Up until “Fuck The Symbols” I’m with you. And as an article for the general public, I’d probably endorse the “Fuck the Symbols” section as well.
In particular:
it’s usually worth at least thinking about how to do it—because the process of thinking about it forces you to recognize that the Symbol does not necessarily give the thing, and consider what’s actually needed.
To the extent this is advocacy, however, it seems worth noting that I think the highly engaged LW crowd is already often pretty good about this, (so I’d be more excited about this being read by new LWers). In fact, in my experience, the highly-engaged LW crowd’s bias is already too far toward “fuck the symbols”.
There’s a lot of information that can be gained by examining the symbols. For example, I think EA’s efforts toward global development are highly stunted by a lack of close engagement with many existing efforts to do good. Working at a soup kitchen is probably not the best use of a poverty-focused EA’s time. But learning about UN programs, the various development sectors and associated interventions, and the status and shortcomings of existing M&E, I think very likely are (for those who haven’t done so). Doing so revealed to me a myriad of interventions that I’d expect to be higher impact than those endorsed by GiveWell. The symbols often contain valuable information.
The symbols can also be useful. Ivy League MBAs probably have an easier time raising money for certain types of businesses than do others.
So ‘fuck the symbols’ just feels much too strong to me, and in fact in the opposite direction I’d advocate, for the particular audience reading this.
You’re pointing to a good problem, but there’s more to it than a slider between “pay more attention to Symbols” and “pay less attention to Symbols”. I was thinking about writing a whole other post on this, but I’ll give a short version here.
First, suppose some group of people repeatedly says “Fuck the Symbols” and then manages to do the corresponding things without the Symbols, across a bunch of different areas. How does this parse to others, through a social lens? Basically, it’s countersignalling. It sends a message of “we are so good that we can do the things without the Symbols, those people with the Symbols are just a bunch of posers”. If a group of people does this consistently across a whole bunch of areas, then we basically have Counterculture.
(To be clear, I’m not saying that the intent behind saying “Fuck the Symbols” is necessarily to countersignal. Everything in the post still holds; saying “Fuck the Symbols” is an object-level useful way to avoid Goodhart. But some people insist on interpreting everything as a social signal, regardless of intent, and countersignalling is an obvious way for Fuck the Symbols to parse.)
One interesting output of this model: it says that groups which focus on object-level things (at least to start) will naturally end up counterculture-loaded. The countercultural inclinations of e.g. the rationalist/EA community is not an accident of history, it’s a natural result of the core approach.
But now there’s a danger: Fuck the Symbols becomes a symbolic move in its own right. People start to say Fuck the Symbols not because it’s object-level useful, but because it’s a recognizable social signal. It’s a status-granting Symbol within the counterculture. Once that happens, people will inevitably Goodhart on Fucking the Symbols, rather than doing it when it’s object-level useful.
The solution to this is not to move a mental slider from “pay less attention to Symbols” to “pay more attention to Symbols”. That would throw out the baby with the bathwater. Rather, the solution is to double-check whether Fucking the Symbols is actually useful in each particular situation. Think about how to solve the problem without the Symbol, in order to force yourself to consider the actual thing, but then go back and ask how the Symbol can improve the solution.
Or, go full meta: if Fucking the Symbols is itself a Symbol, then Fuck that Symbol in particular: ask how to solve the problem without Fucking the Symbols. (Culturally, this would parse as metacontrarianism.)
Doing so revealed to me a myriad of interventions that I’d expect to be higher impact than those endorsed by GiveWell.
Have you talked to GiveWell about this? Like, I don’t know much of anything about charities or the people at GiveWell. But the standard rationalist reaction to “I found something you can read that helps explain the domain you’re in and how to make the world a better place” is supposed to be “give me, give it now”.
(And the reason I ask is the huge potential upside of making GiveWell donations more effective.)
Yes, and they are public, and others have highlighted similar things to them and publicly.
GiveWell is now starting to look into a subset of these things:
To date, most of GiveWell’s research capacity has focused on finding the most impactful programs among those whose results can be rigorously measured. …
GiveWell has now been doing research to find the best giving opportunities in global health and development for 11 years, and we plan to increase the scope of giving opportunities we consider. We plan to expand our research team and scope in order to determine whether there are giving opportunities in global health and development that are more cost-effective than those we have identified to date.
We expect this expansion of our work to take us in a number of new directions,
Over the next several years, we plan to consider everything that we believe could be among the most cost-effective (broadly defined) giving opportunities in global health and development. This includes more comprehensively reviewing direct interventions in sectors where impacts are more difficult to measure, investigating opportunities to influence government policy, as well as other areas.
