Some upcoming content in my Doublecrux/Frames sequence is that while there is some “arbitrariness” to frames, there are facts of the matter of whether a frame is consistent or self-defeating, and whether it is useful for achieving particular goals.
I think an important skill for a rationalist culture to impart is “how to productively disagree on frames”, and figure out under what circumstances you should change your frame. I think this is harder than changing your beliefs, and some of the considerations are a bit different. But, still an important skill.
Nonetheless, because frames are often wound up in one’s identity (even moreso than beliefs), it’s often actively unproductive to jump to “Frame X is worse than Frame Y”. In my Noticing Frames post, I avoided getting too opinionated about which frames were good for which reasons, because the main point was being able to notice differing frames at all, and it’s easier to focus on that when you’re not defensive.
It feels like something similar is at play in the Decoupled/Contextual post. My impression is that you’re worried about it shifting the overton window towards “arbitrary politically motivated bids for contextual sensitivity”. But one major use case for the D/C post is to introduce people who normally think contextually, to the idea that they might want to think decoupled sometimes. And that’s easier to do without putting them on the defensive.
Some further potentially relevant thoughts:
Some upcoming content in my Doublecrux/Frames sequence is that while there is some “arbitrariness” to frames, there are facts of the matter of whether a frame is consistent or self-defeating, and whether it is useful for achieving particular goals.
I think an important skill for a rationalist culture to impart is “how to productively disagree on frames”, and figure out under what circumstances you should change your frame. I think this is harder than changing your beliefs, and some of the considerations are a bit different. But, still an important skill.
Nonetheless, because frames are often wound up in one’s identity (even moreso than beliefs), it’s often actively unproductive to jump to “Frame X is worse than Frame Y”. In my Noticing Frames post, I avoided getting too opinionated about which frames were good for which reasons, because the main point was being able to notice differing frames at all, and it’s easier to focus on that when you’re not defensive.
It feels like something similar is at play in the Decoupled/Contextual post. My impression is that you’re worried about it shifting the overton window towards “arbitrary politically motivated bids for contextual sensitivity”. But one major use case for the D/C post is to introduce people who normally think contextually, to the idea that they might want to think decoupled sometimes. And that’s easier to do without putting them on the defensive.