First, when Jacob wrote “join the tribe”, I don’t think ey had anything as specific as a rationalist village in mind? Your model fits the bill as well, IMO. So what you’re saying here doesn’t seem like an argument against my objection to Zack’s objection to Jacob.
So my objection definitely applies much more to a village than less tightly bound communities, and Jacob could have been referring to anything along that spectrum. But I brought it up because you said:
Moreover, the relationships between them shouldn’t be purely impersonal and intellectual. Any group endeavour benefits from emotional connections and mutual support.
This is where the objection begins to apply. The more interdependent the group becomes, the more susceptible it is to the issues I brought up. I don’t think it’s a big deal in an online community, especially with pseudonyms, but I think we need to be careful when you get to more IRL communities. With a village, treating it like an experiment is good first step, but I’d definitely be in the group that wouldn’t join unless explicit thought had been put in to deal with my objections, or the village had been running successfully for long enough that I become convinced I was wrong.
Third, sure, social and economic dependencies can create problems, but what about your social and economic dependencies on non-rationalists? I do agree that dilution is a real danger (if not necessarily an insurmountable one).
So in this case individual rationalists can still be undermined by their social networks, but theres a few reasons this is a more robust model. 1) You can have a dual-identity. In my case most of the people I interact with don’t know what a rationalist is, I either introduce someone to the ideas here without referencing this place, or I introduce them to this place after I’ve vetted them. This makes it harder for social networks to put pressure on you or undermine you. 2) A group failure of rationality is far less likely to occur when doing so requires affecting social networks in New York, SF, Singapore, Northern Canada, Russia, etc., then when you just need to influence in a single social network.
So in this case individual rationalists can still be undermined by their social networks, but theres a few reasons this is a more robust model. 1) You can have a dual-identity. In my case most of the people I interact with don’t know what a rationalist is, I either introduce someone to the ideas here without referencing this place, or I introduce them to this place after I’ve vetted them. This makes it harder for social networks to put pressure on you or undermine you.
Hmm, at this point it might be just a difference of personalities, but to me what you’re saying sounds like “if you don’t eat, you can’t get good poisoning”. “Dual identity” doesn’t work for me, I feel that social connections are meaningless if I can’t be upfront about myself.
A group failure of rationality is far less likely to occur when doing so requires affecting social networks in New York, SF, Singapore, Northern Canada, Russia, etc., then when you just need to influence in a single social network.
I guess? But in any case there will many subnetworks in the network. Even if everyone adopt the “village” model, there will be many such villages.
Hmm, at this point it might be just a difference of personalities, but to me what you’re saying sounds like “if you don’t eat, you can’t get good poisoning”. “Dual identity” doesn’t work for me, I feel that social connections are meaningless if I can’t be upfront about myself.
That’s probably a good part of it. I have no problem hiding a good chunk of my thoughts and views from people I don’t completely trust, and for most practical intents and purposes I’m quite a bit more “myself” online than IRL.
But in any case there will many subnetworks in the network. Even if everyone adopt the “village” model, there will be many such villages.
I think that’s easier said than done, and that a great effort needs to be made to deal with effects that come with having redundancy amongst villages/networks. Off the top of my head, you need to ward against having one of the communities implode after their best members leave for another:
Likewise, even if you do keep redundancy in rationalist communities, you need to ensure that there’s a mechanism that prevents them from seeing each other as out-groups or attacking each other when they do. This is especially important since one group viewing the other as their out-group, but not vice versa can lead to the group with the larger in-group getting exploited.
So my objection definitely applies much more to a village than less tightly bound communities, and Jacob could have been referring to anything along that spectrum. But I brought it up because you said:
This is where the objection begins to apply. The more interdependent the group becomes, the more susceptible it is to the issues I brought up. I don’t think it’s a big deal in an online community, especially with pseudonyms, but I think we need to be careful when you get to more IRL communities. With a village, treating it like an experiment is good first step, but I’d definitely be in the group that wouldn’t join unless explicit thought had been put in to deal with my objections, or the village had been running successfully for long enough that I become convinced I was wrong.
So in this case individual rationalists can still be undermined by their social networks, but theres a few reasons this is a more robust model. 1) You can have a dual-identity. In my case most of the people I interact with don’t know what a rationalist is, I either introduce someone to the ideas here without referencing this place, or I introduce them to this place after I’ve vetted them. This makes it harder for social networks to put pressure on you or undermine you. 2) A group failure of rationality is far less likely to occur when doing so requires affecting social networks in New York, SF, Singapore, Northern Canada, Russia, etc., then when you just need to influence in a single social network.
Hmm, at this point it might be just a difference of personalities, but to me what you’re saying sounds like “if you don’t eat, you can’t get good poisoning”. “Dual identity” doesn’t work for me, I feel that social connections are meaningless if I can’t be upfront about myself.
I guess? But in any case there will many subnetworks in the network. Even if everyone adopt the “village” model, there will be many such villages.
That’s probably a good part of it. I have no problem hiding a good chunk of my thoughts and views from people I don’t completely trust, and for most practical intents and purposes I’m quite a bit more “myself” online than IRL.
I think that’s easier said than done, and that a great effort needs to be made to deal with effects that come with having redundancy amongst villages/networks. Off the top of my head, you need to ward against having one of the communities implode after their best members leave for another:
Likewise, even if you do keep redundancy in rationalist communities, you need to ensure that there’s a mechanism that prevents them from seeing each other as out-groups or attacking each other when they do. This is especially important since one group viewing the other as their out-group, but not vice versa can lead to the group with the larger in-group getting exploited.