First was the significant meta discussion about moderation, which diverted a lot of the attention I could spare for LW, and also changed my relationship to the post somewhat. Then the pandemic struck, in a way that killed a lot of my ongoing inspiration for Circling-like things. Part of this is my low interest in non-text online activities; while online Circling does work, and I did it a bit over the course of the pandemic, I Circled way less than I did in the previous year, and there was much less in the way of spontaneous opportunities to talk Circling with experts. I put some effort into deliberate conversations with experts (thanks Jordan!), and made some progress, but didn’t have the same fire to push through and finish things.
A common dynamic at the start of a new project is that one is excited and dumb; finishing seems real, and the problems seem imaginary. As one thinks more about the problem, the more one realizes that the original goal was impossible, slowly losing excitement. If pushed quickly enough, the possible thing (that was adjacent to the impossible goal) gets made; if left to sit, the contrast is too strong for work on the project to be compelling. Something like this happened here, I think.
So what was the original hope? Eliezer wrote The Simple Truth, which explained in detail what it means for truth to be a correspondence between map and territory, what sort of systems lead to the construction and maintenance of that correspondence, and why you might want it. I think one sort of “authenticity” is a similar correspondence, between behavior and preferences, and another sort of “authenticity” is ‘relational truth’, or that correspondence in the context of a relationship.
But while we can easily talk about truth taking preferences for granted (you don’t want your sheep eaten by wolves, and you don’t want to waste time looking for sheep), talking about preferences while not taking them for granted puts us in murkier territory. An early idea I had here was a dialogue between the ‘hippie’ arguing for authenticity against a ‘Confucian’ arguing for adoption of a role-based persona, which involves suppressing one’s selfish desires, but this ended up seeming unsatisfactory because it was an argument between two particular developmental levels. I later realized that I could step back, and just use the idea of “developmental levels” to compartmentalize a lot of the difficulty, but moving up a level of abstraction would sacrifice the examples, or force me to commit to a particular theory of developmental levels (by using it to supply the examples).
I also got more in touch with the difference between ‘explanatory writing’ and ‘transformative writing’; consider the difference between stating a mathematical formula and writing a math textbook. The former emits a set of facts or a model, and the user can store it in memory but maybe not much else; the latter attempts to construct some skill or ability or perspective in the mind of the reader, but can only do so by presenting the reader with the opportunity to build it themselves. (It’s like mailing someone IKEA furniture or a LEGO set.) Doing the latter right involves seeing how the audience might be confused, and figuring out how to help them fix their own confusion. My original goal had been relatively simple—just explain what is going on, without attempting to persuade or teach the thing—but I found myself more and more drawn towards the standard of transformative writing.
I might still write this, especially in bits and pieces, but I wanted to publicly note that I slipped the deadline I set for myself, and if I write more on the subject it will be because the spirit strikes me instead of because I have a set goal to. [If you were interested in what I had to say about this, maybe reach out and let’s have a conversation about it, which then maybe might seed public posts.]
A year ago, I wrote about an analogy between Circling and Rationality, commenters pointed out holes in the explanation, and I was excited to write more and fill in the holes, and haven’t yet. What gives?
First was the significant meta discussion about moderation, which diverted a lot of the attention I could spare for LW, and also changed my relationship to the post somewhat. Then the pandemic struck, in a way that killed a lot of my ongoing inspiration for Circling-like things. Part of this is my low interest in non-text online activities; while online Circling does work, and I did it a bit over the course of the pandemic, I Circled way less than I did in the previous year, and there was much less in the way of spontaneous opportunities to talk Circling with experts. I put some effort into deliberate conversations with experts (thanks Jordan!), and made some progress, but didn’t have the same fire to push through and finish things.
A common dynamic at the start of a new project is that one is excited and dumb; finishing seems real, and the problems seem imaginary. As one thinks more about the problem, the more one realizes that the original goal was impossible, slowly losing excitement. If pushed quickly enough, the possible thing (that was adjacent to the impossible goal) gets made; if left to sit, the contrast is too strong for work on the project to be compelling. Something like this happened here, I think.
So what was the original hope? Eliezer wrote The Simple Truth, which explained in detail what it means for truth to be a correspondence between map and territory, what sort of systems lead to the construction and maintenance of that correspondence, and why you might want it. I think one sort of “authenticity” is a similar correspondence, between behavior and preferences, and another sort of “authenticity” is ‘relational truth’, or that correspondence in the context of a relationship.
But while we can easily talk about truth taking preferences for granted (you don’t want your sheep eaten by wolves, and you don’t want to waste time looking for sheep), talking about preferences while not taking them for granted puts us in murkier territory. An early idea I had here was a dialogue between the ‘hippie’ arguing for authenticity against a ‘Confucian’ arguing for adoption of a role-based persona, which involves suppressing one’s selfish desires, but this ended up seeming unsatisfactory because it was an argument between two particular developmental levels. I later realized that I could step back, and just use the idea of “developmental levels” to compartmentalize a lot of the difficulty, but moving up a level of abstraction would sacrifice the examples, or force me to commit to a particular theory of developmental levels (by using it to supply the examples).
I also got more in touch with the difference between ‘explanatory writing’ and ‘transformative writing’; consider the difference between stating a mathematical formula and writing a math textbook. The former emits a set of facts or a model, and the user can store it in memory but maybe not much else; the latter attempts to construct some skill or ability or perspective in the mind of the reader, but can only do so by presenting the reader with the opportunity to build it themselves. (It’s like mailing someone IKEA furniture or a LEGO set.) Doing the latter right involves seeing how the audience might be confused, and figuring out how to help them fix their own confusion. My original goal had been relatively simple—just explain what is going on, without attempting to persuade or teach the thing—but I found myself more and more drawn towards the standard of transformative writing.
I might still write this, especially in bits and pieces, but I wanted to publicly note that I slipped the deadline I set for myself, and if I write more on the subject it will be because the spirit strikes me instead of because I have a set goal to. [If you were interested in what I had to say about this, maybe reach out and let’s have a conversation about it, which then maybe might seed public posts.]