I strongly recommend against engaging with Twitter at all. The LessWrong community has been significantly underestimating the extent to which it damages the quality of its users’ thinking. Twitter pulls its users into a pattern of seeking social approval in a fast-paced loop. Tweets shape their regular readers’ thoughts into becoming more tweet-like: short, vague, lacking in context, status-driven, reactive, and conflict-theoretic. AI alignment researchers, more than perhaps anyone else right now, need to preserve their ability to engage in high-quality thinking. For them especially, spending time on Twitter isn’t worth the risk of damaging their ability to think clearly.
I think yall will be okay if you make sure your twitter account isn’t your primary social existence, and you don’t have to play twitter the usual way. Write longform stuff. Retweet old stuff. Be reasonable and conciliatory while your opponents are being unreasonable and nasty, that’s how you actually win.
Remember that the people who’ve fallen in deep and contracted twitter narcissism are actually insane, It’s not an adaptive behavior, they’re there to lose. Every day they’re embarrassing themselves and alienating people and all you have to do is hang around, occasionally point it out, and be the reasonable alternative.
I think this is personally right for me. I do not twit, and I have fully blocked the platform for (I think) more than half of the last two years.
I sometimes go there and seek out the thoughts of people I respect. When I do, I commonly find them arguing against positions they’re uninterested in and with people who seem to pick their positions for political reasons (rather than their assessment of what’s true), and who bring low-quality arguments and discussion norms. It’s not where I want to spend my time thinking.
I think some people go there to just have fun and make friends, which is quite a different thing.
I dont think the numbers really check out on your claim. Only a small proportion of people reading this are alignment researchers. And for remaining folks many are probably on Twitter anyway, or otherwise have some similarly slack part of their daily scheduling filled with sort of random non high opportunity cost stuff.
Historically there sadly hasn’t been scalable ways for the average LW lurker to contribute to safety progress; now there might be a little one.
The time expenditure isn’t the crux for me, the effects of Twitter on its user’s habits of thinking are the crux. Those effects also apply to people who aren’t alignment researchers. For those people, trading away epistemic rationality for Twitter influence is still very unlikely to be worth it.
While I do not use the platform myself, what do you think of people doing their thinking and writing offline, and then just using it as a method of transmission? I think this is made even easier by the express strategic decision to create an account for AI-specific engagement.
For example, when I look at tweets at all it is largely as links to completed threads or off-twitter blogs/articles/papers.
agreed, and this is why I don’t use it; however, probably not so much a thing that must be avoided at nearly all costs for policy people. For them, all I know how to suggest is “use discretion”.
I strongly recommend against engaging with Twitter at all. The LessWrong community has been significantly underestimating the extent to which it damages the quality of its users’ thinking. Twitter pulls its users into a pattern of seeking social approval in a fast-paced loop. Tweets shape their regular readers’ thoughts into becoming more tweet-like: short, vague, lacking in context, status-driven, reactive, and conflict-theoretic. AI alignment researchers, more than perhaps anyone else right now, need to preserve their ability to engage in high-quality thinking. For them especially, spending time on Twitter isn’t worth the risk of damaging their ability to think clearly.
I think yall will be okay if you make sure your twitter account isn’t your primary social existence, and you don’t have to play twitter the usual way. Write longform stuff. Retweet old stuff. Be reasonable and conciliatory while your opponents are being unreasonable and nasty, that’s how you actually win.
Remember that the people who’ve fallen in deep and contracted twitter narcissism are actually insane, It’s not an adaptive behavior, they’re there to lose. Every day they’re embarrassing themselves and alienating people and all you have to do is hang around, occasionally point it out, and be the reasonable alternative.
Yeah, my hypothesis is something like this might work.
(Though I can totally see how it wouldn’t though, and I wouldn’t have thought it a few years ago, so my intuition might just be mistaken)
Interesting arguments going on on the e/acc Twitter side of this debate: https://x.com/khoomeik/status/1799966607583899734
“arguments” is perhaps a bit generous of a term...
I don’t anticipate being personally affected by this much if I start using Twitter.
I think this is personally right for me. I do not twit, and I have fully blocked the platform for (I think) more than half of the last two years.
I sometimes go there and seek out the thoughts of people I respect. When I do, I commonly find them arguing against positions they’re uninterested in and with people who seem to pick their positions for political reasons (rather than their assessment of what’s true), and who bring low-quality arguments and discussion norms. It’s not where I want to spend my time thinking.
I think some people go there to just have fun and make friends, which is quite a different thing.
Can you expand the list, go into further detail, or list a source that goes into further detail?
I dont think the numbers really check out on your claim. Only a small proportion of people reading this are alignment researchers. And for remaining folks many are probably on Twitter anyway, or otherwise have some similarly slack part of their daily scheduling filled with sort of random non high opportunity cost stuff.
Historically there sadly hasn’t been scalable ways for the average LW lurker to contribute to safety progress; now there might be a little one.
The time expenditure isn’t the crux for me, the effects of Twitter on its user’s habits of thinking are the crux. Those effects also apply to people who aren’t alignment researchers. For those people, trading away epistemic rationality for Twitter influence is still very unlikely to be worth it.
While I do not use the platform myself, what do you think of people doing their thinking and writing offline, and then just using it as a method of transmission? I think this is made even easier by the express strategic decision to create an account for AI-specific engagement.
For example, when I look at tweets at all it is largely as links to completed threads or off-twitter blogs/articles/papers.
That’s not as bad, since it doesn’t have the rapid back-and-forth reward loop of most Twitter use.
agreed, and this is why I don’t use it; however, probably not so much a thing that must be avoided at nearly all costs for policy people. For them, all I know how to suggest is “use discretion”.