First off, thanks for including that edit (which is certainly better than nothing), although that still doesn’t neglect that (given the public status of the post) your summaries will be the only thing almost everyone sees (as much as you link to these comments or my original text), and that in this thread I have certainly just been trying to get my positions not misrepresented (so I find it completely false that I’m purposefully imposing an unnecessary tax, even if it’s true that engaging with this misrepresentation debate takes some effort, like any epistemic endeavor).
Here’s the two main reasons why I wouldn’t find your proposal above fair:
I expect most people who will see this post / read your summaries of my position to have already seen it (although someone correct me if I’m wrong about viewership dynamics in LessWrong). As a consequence, I’d gain much less from such a disclaimer / rethinking of the post being incorporated now (although of course it would be positive for me / something I could point people towards). Of course, this is not solely a consequence of your actions, but also of my delayed response times (as I had already anticipated in our clarifications thread).
A second order effect is that most people who have seen the post up until now will have been “skimmers” (because it was just in frontpage, just released, etc.), while probably more of the people who read the post in the future will be more thorough readers (because they “went digging for it”, etc.). As I’ve tried to make explicit in the past, my worry is more about the social dynamics consequences of having such a post (with such a framing) receive a lot of public attention, than with any scientific inquiry into nutrition, or any emphasis on public health. Thus, I perceive most of the disvalue coming from the skimmers’ reactions to such a public signal. More on this below.
My worry is exactly that such a post (with such a framing) will not be correctly processed by too many readers (and more concretely, the “skimmers”, or the median upvoter/downvoter), in the sense that they will take away (mostly emotionally / gutturally) the wrong update (especially action-wise) from the actual information in the post (and previous posts). Yes: I am claiming that I cannot assume perfect epistemics from LessWrong readers. More concretely, I am claiming that there is a predictable bias in one of two emotional / ethical directions, which exists mainly due to the broader ethical / cultural context we experience (from which LessWrong is not insulated). Even if we want LessWrong to become a transparent hub of information sharing (in which indeed epistemic virtue is correctly assumed of the other), I claim that the best way to get there is not through completely implementing this transparent information sharing immediately in the hopes that individuals / groups will respond correctly. This would amount to ignoring a part of reality that steers our behavior too much to be neglected: social dynamics and culturally inherited biases. I claim the best way to get there is by implementing this transparency wherever it’s clearly granted, but necessarily being strategic in situations when some unwanted dynamics and biases are at play. The alternative, being completely transparent (“hands off the simulacrum levels”), amounts to leaving a lot of instrumental free energy on the table for these already existing dynamics and biases to hoard (as they have always done). It amounts to having a dualistic (as opposed to embedded) picture of reality, in which epistemics cannot be affected by the contingent or instrumental. And furthermore, I claim this topic (public health related to animal ethics) is unfortunately one of the tricky situations in which such strategicness (as opposed to naive transparency) is the best approach (even if it requires some more efforts on our part). Of course, you can disagree with these claims, but I hope it’s clear why I don’t find a public jury is to be trusted on this matter.
You might respond “huh, but we’re not talking about deciding things about animal ethics here. We’re talking about deciding rationally whether some comments were or weren’t useful. We certainly should be able to at least trust the crowd on that?” I don’t think that’s the case for this topic, given how strong the “vegans bad” / “vegans annoying” immune reaction is for most people generally (that is, the background bias present in our culture / the internet).
As an example, in this thread there are some people (like you and Jim) who have engaged with my responses / position fairly deeply, and for now disagreed. I don’t expect the bulk of the upvotes / downvotes in this thread (or if we were to carry out such a public vote) to come from this camp, but more from “skimmers” and first reactions (that wouldn’t enter the nuance of my position, which is, granted, slightly complex). Indeed (and of course based on my anecdotal experience on the internet and different circles, including EA circles), I expect way too many anonymous readers/voters to, upon seeing something like human health and animal ethics weighed off in this way, would just jump on the bandwagon of punishing the veganism meme for the hell of it. And let me also note that, while further engagement and explicit reasoning should help with recognizing those nuances (although you have reached a different conclusion), I don’t expect this to eliminate some strong emotional reactions to this topic, that drive our rational points (“we are not immune to propaganda”). And again, given the cultural background, I expect these to go more in one direction than the other.
