Sure, but people do unhealthy / bad things all the time, and are biased in favor of many of them. I’m not supposing that someone might “use our power for evil” or something like that. Rather, I think we should include our best information.
Our disagreement seems to boil down to:
A … net cost of silly biased human brains letting should cloud their assessment of is. B … net cost of silly biased human brains letting is cloud their assessment of should.
Statement: Among Lesswrong readers: P(A>B) > P(B>A)
I say TRUE.
You say FALSE.
Do you (and the readers) agree with this interpretation of the debate?
Do you (and the readers) agree with this interpretation of the debate?
I don’t.
My point is that a discussion of PUA, by its nature, is a discussion of “should”. The relevant questions are things like “How does one best achieve X?” Excluding ethics from that discussion is wrong, and probably logically inconsistent.
I’m actually still a bit unclear on what you are referring to by this “letting should cloud their assessment of is” and its reverse.
Aha. I agree. Do people really make that mistake a lot around here?
Also note that ‘should’ goes on the map too. Not just in the “here be dragons” sense, but also indicated by the characterization that the way is “best”.
Do people really make that mistake a lot around here?
There is a whole host of empirically demonstrated biases in humans that work in these two directions under different circumstances. LWers may be aware of many of them, but they are far from immune.
Also note that ‘should’ goes on the map too. Not just in the “here be dragons” sense, but also indicated by the characterization that the way is “best”.
Agreed but, should is coloured in with different ink on the map than is. I admit mapping should can prove to be as much of a challenge as is.
I see my proposal of two quarantined threads, as a proposal to lets stop messing up the map by all of us drawing with the same color at the same time, and first draw out “is” in black and then once the colour is dry add in should with red so we don’t forget where we want to go. Then use that as our general purpose map and update both red and black as we along our path and new previously unavailable empirical evidence meets our eyes.
I see my proposal of two quarantined threads, as a proposal to lets stop messing up the map by all of us drawing with the same color at the same time, and first draw out “is” in black and then once the colour is dry add in should with red so we don’t forget where we want to go. Then use that as our general purpose map and update both red and black as we along our path and new previously unavailable empirical evidence meets our eyes.
I didn’t point this out before, but this is actually a good argument in favor of the ‘ethics later’ approach. It makes no sense to start drawing paths on your map before you’ve filled in all of the nodes. (Counterargument: assume stochasticity / a non-fully-observable environment).
Also, if this technique actually works, it should be able to be applied to political contexts as well. PUA is a relatively safer area to test this, since while it does induce mind-killing (a positive feature for purposes of this test) it does not draw in a lot of negative attention from off-site, which is one of the concerns regarding political discussion.
I am majorly in favor of researching ways of reducing/eliminating mind-killing effects.
I see my proposal of a two quarantined threads, as a proposal to lets stop messing up the colours, and first draw out is in black and then once the colour is dry add in should with red so we don’t forget where we want to go. Then use that as our general purpose map.
So an analogous circumstance would be: if we were constructing a weighted directed graph representing routes between cities, we’d first put in all the nodes and connections and weights in black ink, and then plan the best route and mark it in red ink?
If so, that implies the discussion of “PUA” would include equal amounts of “X results in increased probability of the subject laughing at you” and “Y results in increased probability of the subject slapping you” and “Z results in increased probability of the subject handing you an aubergine”.
If the discussion is not goal-directed, I don’t see how it could be useful, especially for such a large space as human social interaction.
But it would be goal directed: “To catalogue beliefs and practices of PUAs and how well they map to reality.”
Without breaking the metaphor, we are taking someone else’s map and comparing it to our own map. Our goal being to update our map where their map of reality (black ink) is clearly better or at the very least learn if their map sucks. And to make this harder we aren’t one individual but a committee comparing the two maps. Worse some of us love their black ink more than their red one and vice versa, and can’t shut up about them. Let’s set up separate work meetings for the two issues so we know that black ink arguments have no place on meeting number 2. and the person is indulging his interests at the expense of good map making.
The reason why I favour black first is that going red first we risk drawing castles in clouds rather than a realizable destinations.
To catalogue beliefs and practices of PUAs and how well they map to reality.
Oops.
Yes, that’s absolutely possible, and is (on reflection) what we have been talking about this whole time.
So the challenge, then, would be to distinguish the black from red ink in PUA, and make sure we’re only talking about the black ink in the ‘no ethics’ thread.
I have no intuitions about how feasible that is, but I withdraw my assertion it is ‘impossible’, as I was clearly talking about something else.
So the challenge, then, would be to distinguish the black from red ink in PUA, and make sure we’re only talking about the black ink in the ‘no ethics’ thread.
