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.
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.