actually have it actually be Worth It)
And finally, “your comments will actually change behaviors or minds in a way that you care about upon reflection”.
(In this case, it’s still worth reflecting on how much of your engagement is about the-mattering, and how much is about you just engaging socially with other primates because it’s fun. If the former, maybe think about what would bring about the most change that you care about).
There’s a Sarah Constantin post arguing something like “if you’re arguing about whether your fandom is problematic, you’re not Helping The World, you are having fun engaging with your fandom. And that’s fine, but it’s not the same thing.” This seems mostly true to me, and it applies whether your fandom is a TV show or a rationality blog.
[note: later on I may write a post that delves into the object-level examples, for now, I’m keeping an anecdote vague enough to just use as reference. please don’t dive into whatever you think I’m talking about]
Actually, on second thought, I’m doubling down on “doesn’t matter.”
(Or, “the degree to which it matters is horribly un-coupled from your intuitions about it.”)
The discussions that first crystalized “demon thread” for me were related to the Effective Altruism world—people were making controversial claims, people and organization’s relative status was at stake. And I felt compelled to log in and slog through the comments myself....
...and then I looked at the effective-altruism.com front page, and all the other threads that were not about juicy social drama… but where the thing at stake was “which intervention will actually save lives / bring about great value to the world if people donated money to it, in a community that is about donating money or taking actions on things that matter.”
And on one hand, it would have been a lot of less-fun effort to think about the actual “effective altruism” discussions. And there’s some case to be made that my marginal contribution wouldn’t have affected anything.
But, on the other hand… the social stakes in the Drama Thread didn’t actually affect me, and in some cases, didn’t affect anyone I cared about.
There were some people for whom the drama was object-level relevant, and maybe it was right for them to wade in. But it was clearly a waste of my time. I just got swept up into it because of an illusion of mattering.
There are different degrees of mattering, and not mattering. There’s:
“Literally the President or Congress or Leaders of the industry would have to be paying attention for you for this internet argument to matter.” They won’t, so it doesn’t matter. At all.
“Literally millions of people would need to work in tandem for this social norm to matter.” But you aren’t strategically engaging millions of people or working in-concert with organizers who are, so it won’t matter. At all.
A smallish-dunbar-ish number of people will in fact be affected by this thing, but not anyone you directly care about. Your intuition that this matters isn’t wrong per se but I’m pretty sure if you optimized for things-that-matter-to-you you’d be doing something else.
(if you have a wide circle of concern, something that looks more like Classic Effective Altruism. If you have smaller circle of concern, something that looks more like spending time on people closest to you and disengaging from people who make you unhappy. “Medium circles of concern” might actually have it actually be Worth It)
And finally, “your comments will actually change behaviors or minds in a way that you care about upon reflection”.
(In this case, it’s still worth reflecting on how much of your engagement is about the-mattering, and how much is about you just engaging socially with other primates because it’s fun. If the former, maybe think about what would bring about the most change that you care about).
There’s a Sarah Constantin post arguing something like “if you’re arguing about whether your fandom is problematic, you’re not Helping The World, you are having fun engaging with your fandom. And that’s fine, but it’s not the same thing.” This seems mostly true to me, and it applies whether your fandom is a TV show or a rationality blog.
[note: later on I may write a post that delves into the object-level examples, for now, I’m keeping an anecdote vague enough to just use as reference. please don’t dive into whatever you think I’m talking about]
I think I still disagree but I don’t know how to productively explain my disagreement without going into object-level examples and details.
[Note: Qiaochu and I eventually talked in private, and I wrote up a summary of my takeaways here]