I think this approach is reasonable for things where failure is low stakes. But I really think it makes sense to be extremely conservative about who you start businesses with. Your ability to verify things is limited, and there may still be information in vibes even after updating on the results of all feasible efforts to verify someone’s trustworthiness.
But I really think it makes sense to be extremely conservative about who you start businesses with.
Yes, you should check carefully.
To put it another way: sure, use all the information you have access to (so long as you have good reason to believe that it is reliable, and not misleading)… but adopt a strategy that would still work well even if you ignored “vibes”.
I’m surprised to see this take so disagree-voted, given how sensible the policy of adopting a vibes-invariant strategy is. Anyone who disagree-voted care to explain?
If the strategy is vibes-invariant, it’s also ignoring useful information. It’s not sensible to use an X-invariant strategy unless you believe X carries no information whatsoever. And that’s kind of what the OP is arguing, that vibes do carry information. If you disagree with that, argue that directly! Arguing that you can adopt an invariant strategy without tossing away information is not correct or useful.
It’s not sensible to use an X-invariant strategy unless you believe X carries no information whatsoever.
This is not the case. It is sufficient for the X input channel to be very noisy, biased, or both, or for mistakes in measurement of X to be asymmetrically costly.
Separately, you may note that I did not, in fact, argue for a “vibes-invariant strategy”; that was @Mo Putera’s gloss, which I do not endorse. What I wrote was:
a good policy is to act in such a way that your actions are robust against vibe quality
and:
sure, use all the information you have access to (so long as you have good reason to believe that it is reliable, and not misleading)… but adopt a strategy that would still work well even if you ignored “vibes”
This is explicitly not an argument that you should “toss away information”.
If the strategy is vibes-invariant, it’s also ignoring useful information.
I am not one to suggest ignoring useful information if you’re able to process it in order to get a better answer. However, I think all the examples above were examples where people do not expect to be acting more effectively after processing the information.
That is, I agree with you for a perfect Bayesian that you shouldn’t ignore anything ever, but I read Said Achmiz as saying “If you get bad vibes from someone, be safer around them through planning”, which is not actually a qualitative difference from what Kaj Sotala suggested.
I think this approach is reasonable for things where failure is low stakes. But I really think it makes sense to be extremely conservative about who you start businesses with. Your ability to verify things is limited, and there may still be information in vibes even after updating on the results of all feasible efforts to verify someone’s trustworthiness.
Yes, you should check carefully.
To put it another way: sure, use all the information you have access to (so long as you have good reason to believe that it is reliable, and not misleading)… but adopt a strategy that would still work well even if you ignored “vibes”.
I’m surprised to see this take so disagree-voted, given how sensible the policy of adopting a vibes-invariant strategy is. Anyone who disagree-voted care to explain?
If the strategy is vibes-invariant, it’s also ignoring useful information. It’s not sensible to use an X-invariant strategy unless you believe X carries no information whatsoever. And that’s kind of what the OP is arguing, that vibes do carry information. If you disagree with that, argue that directly! Arguing that you can adopt an invariant strategy without tossing away information is not correct or useful.
This is not the case. It is sufficient for the X input channel to be very noisy, biased, or both, or for mistakes in measurement of X to be asymmetrically costly.
Separately, you may note that I did not, in fact, argue for a “vibes-invariant strategy”; that was @Mo Putera’s gloss, which I do not endorse. What I wrote was:
and:
This is explicitly not an argument that you should “toss away information”.
You’re right, I mis-paraphrased. Thanks for the correction Said.
I am not one to suggest ignoring useful information if you’re able to process it in order to get a better answer. However, I think all the examples above were examples where people do not expect to be acting more effectively after processing the information.
That is, I agree with you for a perfect Bayesian that you shouldn’t ignore anything ever, but I read Said Achmiz as saying “If you get bad vibes from someone, be safer around them through planning”, which is not actually a qualitative difference from what Kaj Sotala suggested.