The word “should” definitely doesn’t belong here. Like, that’s definitely a fair description of the push I’m making. Because I actually feel that way. But obviously, other people shouldn’t passionately advocate for open and honest discourse if they’re not actually passionate about open and honest discourse: that would be dishonest!
This seems to me like you’re saying “people shouldn’t have to advocate for being open and honest because people should be open and honest”
And then the question becomes… If you think it’s true that people should be open and honest, do you have policy proposals that help that become true?
I separated out the question of “stuff individuals should do unilaterally” from “norm enforcement” because it seems like at least some stuff doesn’t require any central decision nodes.
In particular, while “don’t lie” is an easy injunction to follow, “account for systematic distortions in what you say” is actually quite computationally hard, because there are a lot of distortions with different mechanisms and different places one might intervene on their thought process and/or communication process. “Publicly say literally ever inconvenient thing you think of” probably isn’t what you meant (or maybe it was?), and it might cause you to end not having a harder time thinking inconvenient thoughts.
I’m asking because I’m actually interested in improving on this dimension.
(some current best guesses of mine are, at least for my own values, are:
“Practice noticing heretical thoughts I think and actually notice what things you can’t say, without obligating yourself to say them, so that you don’t accidentally train yourself not to think them”
“Practice noticing opportunities to exhibit social courage, either in low stakes situations, or important situations. Allocate some additional attention towards practicing social courage as skill/muscle” (it’s unclear to me how much to prioritize this, because there’s two separate potential models of ‘social/epistemic courage is a muscle’ and ’social/epistemic courage is a resource you can spend, but you risk using up people’s willingness to listen to you, as well a “most things one might be courageous about actually aren’t important and you’ll end up spending a lot of effort on things that don’t matter”)
But, I am interested in what you actually do within your own frame/value setup.
I’m more interested, as the person who has been the powerful central decision node at multiple times in my life, and will likely be in the future (and as someone who is interested in institution design in general) in if you have suggestions for how to make this work in new or existing institutions. For instance, some of the ideas I’ve shared elsewhere on radical transparency norms seem one way to go about this.
I think cultural evolution and the marketplace of ideas seems like a good idea, but memetics unfortunately select for other things than just truth, and relying on memetics to propagate truth norms (if indeed the propagation of truth norms is good) feels insufficient.
This seems to me like you’re saying “people shouldn’t have to advocate for being open and honest because people should be open and honest”
And then the question becomes… If you think it’s true that people should be open and honest, do you have policy proposals that help that become true?
Not really? The concept of a “policy proposal” seems to presuppose control over some powerful central decision node, which I don’t think is true of me. This is a forum website. I write things. Maybe someone reads them. Maybe they learn something. Maybe me and the people who are better at open and honest discourse preferentially collaborate with each other (and ignore people who we can detect are playing a different game), have systematically better ideas, and newcomers tend to imitate our ways in a process of cultural evolution.
I separated out the question of “stuff individuals should do unilaterally” from “norm enforcement” because it seems like at least some stuff doesn’t require any central decision nodes.
In particular, while “don’t lie” is an easy injunction to follow, “account for systematic distortions in what you say” is actually quite computationally hard, because there are a lot of distortions with different mechanisms and different places one might intervene on their thought process and/or communication process. “Publicly say literally ever inconvenient thing you think of” probably isn’t what you meant (or maybe it was?), and it might cause you to end not having a harder time thinking inconvenient thoughts.
I’m asking because I’m actually interested in improving on this dimension.
(some current best guesses of mine are, at least for my own values, are:
“Practice noticing heretical thoughts I think and actually notice what things you can’t say, without obligating yourself to say them, so that you don’t accidentally train yourself not to think them”
“Practice noticing opportunities to exhibit social courage, either in low stakes situations, or important situations. Allocate some additional attention towards practicing social courage as skill/muscle” (it’s unclear to me how much to prioritize this, because there’s two separate potential models of ‘social/epistemic courage is a muscle’ and ’social/epistemic courage is a resource you can spend, but you risk using up people’s willingness to listen to you, as well a “most things one might be courageous about actually aren’t important and you’ll end up spending a lot of effort on things that don’t matter”)
But, I am interested in what you actually do within your own frame/value setup.
I’m more interested, as the person who has been the powerful central decision node at multiple times in my life, and will likely be in the future (and as someone who is interested in institution design in general) in if you have suggestions for how to make this work in new or existing institutions. For instance, some of the ideas I’ve shared elsewhere on radical transparency norms seem one way to go about this.
I think cultural evolution and the marketplace of ideas seems like a good idea, but memetics unfortunately select for other things than just truth, and relying on memetics to propagate truth norms (if indeed the propagation of truth norms is good) feels insufficient.