some counter-arguments, in no particular order of importance:
Verbal communication is quite often more succinct, because it is easier to exhaust the vocal medium, and you can see in real time your conversationists getting bored with your rambling.
Verbal communication allows far more nuance carried with tone, body language, and social situation, thus often delivers the message most clearly. I find it most useful when discussing Ethics: everyone is a clinical utilitarian when typing, but far more humanistic when they see the other person’s facial reaction to your words.
Rhetoric and charisma do not carry well over text. Most Rationalists consider it beneficial, right until the point where they need to explain something, or convince non-Rationalists and completely lack the tools to do so. Avoiding the use of verbal rhetoric and not training your in-person charisma is the surefire way to become very unconvincing to the general audience: case in point, every attempt by explain AI Risk to “muggles” by somewhat introvert and dry-talking Rationalists.
Related to point 3: conversational charisma is the main tool used by human males to woo women. By not practicing conversational charisma, Rationalists ensure they will breed themselves out of existence.
Most child-rearing and education is oral communication. Without practicing it, the Rationalist will not make a good parent or a teacher, and thus, from civilizational perspective, had squandered his rationality.
Rubberducking: saying things out-loud quite often leads to epiphanies, especially negative ones (“wow, my cherished idea sounds really dumb when I say it out, loud.”). Writing down, and then reading your own ideas often leads to an emotional feedback loop in which you reinforce your own conviction rather than nit-picking your own idea. This leads to...
Oral communication avoids the risk of Rabbit-Holes. When writing, uninterrupted, it is easy to accidentally pick a logical mistake as the crux of your whole argument, and waste hours exploring it. In conversation, your partner/opponent can snip that in the bud.
Op-Sec. Oral conversation is far less likely to get you in trouble for the things you say, unless you are being recorded. Meanwhile, a text based conversation, especially on a social platform is a Sword of Damocles always hanging over your head. Say the wrong thing, and at worst a dozen people will consider you an ass. Write and post the wrong thing, and you might, decades from now, lose your job, your social standing, or even your life. An innocent comment today might make people cancel you in 2040, or a vengeful Basilisk mulching you in 2045.
I am sensing some implicit if not explicit claims that rationalists believe in Hollywood Rationality instead of Actual Rationality. To be clear, that is untrue.
possibly, but is that not basically a No True Rationalist trick? I do not see a way for us to truly check that, unless we capture LW rationalists one by one and test them, but even then, what is preventing you from claiming: “eh, maybe this particular person is not a Real Rationalist but a Nerdy Hollywood Rationalist, but the others are the real deal,” ad nauseam?
I definitely agree that people who consider themselves Rationalists believe themselves to be Actual Rationalists not Hollywood Rationalists. This of course leads us to the much analyzed question of “why aren’t Rationalists winning?” The answers I see is that either Rationality does not lead to Winning, Or the Rationalists aren’t Actual Rationalists (yet, or at all, or at least not sufficiently).
A major case in point is that Rationalists mostly failed to convince the world about the threat posed by unrestricted AI. This means that either Rationalists are wrong about the AI threat, or bad at convincing. The second option is more likely I think, and I wager the reason Rationalists have a hard time convincing the general public is not because the logic of the argument is faulty, but because the delivery is based on clunky rhetoric and shows no attempts at well engineered charisma.
I’m not sure if this addresses all of the things you’re saying. If not, let me know.
I’m not claiming that all or even most rationalists actually are successful in leaning closer to Real Rationality than Hollywood Rationality. I’m claiming that a very large majority 1) endorse and 2) aspire towards the former rather than the latter.
Incremental Progress and the Valley talks about the relationship between rationality and winning. In short, what the post says and what I think the majority opinion amongst rationalists is, is that in the long run it does bring you closer to winning, but 1) a given step forward towards being more rational sometimes moves you a step back in towards on winning rather than forward, and 2) we’re not really at the point in our art where it leads to a sizeable increase in winning.
As for convincing people about the threat of AI:
1) I don’t thing the art of rationality has spent too much time on persuasion, compared to, say, probability theory.
2) I think there’s been some amount of effort put towards persuasion. People reference Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini a fair bit).
3) People very much care about anything even remotely relevant to lowering the chance of unfriendly AI or any other existential risk and will be extremely open to any ideas you or others have on how to do better.
4) There very well might be some somewhat low hanging fruit in terms of being better at persuading others in the context of AI risk.