Yes! We can’t take PUA’s at their word. Even when they believe with unwavering certainty they are talking black ink, they are in the best of cases as confused as we are and in the worst quite a bit more confused. Also some people just like to lie to others to get to the red destination faster (heh).
It is hard, but apparently enough posters think we can make a decent map of the reality of romance that they try and write up posts and start discussions about them. Limiting ourselves to the more popular PUAs I think we can also get a pretty good idea of what their idea of reality is.
Comparing the two and seeking evidence to prove or disprove our speculations about reality seems like a worthy exercise.
I think this is a horrendously bad idea—“more popular” is not always positively correlated with “more correct”. ;-)
Also, “more popular” isn’t always positively correlated with “more useful”, either. The most popular PUA material is about indirect game, social tricks, and the like… and that’s why it’s popular. That doesn’t mean those things are the most useful ways to get into relationships.
Consider Bob, who believes he is unattractive to women. Will Bob be more interested in course A which tells him there are secrets to make women like him, or course B, which teaches him how to notice which women are already attracted to him? His (quite common) belief makes course B less attractive, even if course B would be far more useful.
Of available courses that fit Bob’s existing belief structure, the ones that will be most popular will be the ones that purport to explain his unattractiveness (and the attractiveness of other men) in a way that Bob can understand. And if they offer him a solution that doesn’t sound too difficult (i.e. act like a jerk), then this will be appealing.
What’s more, because Bob is convinced of his unattractiveness and fundamental low worth where women are concerned, Bob will be most attracted to courses that involve pretending to be someone he is not: after all, if who he is is unattractive, then of course he needs to pretend to be somebody else, right?
I could go on, but my point here is that popularity is a horrible way to select what to discuss, because there’s a systematic bias towards “tricks” as being the most marketable thing. However, even companies that sell tricks on the low end of the market to get people interested, usually sell some form of self-improvement as their “advanced” training. (That is, stuff that involves people actually being a different sort of man, rather than simply pretending to be one.)
(There are probably exceptions to this, of course.)
Anyway, a better selection criterion would be goal relevance. Most PUA sales material has end-user goals explicitly or implicitly stated—why not select materials on the basis of goals that LW has use for, and evaluate them for how well they achieve those stated goals?
What popular PUA is saying matters quite a bit because it helps us understand the PUA community as a cultural phenomena it also can help us by helping expose some biases that probably exist to some degree in harder to detect form in higher quality material. Perhaps well respected or esteemed authors (within the PUA community) rather than the ones that sell the most material (where would we even get that data?), are even better for this purpose.
But overall I’m not saying we shouldn’t extend our analysis to PUA’s that are less well known but seem particularly compelling to LessWrong readers. The thing is they have to be put in context.
I think this is a horrendously bad idea—“more popular” is not always positively correlated with “more correct”. ;-)
How is that bad? The whole point is to locate actual beliefs and test them. If they’re incorrect, all the better—our job is probably easier. By focusing on the general population, we can cull down the potentially-useful beliefs without needing to ourselves bring ethics into the discussion. Thus, we only test “X results in a 20% chance of being handed an aubergine” if that is a belief some PUA practitioner actually holds.
Also, “more popular” isn’t always positively correlated with “more useful”, either. The most popular PUA material is about indirect game, social tricks, and the like… and that’s why it’s popular. That doesn’t mean those things are the most useful ways to get into relationships.
Anyway, a better selection criterion would be goal relevance. Most PUA sales material has end-user goals explicitly or implicitly stated—why not select materials on the basis of goals that LW has use for, and evaluate them for how well they achieve those stated goals?
These are all ‘red ink’ concerns. The ‘black ink’ thread is supposed to evaluate beliefs of PUAs without reference to how effective they are at achieving goals. You can’t presuppose what the goals are supposed to be or determine whether they’re optimal ways of achieving goals. Thus, we can test for the presence of aubergines, but we don’t need to know whether we actually want aubergines.
These are all ‘red ink’ concerns. The ‘black ink’ thread is supposed to evaluate beliefs of PUAs without reference to how effective they are at achieving goals.
My initial response to your comment, is, “WTF?”
My second, more polite response, is simply that your suggestion isn’t particularly compatible with finding out useful things, since your proposed selection criteria will tend to filter them out before you have anything to evaluate.
I’m talking about following the strategy laid out by Konkvistador above. Have you been following this thread?
My second, more polite response, is simply that your suggestion isn’t particularly compatible with finding out useful things, since your proposed selection criteria will tend to filter them out before you have anything to evaluate.
Possibly. But the goal was to have separate threads for non-normative and normative claims, and this is how it will be accomplished. My initial response was “That cannot be done”, probably from intuitions similar to yours, but that turned out to be false.
