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.)
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.)