As soon as I started reading this, the topic of automated epistemic coordination came to mind. So, I spend a lot of time on the ACX forums. And traditionally we’ve all independently tried to figure out the truth and then maybe we wander over to ACX where we communicate our findings with each other mostly from memory, without references, in a non-searchable (Google ignores it) database of comments sorted chronologically. There is no voting or reputation system there either.
It’s an inefficient way to learn and an awful filing system. LW is a little better, but not much, and more limited in scope than ACX. So I’ve been thinking there should be an “evidence clearinghouse” website for recording a massive hierarchy (directed acyclic graph) of claims, counterclaims and the evidence for each. It would include attributes of StackOverflow (voting & reputation system, with collaborative and competitive aspects) and Wikipedia (a hyperlinked web of information with academic and non-academic references).
I envision that larger claims (“humans are responsible for the increase in CO2 concentration in the atmosphere over the last 100 years”) can be built out of smaller claims (“Law of conservation of mass” + “Human CO2 emissions are greater than the rate of atmospheric increase”) which themselves can be built out of even smaller claims (“Estimates of annual human CO2 emissions” + “Rate of atmospheric increase / keeling curve”). And then, importantly, the reputation of smaller claims contributes to larger claims provided that users judge the logic as sound. Also, negative reputation in subclaims drags down the credibility of claims that use them. And obviously, voting needs to be more sophisticated than just “up” and “down”. (and surely some sort of Bayesian math should be in there somewhere.)
Anyway, there’s lots of details to work out and I have neither money nor time to build it (yet), but I do want to highlight the value of automated coordination algorithms. Systems like this could also nudge non-rationalists to coordinate with each other too, just by using a web site. And that’s a big deal!
Less important, I’ve been trying to work out how to build an open-source community for a decade or so, and not only has it not worked, it’s really rare even to find someone who understands or cares about any of the goals. It’s weird because the problem is seems almost obvious to me. I can’t even tell if what I’m bad at is solving coordination problems, or advertising, or communication, or if nobody has time to write software for free these days.
Meta-coordination:
Well, I talked to a guy on Reddit about that web site idea. He had a similar idea but different, described it, then I said that overall I preferred my version of the idea, and… no response; the discussion ended right then and there. We are so bad at this.
Coordination problems:
As soon as I started reading this, the topic of automated epistemic coordination came to mind. So, I spend a lot of time on the ACX forums. And traditionally we’ve all independently tried to figure out the truth and then maybe we wander over to ACX where we communicate our findings with each other mostly from memory, without references, in a non-searchable (Google ignores it) database of comments sorted chronologically. There is no voting or reputation system there either.
It’s an inefficient way to learn and an awful filing system. LW is a little better, but not much, and more limited in scope than ACX. So I’ve been thinking there should be an “evidence clearinghouse” website for recording a massive hierarchy (directed acyclic graph) of claims, counterclaims and the evidence for each. It would include attributes of StackOverflow (voting & reputation system, with collaborative and competitive aspects) and Wikipedia (a hyperlinked web of information with academic and non-academic references).
I envision that larger claims (“humans are responsible for the increase in CO2 concentration in the atmosphere over the last 100 years”) can be built out of smaller claims (“Law of conservation of mass” + “Human CO2 emissions are greater than the rate of atmospheric increase”) which themselves can be built out of even smaller claims (“Estimates of annual human CO2 emissions” + “Rate of atmospheric increase / keeling curve”). And then, importantly, the reputation of smaller claims contributes to larger claims provided that users judge the logic as sound. Also, negative reputation in subclaims drags down the credibility of claims that use them. And obviously, voting needs to be more sophisticated than just “up” and “down”. (and surely some sort of Bayesian math should be in there somewhere.)
Anyway, there’s lots of details to work out and I have neither money nor time to build it (yet), but I do want to highlight the value of automated coordination algorithms. Systems like this could also nudge non-rationalists to coordinate with each other too, just by using a web site. And that’s a big deal!
Less important, I’ve been trying to work out how to build an open-source community for a decade or so, and not only has it not worked, it’s really rare even to find someone who understands or cares about any of the goals. It’s weird because the problem is seems almost obvious to me. I can’t even tell if what I’m bad at is solving coordination problems, or advertising, or communication, or if nobody has time to write software for free these days.
Meta-coordination:
Well, I talked to a guy on Reddit about that web site idea. He had a similar idea but different, described it, then I said that overall I preferred my version of the idea, and… no response; the discussion ended right then and there. We are so bad at this.