But the goal was to have separate threads for non-normative and normative claims,
My understanding was that the goal was to have a useful discussion, minus the mindkilling. AFAICT your proposal of the means by which to accomplish this, is to throw out the usefulness along with the mindkilling.
Different goals. The goal was indeed to have a useful discussion mins the mindkilling. The proposed subgoal was to have one thread for non-normative claims and another for normative claims. It might be throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but if you think so then you should (at a much lower level of nesting) propose a different strategy for having the discussion minus the mindkilling. Or at least say you have a problem with that subgoal at the start of the thread, rather than the end.
I didn’t mean to misrepresent your position or the debate so far. I was just trying to communicate how I’m seeing the debate. Hope you didn’t take my question the wrong way! :)
Our disagreement seems to boil down to:
A … net cost of silly biased human brains letting should cloud their assessment of is.
B … net cost of silly biased human brains letting is cloud their assessment of should.
Statement: Among Lesswrong readers: P(A>B) > P(B>A)
I say TRUE. You say FALSE.
Do you (and the readers) agree with this interpretation of the debate?
I don’t.
My point is that a discussion of PUA, by its nature, is a discussion of “should”. The relevant questions are things like “How does one best achieve X?” Excluding ethics from that discussion is wrong, and probably logically inconsistent.
I’m actually still a bit unclear on what you are referring to by this “letting should cloud their assessment of is” and its reverse.
Should and is assessed as they should be:
I have a good map, it shows the best way to get from A to B and … also C. I shouldn’t go to C, it is a nasty place.
Should and is assessed as they unfortunately often are:
I don’t want to go to C so I shouldn’t draw out that part around C on my map. I hope I still find a good way to B and don’t get lost.
I have a good map, it shows the best way to get from A to B and … also C. Wow C’s really nearby, lets go there!
Aha. I agree. Do people really make that mistake a lot around here?
Also note that ‘should’ goes on the map too. Not just in the “here be dragons” sense, but also indicated by the characterization that the way is “best”.
There is a whole host of empirically demonstrated biases in humans that work in these two directions under different circumstances. LWers may be aware of many of them, but they are far from immune.
Agreed but, should is coloured in with different ink on the map than is. I admit mapping should can prove to be as much of a challenge as is.
I see my proposal of two quarantined threads, as a proposal to lets stop messing up the map by all of us drawing with the same color at the same time, and first draw out “is” in black and then once the colour is dry add in should with red so we don’t forget where we want to go. Then use that as our general purpose map and update both red and black as we along our path and new previously unavailable empirical evidence meets our eyes.
I didn’t point this out before, but this is actually a good argument in favor of the ‘ethics later’ approach. It makes no sense to start drawing paths on your map before you’ve filled in all of the nodes. (Counterargument: assume stochasticity / a non-fully-observable environment).
Also, if this technique actually works, it should be able to be applied to political contexts as well. PUA is a relatively safer area to test this, since while it does induce mind-killing (a positive feature for purposes of this test) it does not draw in a lot of negative attention from off-site, which is one of the concerns regarding political discussion.
I am majorly in favor of researching ways of reducing/eliminating mind-killing effects.
So an analogous circumstance would be: if we were constructing a weighted directed graph representing routes between cities, we’d first put in all the nodes and connections and weights in black ink, and then plan the best route and mark it in red ink?
If so, that implies the discussion of “PUA” would include equal amounts of “X results in increased probability of the subject laughing at you” and “Y results in increased probability of the subject slapping you” and “Z results in increased probability of the subject handing you an aubergine”.
If the discussion is not goal-directed, I don’t see how it could be useful, especially for such a large space as human social interaction.
But it would be goal directed: “To catalogue beliefs and practices of PUAs and how well they map to reality.”
Without breaking the metaphor, we are taking someone else’s map and comparing it to our own map. Our goal being to update our map where their map of reality (black ink) is clearly better or at the very least learn if their map sucks. And to make this harder we aren’t one individual but a committee comparing the two maps. Worse some of us love their black ink more than their red one and vice versa, and can’t shut up about them. Let’s set up separate work meetings for the two issues so we know that black ink arguments have no place on meeting number 2. and the person is indulging his interests at the expense of good map making.
The reason why I favour black first is that going red first we risk drawing castles in clouds rather than a realizable destinations.
Oops.
Yes, that’s absolutely possible, and is (on reflection) what we have been talking about this whole time.
So the challenge, then, would be to distinguish the black from red ink in PUA, and make sure we’re only talking about the black ink in the ‘no ethics’ thread.