So, what shall we do? The only thing that seems viable close to your proposal would be having the voters be “a selected crowd”, but I don’t know how to select it (if we had half and half this could look too much like a culture war, although probably that’d be even better than the random crowd due to explicitly engaging deeply with the text). Although maybe we could agree on 2-3 people. To be honest, that’s sounding like a lot of work, and as I mentioned I don’t think there’s that much more in this debate for me. But I truly think I have been strongly misrepresented, so if we did find 2-3 people who seemed impartial and epistemically virtuous I’d deem it positive to have them look at my newest, overly explicit explanation and express opinions.
So, since your main worry was that I hadn’t made my explanation of misrepresentation explicit enough (and indeed, I agree that I hadn’t yet written it out in completely explicit detail, simply because I knew that would require a lot of time), I have in this new comment provided the most explicit version I can muster myself to compose. I have made it explicit (and as a consequence long) enough that I don’t think I have many more thoughts to add, and it is a faithful representation of my opinions about how I’ve been misrepresented. I think having that out there, for you (and Jim, etc.) to be able to completely read my thoughts and re-consider whether I was misrepresented, and for any passer-by who wants to stop by to see, is the best I can do for now. In fact, I would recommend (granted you don’t change your mind more strongly due to reading that) that your edit linked to this new, completely explicit version, instead of my original comment written in 10 minutes.
I will also note (since you seemed to care about the public opinions of people about the misrepresentation issue) that 3 people (not counting Slapstick here) (only one vegan) have privately reached out to me to say they agree that I have been strongly misrepresented. Maybe there’s a dynamic here in which some people agree more with my points but stay more silent due to being in the periphery of the community (maybe because of perceived wrong-epistemics in exchanges like this one, or having different standards for information-sharing / what constitutes misrepresentation, etc.).
(See also this new comment.)
First off, thanks for including that edit (which is certainly better than nothing), although that still doesn’t neglect that (given the public status of the post) your summaries will be the only thing almost everyone sees (as much as you link to these comments or my original text), and that in this thread I have certainly just been trying to get my positions not misrepresented (so I find it completely false that I’m purposefully imposing an unnecessary tax, even if it’s true that engaging with this misrepresentation debate takes some effort, like any epistemic endeavor).
Here’s the two main reasons why I wouldn’t find your proposal above fair:
I expect most people who will see this post / read your summaries of my position to have already seen it (although someone correct me if I’m wrong about viewership dynamics in LessWrong). As a consequence, I’d gain much less from such a disclaimer / rethinking of the post being incorporated now (although of course it would be positive for me / something I could point people towards).
Of course, this is not solely a consequence of your actions, but also of my delayed response times (as I had already anticipated in our clarifications thread).
A second order effect is that most people who have seen the post up until now will have been “skimmers” (because it was just in frontpage, just released, etc.), while probably more of the people who read the post in the future will be more thorough readers (because they “went digging for it”, etc.). As I’ve tried to make explicit in the past, my worry is more about the social dynamics consequences of having such a post (with such a framing) receive a lot of public attention, than with any scientific inquiry into nutrition, or any emphasis on public health. Thus, I perceive most of the disvalue coming from the skimmers’ reactions to such a public signal. More on this below.
My worry is exactly that such a post (with such a framing) will not be correctly processed by too many readers (and more concretely, the “skimmers”, or the median upvoter/downvoter), in the sense that they will take away (mostly emotionally / gutturally) the wrong update (especially action-wise) from the actual information in the post (and previous posts).
Yes: I am claiming that I cannot assume perfect epistemics from LessWrong readers. More concretely, I am claiming that there is a predictable bias in one of two emotional / ethical directions, which exists mainly due to the broader ethical / cultural context we experience (from which LessWrong is not insulated).
