Eh, it is unfortunately a difficult problem either way. Every system will hate critics because every system will think it’s obviously right, and its evils are obviously justified, and even if some members of it are a bit more privileged than others, well, it’s because they are obviously deserving and obviously contributing much more to society than any others. But you’re also not wrong that complete iconoclast behaviour isn’t precisely constructive on its own—we see this a lot with how many people interpret “critical independent thinking” as “listen whatever they tell you on TV and believe the exact opposite”. Hence vaccines don’t work, 9/11 was an inside job, we never went on the Moon, and the Earth is flat. Screw big geology, teach the controversy, drink the lava!
Not sure there’s a real solution. I tend to think that compared to ancient Athens, modern societies seem more robust (if only because of sheer numbers!) and can tolerate more internal dissent, and so should. While all of this stupidity going around makes lots of things harder than they should be, it’s not quite a lethal dose yet (for society, at least. The stupidity does kill people. Various flavours of that sort of stupidity have probably killed a lot of people during the COVID pandemic; many of them not guilty of being that stupid themselves). I hate the “paradox of tolerance” meme (which is kinda akin to what you’re bringing up here) because it’s way too little specific in the way it’s used. I guess a stronger form of it might be that for a democracy to function, you can’t make disempowering significant parts of the population the subject of democratic decision (or a majority can vote a minority out, and so you just get an oligarchy). THAT is well defined enough to be consistent. But defence against memes that uselessly erode trust while leaving the door open to fruitful criticism that society needs to progress? Not sure how could you possibly do that. Your only real choice is to err on one side.
I remember the opposite extreme from my socialist youth. The keywords were “constructive criticism”. The idea was that you are not allowed to complain against any negative aspect of the existing solution, unless you can design a 100% functional alternative from the scratch (which needs to be approved by the people currently in power, who by the way are allowed to provide non-constructive criticism against your solution).
Shortly, you were not allowed to criticize anything, but it was said in a way that made it your fault for being an incompetent critic. See, the regime is open to honest criticism! We only punish the trolls...
*
Now of course there are two different things. Can you list the negatives of the existing solution? Can you design a better solution? Both are legitimate questions, but we should not treat them as synonyms.
It can be that the current system has disadvantages, but no one can design a Pareto improvement, and all things considered maybe we should keep it. Still, the disadvantages are worth noting.
It can also be that the current system has disadvantages, a clear improvement is possible, but the person who is hurt by the current disadvantages is not qualified to design the improvement… but they can provide feedback about how the current system is hurting them, a data point that other people might not notice.
So I guess we should clearly separate the “providing feedback” phase from the “designing an alternative” phase. On one hand, lack of designing ability should not be used as an excuse to dismiss feedback. On the other hand, negative feedback should not be taken as a proof that a better option is (trivially) possible.
I remember the opposite extreme from my socialist youth. The keywords were “constructive criticism”. The idea was that you are not allowed to complain against any negative aspect of the existing solution, unless you can design a 100% functional alternative from the scratch (which needs to be approved by the people currently in power, who by the way are allowed to provide non-constructive criticism against your solution).
Which is especially ironic from socialists because if there’s a poster boy for “correct in pointing out the issues with the status quo, pretty shit pie-in-the-sky proposed solution”, I’d say it’s Karl Marx.
But yeah, ideally you’d need to balance the two things. At the very least if all you can do is provide feedback, do so in a precise enough manner that people can work out a solution even if you can’t (for example, define by what metric you would consider the problem solved rather than leaving yourself open a path to be perpetually aggrieved by moving the goalposts).
If I complain at a restaurant that the soup is too salty, and the cook makes a new one, and now I complain that this one is too spicy (let’s assume the previous one was not), am I moving the goalpost?
I don’t know how to define the rules for what is proper criticism. Sometimes the utility function is too complex to express clearly. (And sometimes the person just sucks at expressing themselves clearly.)
