One small thing you could do is to have probability tools be collapsed by default on any AIAF posts (and maybe even on the LW versions of AIAF posts).
Also, maybe someone should write a blog post that’s a canonical reference for ‘the relevant risks of using probabilities that haven’t already been written up’, in advance of the feature being released. Then you could just link to that a bunch. (Maybe even include it in the post that explains how the probability tools work, and/or link to that post from all instances of the probability tool.)
Another idea: Arbital had a mix of (1) ‘specialized pages that just include a single probability poll and nothing else’; (2) ‘pages that are mainly just about listing a ton of probability polls’; and (3) ‘pages that have a bunch of other content but incidentally include some probability polls’.
If probability polls on LW mostly looked like 1 and 2 rather than 3, then that might make it easier to distinguish the parts of LW that should be very probability-focused from the parts that shouldn’t. I.e., you could avoid adding Arbital’s feature for easily embedding probability polls in arbitrary posts (and/or arbitrary comments), and instead treat this more as a distinct kind of page, like ‘Questions’.
You could still link to the ‘Probability’ pages prominently in your post, but the reduced prominence and site support might cause there to be less social pressure for people to avoid writing/posting things out of fears like ‘if I don’t provide probability assignments for all my claims in this blog post, or don’t add a probability poll about something at the end, will I be seen as a Bad Rationalist?’
Also, if you do something Arbital-like, I’d find it valuable if the interface encourages people to keep updating their probabilities later as they change. E.g., some (preferably optional) way of tracking how your view has changed over time. Probably also make it easy for people to re-vote without checking (and getting anchored by) their old probability assignment, for people who want that.
Note that Paul Christiano warns against encouraging sluggish updating by massively publicising people’s updates and judging them on it. Not sure what implementation details this suggests yet, but I do want to think about it.
Yeah, strong upvote to this point. Having an Arbital-style system where people’s probabilities aren’t prominently timestamped might be the worst of both worlds, though, since it discourages updating and makes it look like most people never do it.
I have an intuition that something socially good might be achieved by seeing high-status rationalists treat ass numbers as ass numbers, brazenly assign wildly different probabilities to the same proposition week-by-week, etc., especially if this is a casual and incidental thing rather than being the focus of any blog posts or comments. This might work better, though, if the earlier probabilities vanish by default and only show up again if the user decides to highlight them.
(Also, if a user repeatedly abuses this feature to look a lot more accurate than they really were, this warrants mod intervention IMO.)
One small thing you could do is to have probability tools be collapsed by default on any AIAF posts (and maybe even on the LW versions of AIAF posts).
Also, maybe someone should write a blog post that’s a canonical reference for ‘the relevant risks of using probabilities that haven’t already been written up’, in advance of the feature being released. Then you could just link to that a bunch. (Maybe even include it in the post that explains how the probability tools work, and/or link to that post from all instances of the probability tool.)
Another idea: Arbital had a mix of (1) ‘specialized pages that just include a single probability poll and nothing else’; (2) ‘pages that are mainly just about listing a ton of probability polls’; and (3) ‘pages that have a bunch of other content but incidentally include some probability polls’.
If probability polls on LW mostly looked like 1 and 2 rather than 3, then that might make it easier to distinguish the parts of LW that should be very probability-focused from the parts that shouldn’t. I.e., you could avoid adding Arbital’s feature for easily embedding probability polls in arbitrary posts (and/or arbitrary comments), and instead treat this more as a distinct kind of page, like ‘Questions’.
You could still link to the ‘Probability’ pages prominently in your post, but the reduced prominence and site support might cause there to be less social pressure for people to avoid writing/posting things out of fears like ‘if I don’t provide probability assignments for all my claims in this blog post, or don’t add a probability poll about something at the end, will I be seen as a Bad Rationalist?’
Also, if you do something Arbital-like, I’d find it valuable if the interface encourages people to keep updating their probabilities later as they change. E.g., some (preferably optional) way of tracking how your view has changed over time. Probably also make it easy for people to re-vote without checking (and getting anchored by) their old probability assignment, for people who want that.
Note that Paul Christiano warns against encouraging sluggish updating by massively publicising people’s updates and judging them on it. Not sure what implementation details this suggests yet, but I do want to think about it.
https://sideways-view.com/2018/07/12/epistemic-incentives-and-sluggish-updating/
Yeah, strong upvote to this point. Having an Arbital-style system where people’s probabilities aren’t prominently timestamped might be the worst of both worlds, though, since it discourages updating and makes it look like most people never do it.
I have an intuition that something socially good might be achieved by seeing high-status rationalists treat ass numbers as ass numbers, brazenly assign wildly different probabilities to the same proposition week-by-week, etc., especially if this is a casual and incidental thing rather than being the focus of any blog posts or comments. This might work better, though, if the earlier probabilities vanish by default and only show up again if the user decides to highlight them.
(Also, if a user repeatedly abuses this feature to look a lot more accurate than they really were, this warrants mod intervention IMO.)