but I’m guessing your wording was just convenient shorthand rather than a disagreement with the above
Yes.
As I said, even if the Judge example, Carol has to understand Alice’s claims.
Yes, trivially; Jessica and I both agree with this.
Jessica’s Judge example still feels like a nonsequitor [sic] that doesn’t have much to do with what I was talking about.
Indeed, it may not have been relevant to the specific thing you were trying to say. However, being that as it may, I claim that the judge example is relevant to one of the broader topics of conversation: specifically, “what norms and/or principles should Less Wrong aspire to.” The Less Wrong karma and curation systems are functionally a kind of Judge, insofar as ideas that get upvoted and curated “win” (get more attention, praise, general acceptance in the rationalist community, &c.).
If Alice’s tendency to lie, obfuscate, rationalize, play dumb, report dishonestly, filter evidence, &c. isn’t an immutable feature of her character, but depends on what the Judge’s behavior incentivizes (at least to some degree), then it really matters what kind of Judge you have.
We want Less Wrong specifically, and the rationalist community more generally, to be a place where clarity wins, guided by the beauty of our weapons. If we don’t have that—if we live in a world where lies and bullshit outcompete truth, not just in the broader Society, but even in the rationalist community—then we’re dead. (Because you can’t solve AI alignment with lies and bullshit.)
As a moderator and high-karma user of lesswrong.com, you, Raymond Arnold, are a Judge. Your strong-upvote is worth 10 karma; you have the power to Curate a post; you have the power to have the power to tell Alice to shape up or ship out. You arethe incentives. This is a huge and important responsibility, your Honor—one that has the potential to influence 10¹⁴ lives per second. It’s true that truthtelling is only useful insofar as it generates understanding in other people. But that observation, in itself, doesn’t tell you how to exercise your huge and important responsibility.
If Jessica says, “Proponents of short AI timelines are lying, but not necessarily consciously lying; I mostly mean covert deception hidden from conscious attention,” and Alice says, “Huh? I can’t understand you if you’re going to use words in nonstandard ways,” then you have choices to make, and your choices have causal effects.
If you downvote Alice for pretending to be stupid when Jessica explicitly explained what she meant by the word “lying” in this context, then that has causal effects, too: maybe Alice will try harder to understand what Jessica meant, or maybe Alice will quit the site in disgust.
I can’t tell you how to wield your power, your Honor. (I mean, I can, but no one listens to me, because I don’t have power.) But I want you to notice that you have it.
If they’re so motivatedly-unreasonable that they won’t listen at all, the problem may be so hard that maybe you should go to some other place where more reasonable people live and try there instead. (Or, if you’re Eliezer in 2009, maybe you recurse a bit and write the Sequences for 2 years so that you gain access to more reasonable people).
I agree that “retreat” and “exert an extraordinary level of interpretive labor” are two possible strategies for dealing with unreasonable people. (Personally, I’m a huge fan of the “exert arbitrarily large amounts of interpretive labor” strategy, even though Ben has (correctly) observed that it leaves me incredibly vulnerable to certain forms of trolling.)
The question is, are there any other strategies?
The reason “retreat” isn’t sufficient, is because sometimes you might be competing with unreasonable people for resources (e.g., money, land, status, control of the “rationalist” and Less Wrong brand names, &c.). Is there some way to make the unreasonable people have to retreat, rather than the reasonable people?
I don’t have an answer to this. But it seems like an important thing to develop vocabulary for thinking about, even if that means playing inhard mode.
Yes.
Yes, trivially; Jessica and I both agree with this.
Indeed, it may not have been relevant to the specific thing you were trying to say. However, being that as it may, I claim that the judge example is relevant to one of the broader topics of conversation: specifically, “what norms and/or principles should Less Wrong aspire to.” The Less Wrong karma and curation systems are functionally a kind of Judge, insofar as ideas that get upvoted and curated “win” (get more attention, praise, general acceptance in the rationalist community, &c.).
If Alice’s tendency to lie, obfuscate, rationalize, play dumb, report dishonestly, filter evidence, &c. isn’t an immutable feature of her character, but depends on what the Judge’s behavior incentivizes (at least to some degree), then it really matters what kind of Judge you have.
We want Less Wrong specifically, and the rationalist community more generally, to be a place where clarity wins, guided by the beauty of our weapons. If we don’t have that—if we live in a world where lies and bullshit outcompete truth, not just in the broader Society, but even in the rationalist community—then we’re dead. (Because you can’t solve AI alignment with lies and bullshit.)
As a moderator and high-karma user of lesswrong.com, you, Raymond Arnold, are a Judge. Your strong-upvote is worth 10 karma; you have the power to Curate a post; you have the power to have the power to tell Alice to shape up or ship out. You are the incentives. This is a huge and important responsibility, your Honor—one that has the potential to influence 10¹⁴ lives per second. It’s true that truthtelling is only useful insofar as it generates understanding in other people. But that observation, in itself, doesn’t tell you how to exercise your huge and important responsibility.
If Jessica says, “Proponents of short AI timelines are lying, but not necessarily consciously lying; I mostly mean covert deception hidden from conscious attention,” and Alice says, “Huh? I can’t understand you if you’re going to use words in nonstandard ways,” then you have choices to make, and your choices have causal effects.
If you downvote Jessica because you think she’s drawing the category boundaries of “lying” too widely in a way that makes the word less useful, that has causal effects: fewer people will read Jessica’s post; maybe Jessica will decide to change her rhetorical strategy, or maybe she’ll quit the site in disgust.
If you downvote Alice for pretending to be stupid when Jessica explicitly explained what she meant by the word “lying” in this context, then that has causal effects, too: maybe Alice will try harder to understand what Jessica meant, or maybe Alice will quit the site in disgust.
I can’t tell you how to wield your power, your Honor. (I mean, I can, but no one listens to me, because I don’t have power.) But I want you to notice that you have it.
I agree that “retreat” and “exert an extraordinary level of interpretive labor” are two possible strategies for dealing with unreasonable people. (Personally, I’m a huge fan of the “exert arbitrarily large amounts of interpretive labor” strategy, even though Ben has (correctly) observed that it leaves me incredibly vulnerable to certain forms of trolling.)
The question is, are there any other strategies?
The reason “retreat” isn’t sufficient, is because sometimes you might be competing with unreasonable people for resources (e.g., money, land, status, control of the “rationalist” and Less Wrong brand names, &c.). Is there some way to make the unreasonable people have to retreat, rather than the reasonable people?
I don’t have an answer to this. But it seems like an important thing to develop vocabulary for thinking about, even if that means playing in hard mode.