I wholeheartedly agree that following 5 leaves you vulnerable to defection; the claim is that (especially within a subculture like LessWrong) the results of everybody hunting stag on this one are much better than the results of everyone choosing rabbit; you will once in a while get taken advantage of for an extra minute or two/a few more rounds of the back-and-forth, but the base rate of charity in the water supply goes WAY up and this has a bunch of positive downstream effects and is worth it on net in expectation (claim).
(This is elaborated on a good bit in the expansion of 5 if you haven’t read it and are curious. I’d love to be tagged in an objection post, b/c I’d probably engage substantially in the comments.)
10 should maybe be toned back a bit!
I strongly agree with your take on 0; this is hit pretty hard in the Sapir-Whorf piece from a couple of days ago (the thing feels effortful when it’s not reflecting your inner thought processes but using the language can update the inner thought processes, and speaking in a way that reflects the inner thought processes is subjectively ~0% extra effort). But if we’re wanting to gain new skill and not just stay as-good-at-discourse as we currently are, we’re each going to need to be nonzero trying on some axis.
I had read the expansions. We might be in practical agreement on 5. I would say if you’re debating in the comments of a Less Wrong thread, following 5 is positive expected value. You’ll avoid escalations that you’d otherwise fall into, and being defected against won’t cost you too much. It stands out to me because other rules guidelines (say, 2 and 8) I would be comfortable abiding holding myself to even if I knew my interlocutor wasn’t going to follow them. It’s when you’re having higher stakes discussions that leaving yourself open in good faith can go badly. (Edited when it was pointed out to me that they’re always referred to as guidelines, never rules. This is in fact a useful distinction I let blur.)
I agree that when starting out 0 is likely to require energy, like, more energy than it feels like it should to do something like this. “Expect good discourse to require energy until you become very used to it, then it should feel natural” is a weaker message but is how I am interpreting it. (I am trying and failing to find the sequences post about rules phrased as absolutes that aren’t actually absolutes, such that it stays your hand until need actually weighs you down.)
I will be sure to direct your attention to the objection post once I write it. It is partially written already and did not start life as an objection, but it does apply and will be finished. . . someday.
Since I haven’t said so yet, thank you for writing this and giving me a link to reference!
Er, this is maybe too nitpicky, but it’s pretty important to me that these are guidelines, not rules (with expansion on what a guideline means); I worked hard to make sure that the word “rules” appeared nowhere in the text outside of one quote in the appendix.
I wholeheartedly agree that following 5 leaves you vulnerable to defection; the claim is that (especially within a subculture like LessWrong) the results of everybody hunting stag on this one are much better than the results of everyone choosing rabbit; you will once in a while get taken advantage of for an extra minute or two/a few more rounds of the back-and-forth, but the base rate of charity in the water supply goes WAY up and this has a bunch of positive downstream effects and is worth it on net in expectation (claim).
(This is elaborated on a good bit in the expansion of 5 if you haven’t read it and are curious. I’d love to be tagged in an objection post, b/c I’d probably engage substantially in the comments.)
10 should maybe be toned back a bit!
I strongly agree with your take on 0; this is hit pretty hard in the Sapir-Whorf piece from a couple of days ago (the thing feels effortful when it’s not reflecting your inner thought processes but using the language can update the inner thought processes, and speaking in a way that reflects the inner thought processes is subjectively ~0% extra effort). But if we’re wanting to gain new skill and not just stay as-good-at-discourse as we currently are, we’re each going to need to be nonzero trying on some axis.
I had read the expansions. We might be in practical agreement on 5. I would say if you’re debating in the comments of a Less Wrong thread, following 5 is positive expected value. You’ll avoid escalations that you’d otherwise fall into, and being defected against won’t cost you too much. It stands out to me because other
rulesguidelines (say, 2 and 8) I would be comfortableabidingholding myself to even if I knew my interlocutor wasn’t going to follow them. It’s when you’re having higher stakes discussions that leaving yourself open in good faith can go badly. (Edited when it was pointed out to me that they’re always referred to as guidelines, never rules. This is in fact a useful distinction I let blur.)I agree that when starting out 0 is likely to require energy, like, more energy than it feels like it should to do something like this. “Expect good discourse to require energy until you become very used to it, then it should feel natural” is a weaker message but is how I am interpreting it. (I am trying and failing to find the sequences post about rules phrased as absolutes that aren’t actually absolutes, such that it stays your hand until need actually weighs you down.)
I will be sure to direct your attention to the objection post once I write it. It is partially written already and did not start life as an objection, but it does apply and will be finished. . . someday.
Since I haven’t said so yet, thank you for writing this and giving me a link to reference!
Er, this is maybe too nitpicky, but it’s pretty important to me that these are guidelines, not rules (with expansion on what a guideline means); I worked hard to make sure that the word “rules” appeared nowhere in the text outside of one quote in the appendix.
You are correct and that is an important distinction I blurred in my own head, thank you.