Even if we want LessWrong to become a transparent hub of information sharing (in which indeed epistemic virtue is correctly assumed of the other), I claim that the best way to get there is not through completely implementing this transparent information sharing immediately in the hopes that individuals / groups will respond correctly. This would amount to ignoring a part of reality that steers our behavior too much to be neglected: social dynamics and culturally inherited biases. I claim the best way to get there is by implementing this transparency wherever it’s clearly granted, but necessarily being strategic in situations when some unwanted dynamics and biases are at play. The alternative, being completely transparent (“hands off the simulacrum levels”), amounts to leaving a lot of instrumental free energy on the table for these already existing dynamics and biases to hoard (as they have always done). It amounts to having a dualistic (as opposed to embedded) picture of reality, in which epistemics cannot be affected by the contingent or instrumental. And furthermore, I claim this topic (public health related to animal ethics) is unfortunately one of the tricky situations in which such strategicness (as opposed to naive transparency) is the best approach (even if it requires some more efforts on our part).
Of course, you can disagree with these claims, but I hope it’s clear why I don’t find a public jury is to be trusted on this matter.
You might respond “huh, but we’re not talking about deciding things about animal ethics here. We’re talking about deciding rationally whether some comments were or weren’t useful. We certainly should be able to at least trust the crowd on that?” I don’t think that’s the case for this topic, given how strong the “vegans bad” / “vegans annoying” immune reaction is for most people generally (that is, the background bias present in our culture / the internet).
As an example, in this thread there are some people (like you and Jim) who have engaged with my responses / position fairly deeply, and for now disagreed. I don’t expect the bulk of the upvotes / downvotes in this thread (or if we were to carry out such a public vote) to come from this camp, but more from “skimmers” and first reactions (that wouldn’t enter the nuance of my position, which is, granted, slightly complex). Indeed (and of course based on my anecdotal experience on the internet and different circles, including EA circles), I expect way too many anonymous readers/voters to, upon seeing something like human health and animal ethics weighed off in this way, would just jump on the bandwagon of punishing the veganism meme for the hell of it.
And let me also note that, while further engagement and explicit reasoning should help with recognizing those nuances (although you have reached a different conclusion), I don’t expect this to eliminate some strong emotional reactions to this topic, that drive our rational points (“we are not immune to propaganda”). And again, given the cultural background, I expect these to go more in one direction than the other.
So, what shall we do? The only thing that seems viable close to your proposal would be having the voters be “a selected crowd”, but I don’t know how to select it (if we had half and half this could look too much like a culture war, although probably that’d be even better than the random crowd due to explicitly engaging deeply with the text). Although maybe we could agree on 2-3 people. To be honest, that’s sounding like a lot of work, and as I mentioned I don’t think there’s that much more in this debate for me. But I truly think I have been strongly misrepresented, so if we did find 2-3 people who seemed impartial and epistemically virtuous I’d deem it positive to have them look at my newest, overly explicit explanation and express opinions.
So, since your main worry was that I hadn’t made my explanation of misrepresentation explicit enough (and indeed, I agree that I hadn’t yet written it out in completely explicit detail, simply because I knew that would require a lot of time), I have in this new comment provided the most explicit version I can muster myself to compose. I have made it explicit (and as a consequence long) enough that I don’t think I have many more thoughts to add, and it is a faithful representation of my opinions about how I’ve been misrepresented.
I think having that out there, for you (and Jim, etc.) to be able to completely read my thoughts and re-consider whether I was misrepresented, and for any passer-by who wants to stop by to see, is the best I can do for now. In fact, I would recommend (granted you don’t change your mind more strongly due to reading that) that your edit linked to this new, completely explicit version, instead of my original comment written in 10 minutes.
I will also note (since you seemed to care about the public opinions of people about the misrepresentation issue) that 3 people (not counting Slapstick here) (only one vegan) have privately reached out to me to say they agree that I have been strongly misrepresented. Maybe there’s a dynamic here in which some people agree more with my points but stay more silent due to being in the periphery of the community (maybe because of perceived wrong-epistemics in exchanges like this one, or having different standards for information-sharing / what constitutes misrepresentation, etc.).