I have no intuitions about how feasible that is, but I withdraw my assertion it is ‘impossible’, as I was clearly talking about something else.
Yes! We can’t take PUA’s at their word. Even when they believe with unwavering certainty they are talking black ink, they are in the best of cases as confused as we are and in the worst quite a bit more confused. Also some people just like to lie to others to get to the red destination faster (heh).
It is hard, but apparently enough posters think we can make a decent map of the reality of romance that they try and write up posts and start discussions about them. Limiting ourselves to the more popular PUAs I think we can also get a pretty good idea of what their idea of reality is.
Comparing the two and seeking evidence to prove or disprove our speculations about reality seems like a worthy exercise.
I think this is a horrendously bad idea—“more popular” is not always positively correlated with “more correct”. ;-)
Also, “more popular” isn’t always positively correlated with “more useful”, either. The most popular PUA material is about indirect game, social tricks, and the like… and that’s why it’s popular. That doesn’t mean those things are the most useful ways to get into relationships.
Consider Bob, who believes he is unattractive to women. Will Bob be more interested in course A which tells him there are secrets to make women like him, or course B, which teaches him how to notice which women are already attracted to him? His (quite common) belief makes course B less attractive, even if course B would be far more useful.
Of available courses that fit Bob’s existing belief structure, the ones that will be most popular will be the ones that purport to explain his unattractiveness (and the attractiveness of other men) in a way that Bob can understand. And if they offer him a solution that doesn’t sound too difficult (i.e. act like a jerk), then this will be appealing.
What’s more, because Bob is convinced of his unattractiveness and fundamental low worth where women are concerned, Bob will be most attracted to courses that involve pretending to be someone he is not: after all, if who he is is unattractive, then of course he needs to pretend to be somebody else, right?
I could go on, but my point here is that popularity is a horrible way to select what to discuss, because there’s a systematic bias towards “tricks” as being the most marketable thing. However, even companies that sell tricks on the low end of the market to get people interested, usually sell some form of self-improvement as their “advanced” training. (That is, stuff that involves people actually being a different sort of man, rather than simply pretending to be one.)
(There are probably exceptions to this, of course.)
Anyway, a better selection criterion would be goal relevance. Most PUA sales material has end-user goals explicitly or implicitly stated—why not select materials on the basis of goals that LW has use for, and evaluate them for how well they achieve those stated goals?
What popular PUA is saying matters quite a bit because it helps us understand the PUA community as a cultural phenomena it also can help us by helping expose some biases that probably exist to some degree in harder to detect form in higher quality material. Perhaps well respected or esteemed authors (within the PUA community) rather than the ones that sell the most material (where would we even get that data?), are even better for this purpose.
But overall I’m not saying we shouldn’t extend our analysis to PUA’s that are less well known but seem particularly compelling to LessWrong readers. The thing is they have to be put in context.
How is that bad? The whole point is to locate actual beliefs and test them. If they’re incorrect, all the better—our job is probably easier. By focusing on the general population, we can cull down the potentially-useful beliefs without needing to ourselves bring ethics into the discussion. Thus, we only test “X results in a 20% chance of being handed an aubergine” if that is a belief some PUA practitioner actually holds.
These are all ‘red ink’ concerns. The ‘black ink’ thread is supposed to evaluate beliefs of PUAs without reference to how effective they are at achieving goals. You can’t presuppose what the goals are supposed to be or determine whether they’re optimal ways of achieving goals. Thus, we can test for the presence of aubergines, but we don’t need to know whether we actually want aubergines.
My initial response to your comment, is, “WTF?”
My second, more polite response, is simply that your suggestion isn’t particularly compatible with finding out useful things, since your proposed selection criteria will tend to filter them out before you have anything to evaluate.
I’m talking about following the strategy laid out by Konkvistador above. Have you been following this thread?
Possibly. But the goal was to have separate threads for non-normative and normative claims, and this is how it will be accomplished. My initial response was “That cannot be done”, probably from intuitions similar to yours, but that turned out to be false.
My understanding was that the goal was to have a useful discussion, minus the mindkilling. AFAICT your proposal of the means by which to accomplish this, is to throw out the usefulness along with the mindkilling.
Different goals. The goal was indeed to have a useful discussion mins the mindkilling. The proposed subgoal was to have one thread for non-normative claims and another for normative claims. It might be throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but if you think so then you should (at a much lower level of nesting) propose a different strategy for having the discussion minus the mindkilling. Or at least say you have a problem with that subgoal at the start of the thread, rather than the end.
I didn’t mean to misrepresent your position or the debate so far. I was just trying to communicate how I’m seeing the debate. Hope you didn’t take my question the wrong way! :)
Not at all (I think).