The only reason ivy league MBA has easier time is because the symbol is used as a shortcut of the actual vetting process of qualifications, so are most social status symbols. They indicate certain qualities and expertise on certain topics because of the general process involved in getting those status symbols in the first place. Of course the actual usefulness of the individuals have to be vetted by doing real work. Outside of playing a role in the production of actual substance, they are mostly used in human social interactions and communications to induce specific positive emotions in said individuals.
Up until “Fuck The Symbols” I’m with you. And as an article for the general public, I’d probably endorse the “Fuck the Symbols” section as well.
In particular:
To the extent this is advocacy, however, it seems worth noting that I think the highly engaged LW crowd is already often pretty good about this, (so I’d be more excited about this being read by new LWers). In fact, in my experience, the highly-engaged LW crowd’s bias is already too far toward “fuck the symbols”.
There’s a lot of information that can be gained by examining the symbols. For example, I think EA’s efforts toward global development are highly stunted by a lack of close engagement with many existing efforts to do good. Working at a soup kitchen is probably not the best use of a poverty-focused EA’s time. But learning about UN programs, the various development sectors and associated interventions, and the status and shortcomings of existing M&E, I think very likely are (for those who haven’t done so). Doing so revealed to me a myriad of interventions that I’d expect to be higher impact than those endorsed by GiveWell. The symbols often contain valuable information.
The symbols can also be useful. Ivy League MBAs probably have an easier time raising money for certain types of businesses than do others.
So ‘fuck the symbols’ just feels much too strong to me, and in fact in the opposite direction I’d advocate, for the particular audience reading this.
You’re pointing to a good problem, but there’s more to it than a slider between “pay more attention to Symbols” and “pay less attention to Symbols”. I was thinking about writing a whole other post on this, but I’ll give a short version here.
First, suppose some group of people repeatedly says “Fuck the Symbols” and then manages to do the corresponding things without the Symbols, across a bunch of different areas. How does this parse to others, through a social lens? Basically, it’s countersignalling. It sends a message of “we are so good that we can do the things without the Symbols, those people with the Symbols are just a bunch of posers”. If a group of people does this consistently across a whole bunch of areas, then we basically have Counterculture.
(To be clear, I’m not saying that the intent behind saying “Fuck the Symbols” is necessarily to countersignal. Everything in the post still holds; saying “Fuck the Symbols” is an object-level useful way to avoid Goodhart. But some people insist on interpreting everything as a social signal, regardless of intent, and countersignalling is an obvious way for Fuck the Symbols to parse.)
One interesting output of this model: it says that groups which focus on object-level things (at least to start) will naturally end up counterculture-loaded. The countercultural inclinations of e.g. the rationalist/EA community is not an accident of history, it’s a natural result of the core approach.
But now there’s a danger: Fuck the Symbols becomes a symbolic move in its own right. People start to say Fuck the Symbols not because it’s object-level useful, but because it’s a recognizable social signal. It’s a status-granting Symbol within the counterculture. Once that happens, people will inevitably Goodhart on Fucking the Symbols, rather than doing it when it’s object-level useful.
The solution to this is not to move a mental slider from “pay less attention to Symbols” to “pay more attention to Symbols”. That would throw out the baby with the bathwater. Rather, the solution is to double-check whether Fucking the Symbols is actually useful in each particular situation. Think about how to solve the problem without the Symbol, in order to force yourself to consider the actual thing, but then go back and ask how the Symbol can improve the solution.
Or, go full meta: if Fucking the Symbols is itself a Symbol, then Fuck that Symbol in particular: ask how to solve the problem without Fucking the Symbols. (Culturally, this would parse as metacontrarianism.)
Have you talked to GiveWell about this? Like, I don’t know much of anything about charities or the people at GiveWell. But the standard rationalist reaction to “I found something you can read that helps explain the domain you’re in and how to make the world a better place” is supposed to be “give me, give it now”.
(And the reason I ask is the huge potential upside of making GiveWell donations more effective.)
Yes, and they are public, and others have highlighted similar things to them and publicly.
GiveWell is now starting to look into a subset of these things:
https://blog.givewell.org/2019/02/07/how-givewells-research-is-evolving/
The only reason ivy league MBA has easier time is because the symbol is used as a shortcut of the actual vetting process of qualifications, so are most social status symbols. They indicate certain qualities and expertise on certain topics because of the general process involved in getting those status symbols in the first place. Of course the actual usefulness of the individuals have to be vetted by doing real work. Outside of playing a role in the production of actual substance, they are mostly used in human social interactions and communications to induce specific positive emotions in said individuals.