It is obvious that one can make similar levels and ask a similar question about rationality and the pursuit of the truth. What should we be trying to optimize in order to optimize the intellectual performance of a community?
This presupposes that optimizing the intellectual performance of a community is the goal in the first place. Individuals have a great deal more control over their own thoughts/behavior than over community norms; there is little point attempting to optimize something over which one exercises minimal control.
Do you think that human-control is conserved in some sense, i.e. some humans are controlling community practices, even if you’re not?
I think of people today trying to control community practices as a lot like premodern physicians. On rare occasions they accidentally stumble on something that works sometimes, and maybe even get it to work more than once. But the understanding to consistently predict which interventions will have which effects just isn’t there, and the vast majority of interventions either have zero effect or negative effects. It’s all humors and leeches.
Someday, we will be better at this. Personal to Prison Gangs is the best example I have—it’s a step closer to the understanding required to go from “I want to implement change X in this community” to “I personally can reliably make that change happen by doing Y”. But we are not yet anywhere near that point.
Meanwhile, in the absence of actually understanding the effects of our actions on community dynamics, the best we can do is try stuff and see what happens. Given that most changes are zero or negative (due to generalized efficient markets), this only works when we have a platform for rapidly testing many changes and quantifying their impacts on the community—video game communities are a good example. In that case, there are clearly people who can modify the community by modifying the interface—assuming they bother to do so. (This does not currently apply to e.g. the LessWrong team, since last I heard they didn’t have the tracking and a/b testing framework necessary to find out which changes have which effects. To the extent that they’re trying to control community dynamics, they’re still on humors and leeches.)
The dynamics in a small group are qualitatively different from whole communities. To a large extent, that’s exactly why community control is hard/interesting. Again, Personal to Prison Gangs is a good example.
This presupposes that optimizing the intellectual performance of a community is the goal in the first place. Individuals have a great deal more control over their own thoughts/behavior than over community norms; there is little point attempting to optimize something over which one exercises minimal control.
x
I think of people today trying to control community practices as a lot like premodern physicians. On rare occasions they accidentally stumble on something that works sometimes, and maybe even get it to work more than once. But the understanding to consistently predict which interventions will have which effects just isn’t there, and the vast majority of interventions either have zero effect or negative effects. It’s all humors and leeches.
Someday, we will be better at this. Personal to Prison Gangs is the best example I have—it’s a step closer to the understanding required to go from “I want to implement change X in this community” to “I personally can reliably make that change happen by doing Y”. But we are not yet anywhere near that point.
Meanwhile, in the absence of actually understanding the effects of our actions on community dynamics, the best we can do is try stuff and see what happens. Given that most changes are zero or negative (due to generalized efficient markets), this only works when we have a platform for rapidly testing many changes and quantifying their impacts on the community—video game communities are a good example. In that case, there are clearly people who can modify the community by modifying the interface—assuming they bother to do so. (This does not currently apply to e.g. the LessWrong team, since last I heard they didn’t have the tracking and a/b testing framework necessary to find out which changes have which effects. To the extent that they’re trying to control community dynamics, they’re still on humors and leeches.)
x
The dynamics in a small group are qualitatively different from whole communities. To a large extent, that’s exactly why community control is hard/interesting. Again, Personal to Prison Gangs is a good example.