Perhaps it’s because of the strong overlap with LessWrong and Leverage’s description of themselves as an organisation adopting an explicitly rationalist approach: see the intro post by lukeprog from early 2012.
(in fact, LW is the only place I have ever heard of Leverage and Connection Theory)
I don’t remember much about it, by my impression was that it more or less says this:
1) People do things they believe do contribute to their goals. Of course their models can be wrong.
2) Leave a line of retreat. If someone does/believes X because according to their model it is the only/best way to a goal G they care about, before you start convicing them to abandon X, first show them there are alternative ways to reach G. Then they will not fight for X so hard.
It doesn’t seem to me so crazy. Just overhyped, without the corresponding extraordinary evidence. And overestimating the strategic behavior of humans.
So, this “Connection Theory” looks like run-of-the-mill crackpottery. Why are people paying attention to it?
Perhaps it’s because of the strong overlap with LessWrong and Leverage’s description of themselves as an organisation adopting an explicitly rationalist approach: see the intro post by lukeprog from early 2012.
(in fact, LW is the only place I have ever heard of Leverage and Connection Theory)
Ah, good old in-group bias...
Paying attention to what the in-group does is no bias. It makes sense to evaluate the ideas of your friends.
And does it take more than five seconds to dismiss an idea like this?
Are they? I almost forgot it exists.
I don’t remember much about it, by my impression was that it more or less says this:
1) People do things they believe do contribute to their goals. Of course their models can be wrong.
2) Leave a line of retreat. If someone does/believes X because according to their model it is the only/best way to a goal G they care about, before you start convicing them to abandon X, first show them there are alternative ways to reach G. Then they will not fight for X so hard.
It doesn’t seem to me so crazy. Just overhyped, without the corresponding extraordinary evidence. And overestimating the strategic behavior of humans.
From the post:
Sounds like a Pascal’s memetic mugging to me.