I instead have a sense that your position is “look, we’re over here playing a game with everyone who understands these rules, and Zack and Said don’t, which means they should stop playing our game.”
No, I’m not saying Zack and Said should stop playing the game, I’m saying they should stop being sanctimonious about their inability to do what the vast majority of people have a pretty easy time doing (“checking interpretations” and “sharing any of the interpretive labor at all”, respectively).
I would be surprised to hear you claim that the valid critical points that Zack and Said make are contingent on them continuing to do the shitty things of (respectively) leaping to conclusions about A definitely implying B, or refusing to believe that A implies A until someone logically proves A→A. The times I’ve seen Zack and Said being useful or perceptive were when they weren’t doing these useless and unproductive moves, but rather just saying what they thought.
When Zack says what he thinks, instead of going “hey, everybody, look how abhorrent my strawman of Rob’s position is!” and trying to trick everyone into thinking that was Rob’s position and that he is the sole bastion of epistemic virtue holding back the tides of evil, it’s often useful.
When Said says what he thinks, instead of demanding that people rigorously define “sky,” “blue,” and “is” before allowing the conversation to move on from the premise “the sky is blue today,” it’s often useful.
There’s absolutely nothing that Zack is currently accomplishing that couldn’t have been accomplished if he’d first written a comment to Rob saying “did you mean X?”
He could’ve even gone off and drafted his post while waiting on an answer; it needn’t have even delayed his longer rant, if Rob failed to reply.
Acting like a refusal to employ that bare minimum of social grace is a virtue is bullshit, and I think Zack acts like it is. If you’re that hostile to your fellow LWers, then I think you are making a mistake being here.
There’s absolutely nothing that Zack is currently accomplishing that couldn’t have been accomplished if he’d first written a comment to Rob saying “did you mean X?” [...] Acting like a refusal to employ that bare minimum of social grace is a virtue is bullshit
It’s not that I think refusing to employ the bare minimum of social grace is a virtue. It’s that I wasn’t aware—in fact, am still not aware—that confirming interpretations with the original author before publishing a critical essay constitutes the bare minimum of social grace. The idea that it’s somehow bad behavior for intellectuals to publish essays about other intellectuals’ essays without checking with the original author first is something I’ve never heard before; I think unilaterally publishing critical essays is a completely normal thing that intellectuals do all the time, and I see no particular reason for self-identified “rationalist” intellectuals to behave any differently.
For an arbitrary example from our local subculture, Yudkowsky once wrote “A Reply to Francois Chollet” criticizing Chollet’s essay on the purported impossibility of an intelligence explosion. Did Yudkowsky first write an email to Chollet saying “did you mean X”? I don’t know, but I would guess not; if Chollet stands by the text he published, and Yudkowsky doesn’t feel uncertain about how to interpret the text, it’s not clear how either of their interests would be served by Yudkowsky sending an email first rather than just publishing the post.
I didn’t check with Leong beforehand. I didn’t check with Yudkowsky beforehand. I didn’t check with Weatherall or O’Connor or Bostrom or Shulman beforehand. No one told me I should have checked with Leong or Yudkowsky or Weatherall or O’Connor or Bostrom or Shulman beforehand. It’s just never been brought up as a problem or an offense before, ever.
Most of these authors are much more important people than me who are probably very busy. If someone had told me I should have checked with the authors beforehand, I think I would have said, “Wouldn’t that be disrespectful of their time?”
I do often notify the author after I’ve published a reaction piece. In the case of the current post, I unfortunately neglected to do so, but after seeing your comment, I did reach out to Rob, and he left afewcomments. Notably, in response to my comment about my motivations for writing this post, Rob writes:
Seems great to me! I share your intuition that Goodwill seems a bit odd to include. I think it’s right to push back on proposed norms like these and talk about how justified they are, and I hope my list can be the start of a conversation like that rather than the end.
This would seem to be pretty strong counterevidence against the claim that I failed to employ the bare minimum of social grace (at least as that minimum is construed by Rob himself)?
… inability to do what the vast majority of people have a pretty easy time doing (“checking interpretations” and “sharing any of the interpretive labor at all”, respectively).
My objection to this sort of claim is basically the same as my objection to this, from an earlier comment of yours:
[Interacting with Said] has never once felt cooperative or collaborative; I can make twice the intellectual progress with half the effort with a randomly selected LWer
And similar to my objection in a much earlier discussion (which I can’t seem to find now, apologies) about Double Crux (I think), wherein (I am summarizing from memory) you said that you have usually been able to easily explain and apply the concept when teaching it to people in person, as a CFAR instructor; to which I asked how you could distinguish between your interlocutor/student really understanding you, vs. the social pressure of the situation (the student/teacher frame, your personal charisma, etc.) causing them, perhaps, to persuade themselves that they’ve understood, when in fact they have not.
In short, the problem is this:
If “sharing interpretive labor”, “making intellectual progress”, etc., just boils down to “agreeing with you, without necessarily getting any closer to (or perhaps even getting further away from) the truth”, then of course you would observe exactly what you say you observe, yes?
And yet it would, in this scenario, be very bad if you self-selected into discussions where everyone had (it would seem to you) an easy time “sharing interpretive labor”, where you routinely made (or so you would think) plenty of “intellectual progress”, etc.
No doubt you disagree with this view of things. But on what basis? How can you tell that this isn’t what’s happening?
