I read this post when it initially came out. It resonated with me to such an extent that even three weeks ago, I found myself referencing it when counseling a colleague on how to deal with a student whose heterodoxy caused the colleague to make isolated demands for rigor from this student.
The author’s argument that Nurture Culture should be the default still resonates with me, but I think there are important amendments and caveats that should be made. The author said:
“To a fair extent, it doesn’t even matter if you believe that someone is truly, deeply mistaken. It is important foremost that you validate them and their contribution, show that whatever they think, you still respect and welcome them.”
There is an immense amount of truth in this. Concede what you can when you can. Find a way to validate the aspects of a person’s point which you can agree with, especially with the person you tend to disagree with most or are more likely to consider an airhead, adversary, or smart-aleck. This has led me to a great amount of success in my organization. As Robin Hanson once asked pointedly, “Do you want to appear revolutionary, or be revolutionary?” Esse quam videri.
Combat Culture is a purer form of Socratic Method. When we have a proposer and a skeptic, we can call this the adversarial division of labor: You propose the idea, I tell you why you are wrong. You rephrase your idea. Rinse and repeat until the conversation reaches one of three stopping points: aporia, agreement, or an agreement to disagree. In the Talmud example, both are proposers of a position and both are skeptics of the other persons’ interpretation.
Nurture Culture does not bypass the adversarial division of labor, but it does put constraints on it—and for good reason. A healthy combat culture can only exist when a set of rare conditions are met. Ruby’s follow-up post outlined those conditions. But Nurture Culture is how we still make progress despite real world conditions like needing consensus, or not everyone being equal in status or knowledge, or some people having more skin in the game than others.
So here are some important things I would add more emphasis to from the original article after about a hundred iterations of important disagreements at work and in intellectual pursuits since 2018.
1. Nurture Culture assumes knowledge and status asymmetries.
2. Nurture Culture demands a lot of personal patience.
3. Nurture Culture invites you to consider what even the most wrong have right.
4. Sometimes you can overcome a disagreement at the round table by talking to your chief adversary privately and reaching a consensus, then returning for the next meeting on the same page.
While these might be two cultures, it’s helpful to remember that there are cultures to either side of these two: Inflexible Orthodoxy and Milquetoast Relativism. A Combat Culture can resolve into a dominant force with weaponized arguments owning the culture, while a Nurture Culture can become so limply committed to their nominal goals that no one speaks out against anything that runs counter to the mission.
In the Less Wrong community, Anti-Nurture comments are afraid of laxity with respect to the mission, while Anti-Combat commenters are afraid of a narrow dogmatism infecting the community.
I read this post when it initially came out. It resonated with me to such an extent that even three weeks ago, I found myself referencing it when counseling a colleague on how to deal with a student whose heterodoxy caused the colleague to make isolated demands for rigor from this student.
The author’s argument that Nurture Culture should be the default still resonates with me, but I think there are important amendments and caveats that should be made. The author said:
“To a fair extent, it doesn’t even matter if you believe that someone is truly, deeply mistaken. It is important foremost that you validate them and their contribution, show that whatever they think, you still respect and welcome them.”
There is an immense amount of truth in this. Concede what you can when you can. Find a way to validate the aspects of a person’s point which you can agree with, especially with the person you tend to disagree with most or are more likely to consider an airhead, adversary, or smart-aleck. This has led me to a great amount of success in my organization. As Robin Hanson once asked pointedly, “Do you want to appear revolutionary, or be revolutionary?” Esse quam videri.
Combat Culture is a purer form of Socratic Method. When we have a proposer and a skeptic, we can call this the adversarial division of labor: You propose the idea, I tell you why you are wrong. You rephrase your idea. Rinse and repeat until the conversation reaches one of three stopping points: aporia, agreement, or an agreement to disagree. In the Talmud example, both are proposers of a position and both are skeptics of the other persons’ interpretation.
Nurture Culture does not bypass the adversarial division of labor, but it does put constraints on it—and for good reason. A healthy combat culture can only exist when a set of rare conditions are met. Ruby’s follow-up post outlined those conditions. But Nurture Culture is how we still make progress despite real world conditions like needing consensus, or not everyone being equal in status or knowledge, or some people having more skin in the game than others.
So here are some important things I would add more emphasis to from the original article after about a hundred iterations of important disagreements at work and in intellectual pursuits since 2018.
1. Nurture Culture assumes knowledge and status asymmetries.
2. Nurture Culture demands a lot of personal patience.
3. Nurture Culture invites you to consider what even the most wrong have right.
4. Sometimes you can overcome a disagreement at the round table by talking to your chief adversary privately and reaching a consensus, then returning for the next meeting on the same page.
While these might be two cultures, it’s helpful to remember that there are cultures to either side of these two: Inflexible Orthodoxy and Milquetoast Relativism. A Combat Culture can resolve into a dominant force with weaponized arguments owning the culture, while a Nurture Culture can become so limply committed to their nominal goals that no one speaks out against anything that runs counter to the mission.
In the Less Wrong community, Anti-Nurture comments are afraid of laxity with respect to the mission, while Anti-Combat commenters are afraid of a narrow dogmatism infecting the community.