On the other hand, if a situation is inherently a tradeoff between X and Y, and the person says “too much X” and later “too much Y”, it makes sense to tell them “hey, we all know that this is a tradeoff between X and Y, so either tell us what proportion of X to Y you want, or shut up”. (Then again, the person might challenge the idea that the tradeoff is inevitable. But better if they do it explicitly, rather than just complaining about X one day, and about Y the other day.)
On the meta level, it’s the same problem again—I can’t give you the proper rules for criticism, but I can say when I feel that people are going too far in certain direction. So I am unconstructively criticizing the very idea of criticism, heh.
I claim there are ratios of cheap-criticism-to-creativity that are much better than others. The extremes of the spectrum are both very problematic, if that’s all there is. But 50% probably isn’t the sweet spot either. It might be something like 1:10. Shifting the ratio toward that sweet spot is a solution, and I think that the essence of Duncan’s post is claiming which direction we ought to move in and why.
One of my challenges with Duncan’s post is that, personally, I’d much prefer somebody writing 3300 words explaining why they disagree with me in their own post than writing 15 words worth of PONDS [1] comments in response to one of mine. I don’t mind being disagreed with—just the burden-of-proof-shifting, nitpicky, low-grade negativity vibe that PONDS comments create. It’s specifically the short Socratic comments that bug me. But overall Duncan is aptly describing an important reason why I’ve started writing less on LessWrong over the last couple of years.
I’d also say that it’s an easy habit to fall into. I’ve done it myself (to Duncan, among others!), and I don’t like that about my own behavior. So I appreciate a renorming effort on this topic.
I agree there’s good ratios; while sometimes the answer defies common sense, for example, very often common sense is common for a reason. But even if you have a rough idea of what the ratio is, how do you maintain it precisely? “Poisoning annoying people with hemlock” is probably not a fantastic approach, however tempting it may be.
I think in a way there’s something of a precarious, somewhat unstable equilibrium in which a culture lives that allows it to balance these two forces in a healthy way, but then the culture can roll down either side of the hill (sometimes split in the middle and do both, which is what it feels like is happening now) and the magic breaks. I’m really not sure how you would even begin keeping it in the proper place, except within smaller subcultures where you can meaningfully gatekeep. You can try to foster a respect and understanding of the healthy middle point, but it’s hard to figure how could you strike the perfect balance of incentives that leads to “10% of society turns into Socrates, the rest are conformists”.
I agree it’s a moving target, but you don’t have to keep it precisely static in one place. Think of it more like a thermostat: we keep taking the temperature, then turn on heating or cooling depending on the difference between the current and desired temperature.
I get it, but honestly I think the most important practical take away about this is for how one should manage their own subculture/forum/whatever. Society-wide interpretations of this are really more likely to lead to rather dark places than do any good IMO. Opening it with an analogy about how maybe the guys who executed a philosopher for “corrupting the youth” and being essentially a heretic had a point may not be the best way to discuss it either: even if Socrates was potentially a danger, those are traditionally the exact same kind of excuses demagogues, populists and authoritarians use to justify their power, and deciding who was “right” here is not a simple exercise; perhaps an impossible one, after so much time.
I mean, it’s ancient Athens. Even supposing Socrates was threatening to destroy that society, if any of us was transported back in time, we’d probably try to destroy it too! What with all the slavery and the women treated as property? Obviously Socrates wasn’t doing it from either a feminist or anti-slavery point of view, but we’re not precisely in a position to talk. Not even “the order was trying to defend itself” is a good reason on its own. The order always tries to defend itself, but sometimes the order is bad.
I read Duncan’s post as being mainly about LW, using the society of Athens as an analogy. “Poisoning Socrates” to me would be more like reprimanding or firing an employee at a startup who’s demoralizing the team, not literally forcing somebody to commit suicide for criticizing someone else. In most places I think it’s recognized that there’s a balance between critique and creativity, and Duncan’s saying that specifically on LW, we seem to have stumbled into a bad equilibrium with way more cheap criticism than is productive to truth-seeking.
