The intent was that the list of statuses was _not_ freeform text, but that the freeform text was in addition. So, basically all posts would choose one of the “exploratory”, “my best guess” or “authoritative” fields, and then if desired could add additional comments.
I think things like “political, controversial and opinionated” is a reasonable thing to tack onto a “exploratory” post since it adds actual (if context-heavy) information about how to relate epistemically to the post. I also think optional things like “epistemic effort” are reasonable to add, and it wouldn’t make sense to limit them to preset options.
I have noticed “witty signaling” epistemic statuses on the uptick over the past year and think it’d be good to push back against that (esp. since they’re only actually funny if they’re not the majority of posts). But I think forcing all epistemic statuses into a single list would be too costly a solution.
I would be okay with a limited (say, 140 characters) explanatory text if it were in addition to an already chosen epistemic status. That is, in the implementation I’m visualizing, selecting an epistemic status would enable the free-form text box, but the free-form text would remain read-only otherwise.
Also, worth noting there’s a separate feature we’re thinking about which is to introduce “claims”, which come with actual probabilities attached (and which other users can add their own probabilities too), influenced by arbital.com’s implementation. Which is where I think it makes more sense to actually convey explicit confidence.
I actually really like the claims idea. One of the limitations I’ve found with PredictionBook is that I can make a prediction, but I can’t lay out my evidence or reasoning (nor can others make long-form responses to tell me why prediction is wrong). Allowing a post to make formal claims with probabilities attached would make it easier to use LessWrong to practice rationality as well as theorize about it.
The intent was that the list of statuses was _not_ freeform text, but that the freeform text was in addition. So, basically all posts would choose one of the “exploratory”, “my best guess” or “authoritative” fields, and then if desired could add additional comments.
I think things like “political, controversial and opinionated” is a reasonable thing to tack onto a “exploratory” post since it adds actual (if context-heavy) information about how to relate epistemically to the post. I also think optional things like “epistemic effort” are reasonable to add, and it wouldn’t make sense to limit them to preset options.
I have noticed “witty signaling” epistemic statuses on the uptick over the past year and think it’d be good to push back against that (esp. since they’re only actually funny if they’re not the majority of posts). But I think forcing all epistemic statuses into a single list would be too costly a solution.
I would be okay with a limited (say, 140 characters) explanatory text if it were in addition to an already chosen epistemic status. That is, in the implementation I’m visualizing, selecting an epistemic status would enable the free-form text box, but the free-form text would remain read-only otherwise.
Yep, that was roughly what we were thinking about.
Also, worth noting there’s a separate feature we’re thinking about which is to introduce “claims”, which come with actual probabilities attached (and which other users can add their own probabilities too), influenced by arbital.com’s implementation. Which is where I think it makes more sense to actually convey explicit confidence.
I actually really like the claims idea. One of the limitations I’ve found with PredictionBook is that I can make a prediction, but I can’t lay out my evidence or reasoning (nor can others make long-form responses to tell me why prediction is wrong). Allowing a post to make formal claims with probabilities attached would make it easier to use LessWrong to practice rationality as well as theorize about it.