No, I’m not saying Zack and Said should stop playing the game, I’m saying they should stop being sanctimonious about their inability to do what the vast majority of people have a pretty easy time doing (“checking interpretations” and “sharing any of the interpretive labor at all”, respectively).
I would be surprised to hear you claim that the valid critical points that Zack and Said make are contingent on them continuing to do the shitty things of (respectively) leaping to conclusions about A definitely implying B, or refusing to believe that A implies A until someone logically proves A→A. The times I’ve seen Zack and Said being useful or perceptive were when they weren’t doing these useless and unproductive moves, but rather just saying what they thought.
When Zack says what he thinks, instead of going “hey, everybody, look how abhorrent my strawman of Rob’s position is!” and trying to trick everyone into thinking that was Rob’s position and that he is the sole bastion of epistemic virtue holding back the tides of evil, it’s often useful.
When Said says what he thinks, instead of demanding that people rigorously define “sky,” “blue,” and “is” before allowing the conversation to move on from the premise “the sky is blue today,” it’s often useful.
There’s absolutely nothing that Zack is currently accomplishing that couldn’t have been accomplished if he’d first written a comment to Rob saying “did you mean X?”
He could’ve even gone off and drafted his post while waiting on an answer; it needn’t have even delayed his longer rant, if Rob failed to reply.
Acting like a refusal to employ that bare minimum of social grace is a virtue is bullshit, and I think Zack acts like it is. If you’re that hostile to your fellow LWers, then I think you are making a mistake being here.
It’s not that I think refusing to employ the bare minimum of social grace is a virtue. It’s that I wasn’t aware—in fact, am still not aware—that confirming interpretations with the original author before publishing a critical essay constitutes the bare minimum of social grace. The idea that it’s somehow bad behavior for intellectuals to publish essays about other intellectuals’ essays without checking with the original author first is something I’ve never heard before; I think unilaterally publishing critical essays is a completely normal thing that intellectuals do all the time, and I see no particular reason for self-identified “rationalist” intellectuals to behave any differently.
For an arbitrary example from our local subculture, Yudkowsky once wrote “A Reply to Francois Chollet” criticizing Chollet’s essay on the purported impossibility of an intelligence explosion. Did Yudkowsky first write an email to Chollet saying “did you mean X”? I don’t know, but I would guess not; if Chollet stands by the text he published, and Yudkowsky doesn’t feel uncertain about how to interpret the text, it’s not clear how either of their interests would be served by Yudkowsky sending an email first rather than just publishing the post.
As far as my own work goes, “Aiming for Convergence” and “‘Physicist Motors’” aren’t the first times I’ve written reaction posts to popular Less Wrong posts that I didn’t like. Previously, I wrote “Relevance Norms” in reaction to Chris Leong (following John Nerst) on contextualizing vs. decoupling norms, and “Firming Up Not-Lying Around Its Edge-Cases Is Less Broadly Useful Than One Might Initially Think” in reaction to Yudkowsky on meta-honesty.
I’ve also written other commentary posts that said some critical things about an article, without being so negative overall, such as “Comment on ‘Endogenous Epistemic Factionalization’” (reacting to an article by University of California–Irvine professors James Weatherall and Cailin O’Connor) and “Comment on ‘Propositions Concerning Digital Minds and Society’” (reacting to an article by Nick Bostrom and Carl Shulman).
I didn’t check with Leong beforehand. I didn’t check with Yudkowsky beforehand. I didn’t check with Weatherall or O’Connor or Bostrom or Shulman beforehand. No one told me I should have checked with Leong or Yudkowsky or Weatherall or O’Connor or Bostrom or Shulman beforehand. It’s just never been brought up as a problem or an offense before, ever.
Most of these authors are much more important people than me who are probably very busy. If someone had told me I should have checked with the authors beforehand, I think I would have said, “Wouldn’t that be disrespectful of their time?”
I do often notify the author after I’ve published a reaction piece. In the case of the current post, I unfortunately neglected to do so, but after seeing your comment, I did reach out to Rob, and he left a few comments. Notably, in response to my comment about my motivations for writing this post, Rob writes:
This would seem to be pretty strong counterevidence against the claim that I failed to employ the bare minimum of social grace (at least as that minimum is construed by Rob himself)?
My objection to this sort of claim is basically the same as my objection to this, from an earlier comment of yours:
And similar to my objection in a much earlier discussion (which I can’t seem to find now, apologies) about Double Crux (I think), wherein (I am summarizing from memory) you said that you have usually been able to easily explain and apply the concept when teaching it to people in person, as a CFAR instructor; to which I asked how you could distinguish between your interlocutor/student really understanding you, vs. the social pressure of the situation (the student/teacher frame, your personal charisma, etc.) causing them, perhaps, to persuade themselves that they’ve understood, when in fact they have not.
In short, the problem is this:
If “sharing interpretive labor”, “making intellectual progress”, etc., just boils down to “agreeing with you, without necessarily getting any closer to (or perhaps even getting further away from) the truth”, then of course you would observe exactly what you say you observe, yes?
And yet it would, in this scenario, be very bad if you self-selected into discussions where everyone had (it would seem to you) an easy time “sharing interpretive labor”, where you routinely made (or so you would think) plenty of “intellectual progress”, etc.
No doubt you disagree with this view of things. But on what basis? How can you tell that this isn’t what’s happening?
I object to this characterization, which is inaccurate and tendentious.