Eh, it is unfortunately a difficult problem either way. Every system will hate critics because every system will think it’s obviously right, and its evils are obviously justified, and even if some members of it are a bit more privileged than others, well, it’s because they are obviously deserving and obviously contributing much more to society than any others. But you’re also not wrong that complete iconoclast behaviour isn’t precisely constructive on its own—we see this a lot with how many people interpret “critical independent thinking” as “listen whatever they tell you on TV and believe the exact opposite”. Hence vaccines don’t work, 9/11 was an inside job, we never went on the Moon, and the Earth is flat. Screw big geology, teach the controversy, drink the lava!
Not sure there’s a real solution. I tend to think that compared to ancient Athens, modern societies seem more robust (if only because of sheer numbers!) and can tolerate more internal dissent, and so should. While all of this stupidity going around makes lots of things harder than they should be, it’s not quite a lethal dose yet (for society, at least. The stupidity does kill people. Various flavours of that sort of stupidity have probably killed a lot of people during the COVID pandemic; many of them not guilty of being that stupid themselves). I hate the “paradox of tolerance” meme (which is kinda akin to what you’re bringing up here) because it’s way too little specific in the way it’s used. I guess a stronger form of it might be that for a democracy to function, you can’t make disempowering significant parts of the population the subject of democratic decision (or a majority can vote a minority out, and so you just get an oligarchy). THAT is well defined enough to be consistent. But defence against memes that uselessly erode trust while leaving the door open to fruitful criticism that society needs to progress? Not sure how could you possibly do that. Your only real choice is to err on one side.
I remember the opposite extreme from my socialist youth. The keywords were “constructive criticism”. The idea was that you are not allowed to complain against any negative aspect of the existing solution, unless you can design a 100% functional alternative from the scratch (which needs to be approved by the people currently in power, who by the way are allowed to provide non-constructive criticism against your solution).
Shortly, you were not allowed to criticize anything, but it was said in a way that made it your fault for being an incompetent critic. See, the regime is open to honest criticism! We only punish the trolls...
*
Now of course there are two different things. Can you list the negatives of the existing solution? Can you design a better solution? Both are legitimate questions, but we should not treat them as synonyms.
It can be that the current system has disadvantages, but no one can design a Pareto improvement, and all things considered maybe we should keep it. Still, the disadvantages are worth noting.
It can also be that the current system has disadvantages, a clear improvement is possible, but the person who is hurt by the current disadvantages is not qualified to design the improvement… but they can provide feedback about how the current system is hurting them, a data point that other people might not notice.
So I guess we should clearly separate the “providing feedback” phase from the “designing an alternative” phase. On one hand, lack of designing ability should not be used as an excuse to dismiss feedback. On the other hand, negative feedback should not be taken as a proof that a better option is (trivially) possible.
Which is especially ironic from socialists because if there’s a poster boy for “correct in pointing out the issues with the status quo, pretty shit pie-in-the-sky proposed solution”, I’d say it’s Karl Marx.
But yeah, ideally you’d need to balance the two things. At the very least if all you can do is provide feedback, do so in a precise enough manner that people can work out a solution even if you can’t (for example, define by what metric you would consider the problem solved rather than leaving yourself open a path to be perpetually aggrieved by moving the goalposts).
If I complain at a restaurant that the soup is too salty, and the cook makes a new one, and now I complain that this one is too spicy (let’s assume the previous one was not), am I moving the goalpost?
I don’t know how to define the rules for what is proper criticism. Sometimes the utility function is too complex to express clearly. (And sometimes the person just sucks at expressing themselves clearly.)
On the other hand, if a situation is inherently a tradeoff between X and Y, and the person says “too much X” and later “too much Y”, it makes sense to tell them “hey, we all know that this is a tradeoff between X and Y, so either tell us what proportion of X to Y you want, or shut up”. (Then again, the person might challenge the idea that the tradeoff is inevitable. But better if they do it explicitly, rather than just complaining about X one day, and about Y the other day.)