5) Convincing people about the importance is a pretty difficult thing, and so lack of success very well might be more about difficulty than competence.
some counter-arguments, in no particular order of importance:
Verbal communication is quite often more succinct, because it is easier to exhaust the vocal medium, and you can see in real time your conversationists getting bored with your rambling.
Verbal communication allows far more nuance carried with tone, body language, and social situation, thus often delivers the message most clearly. I find it most useful when discussing Ethics: everyone is a clinical utilitarian when typing, but far more humanistic when they see the other person’s facial reaction to your words.
Rhetoric and charisma do not carry well over text. Most Rationalists consider it beneficial, right until the point where they need to explain something, or convince non-Rationalists and completely lack the tools to do so. Avoiding the use of verbal rhetoric and not training your in-person charisma is the surefire way to become very unconvincing to the general audience: case in point, every attempt by explain AI Risk to “muggles” by somewhat introvert and dry-talking Rationalists.
Related to point 3: conversational charisma is the main tool used by human males to woo women. By not practicing conversational charisma, Rationalists ensure they will breed themselves out of existence.
Most child-rearing and education is oral communication. Without practicing it, the Rationalist will not make a good parent or a teacher, and thus, from civilizational perspective, had squandered his rationality.
Rubberducking: saying things out-loud quite often leads to epiphanies, especially negative ones (“wow, my cherished idea sounds really dumb when I say it out, loud.”). Writing down, and then reading your own ideas often leads to an emotional feedback loop in which you reinforce your own conviction rather than nit-picking your own idea. This leads to...
Oral communication avoids the risk of Rabbit-Holes. When writing, uninterrupted, it is easy to accidentally pick a logical mistake as the crux of your whole argument, and waste hours exploring it. In conversation, your partner/opponent can snip that in the bud.
Op-Sec. Oral conversation is far less likely to get you in trouble for the things you say, unless you are being recorded. Meanwhile, a text based conversation, especially on a social platform is a Sword of Damocles always hanging over your head. Say the wrong thing, and at worst a dozen people will consider you an ass. Write and post the wrong thing, and you might, decades from now, lose your job, your social standing, or even your life. An innocent comment today might make people cancel you in 2040, or a vengeful Basilisk mulching you in 2045.
I am sensing some implicit if not explicit claims that rationalists believe in Hollywood Rationality instead of Actual Rationality. To be clear, that is untrue.
possibly, but is that not basically a No True Rationalist trick? I do not see a way for us to truly check that, unless we capture LW rationalists one by one and test them, but even then, what is preventing you from claiming: “eh, maybe this particular person is not a Real Rationalist but a Nerdy Hollywood Rationalist, but the others are the real deal,” ad nauseam?
I definitely agree that people who consider themselves Rationalists believe themselves to be Actual Rationalists not Hollywood Rationalists. This of course leads us to the much analyzed question of “why aren’t Rationalists winning?” The answers I see is that either Rationality does not lead to Winning, Or the Rationalists aren’t Actual Rationalists (yet, or at all, or at least not sufficiently).
A major case in point is that Rationalists mostly failed to convince the world about the threat posed by unrestricted AI. This means that either Rationalists are wrong about the AI threat, or bad at convincing. The second option is more likely I think, and I wager the reason Rationalists have a hard time convincing the general public is not because the logic of the argument is faulty, but because the delivery is based on clunky rhetoric and shows no attempts at well engineered charisma.
I’m not sure if this addresses all of the things you’re saying. If not, let me know.
I’m not claiming that all or even most rationalists actually are successful in leaning closer to Real Rationality than Hollywood Rationality. I’m claiming that a very large majority 1) endorse and 2) aspire towards the former rather than the latter.
Incremental Progress and the Valley talks about the relationship between rationality and winning. In short, what the post says and what I think the majority opinion amongst rationalists is, is that in the long run it does bring you closer to winning, but 1) a given step forward towards being more rational sometimes moves you a step back in towards on winning rather than forward, and 2) we’re not really at the point in our art where it leads to a sizeable increase in winning.
As for convincing people about the threat of AI:
1) I don’t thing the art of rationality has spent too much time on persuasion, compared to, say, probability theory.
2) I think there’s been some amount of effort put towards persuasion. People reference Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini a fair bit).
3) People very much care about anything even remotely relevant to lowering the chance of unfriendly AI or any other existential risk and will be extremely open to any ideas you or others have on how to do better.
4) There very well might be some somewhat low hanging fruit in terms of being better at persuading others in the context of AI risk.
5) Convincing people about the importance is a pretty difficult thing, and so lack of success very well might be more about difficulty than competence.