On the meta level, it’s the same problem again—I can’t give you the proper rules for criticism, but I can say when I feel that people are going too far in certain direction. So I am unconstructively criticizing the very idea of criticism, heh.
I claim there are ratios of cheap-criticism-to-creativity that are much better than others. The extremes of the spectrum are both very problematic, if that’s all there is. But 50% probably isn’t the sweet spot either. It might be something like 1:10. Shifting the ratio toward that sweet spot is a solution, and I think that the essence of Duncan’s post is claiming which direction we ought to move in and why.
One of my challenges with Duncan’s post is that, personally, I’d much prefer somebody writing 3300 words explaining why they disagree with me in their own post than writing 15 words worth of PONDS [1] comments in response to one of mine. I don’t mind being disagreed with—just the burden-of-proof-shifting, nitpicky, low-grade negativity vibe that PONDS comments create. It’s specifically the short Socratic comments that bug me. But overall Duncan is aptly describing an important reason why I’ve started writing less on LessWrong over the last couple of years.
I’d also say that it’s an easy habit to fall into. I’ve done it myself (to Duncan, among others!), and I don’t like that about my own behavior. So I appreciate a renorming effort on this topic.
[1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/k5TTsuHovbeTWgszD/for-better-commenting-avoid-ponds
I agree there’s good ratios; while sometimes the answer defies common sense, for example, very often common sense is common for a reason. But even if you have a rough idea of what the ratio is, how do you maintain it precisely? “Poisoning annoying people with hemlock” is probably not a fantastic approach, however tempting it may be.
I think in a way there’s something of a precarious, somewhat unstable equilibrium in which a culture lives that allows it to balance these two forces in a healthy way, but then the culture can roll down either side of the hill (sometimes split in the middle and do both, which is what it feels like is happening now) and the magic breaks. I’m really not sure how you would even begin keeping it in the proper place, except within smaller subcultures where you can meaningfully gatekeep. You can try to foster a respect and understanding of the healthy middle point, but it’s hard to figure how could you strike the perfect balance of incentives that leads to “10% of society turns into Socrates, the rest are conformists”.
I agree it’s a moving target, but you don’t have to keep it precisely static in one place. Think of it more like a thermostat: we keep taking the temperature, then turn on heating or cooling depending on the difference between the current and desired temperature.
I get it, but honestly I think the most important practical take away about this is for how one should manage their own subculture/forum/whatever. Society-wide interpretations of this are really more likely to lead to rather dark places than do any good IMO. Opening it with an analogy about how maybe the guys who executed a philosopher for “corrupting the youth” and being essentially a heretic had a point may not be the best way to discuss it either: even if Socrates was potentially a danger, those are traditionally the exact same kind of excuses demagogues, populists and authoritarians use to justify their power, and deciding who was “right” here is not a simple exercise; perhaps an impossible one, after so much time.
I mean, it’s ancient Athens. Even supposing Socrates was threatening to destroy that society, if any of us was transported back in time, we’d probably try to destroy it too! What with all the slavery and the women treated as property? Obviously Socrates wasn’t doing it from either a feminist or anti-slavery point of view, but we’re not precisely in a position to talk. Not even “the order was trying to defend itself” is a good reason on its own. The order always tries to defend itself, but sometimes the order is bad.
I read Duncan’s post as being mainly about LW, using the society of Athens as an analogy. “Poisoning Socrates” to me would be more like reprimanding or firing an employee at a startup who’s demoralizing the team, not literally forcing somebody to commit suicide for criticizing someone else. In most places I think it’s recognized that there’s a balance between critique and creativity, and Duncan’s saying that specifically on LW, we seem to have stumbled into a bad equilibrium with way more cheap criticism than is productive to truth-seeking.