FWIW, one of the things that caught my attention about this community, and encouraged me to stick around, was the emphasis on valuing accuracy and precision (which I value) without the “barbs are part of the fun/putting relish into a debate” style you describe here (which I dislike intensely).
There are lots of “nice is more important than true” spaces on the net, and lots of “being unpleasant to people is part of the fun” spaces; and an astonishing number of spaces that are both. A space that manages to even approximate being neither is rare.
Barbs are largely the part of the classical rhetoric that play on biases in the listener. That’s probably true of niceness as well.
And I agree that the Lesswrong tone seems relatively unique, particularly given the broad and general nature of discussion topics, and the variety in political opinions.
One of the good things which contributes to the tone here is people reliably getting credit for saying they’ve changed their mind for some good reason. I can’t think of any other site where that’s in play.
Way back when, I remember discussing exactly that point on the Extropians list. In many ways a similar group to here. But some very smart guys were arguing that it was a huge loss of face to admit you were wrong, and better to deny or evade (I’m sure they put it more convincingly than that).
When someone is wrong, graciously admitting and accepting it scores major points with me.
Thinking about it, maybe I can make a better argument for denial. There are two issues, being wrong, and whether one admits being wrong. If admitting being wrong is what largely determines whether you are perceived as being wrong, then denying the error maintains status.
For people driven by social truth, which is likely the majority, truth is scored on attitude, power, authority, popularity, solidarity, fealty, etc. The validity of the arguments don’t matter much. For people driven by epistemic truth, the arguments are what matters, so denying the plain truth of them is seen as a personality defect, while admitting it a virtue.
The thing is, it’s not that the deniers are aliens. I am. I and my kind. For us, in an argument, it’s the facts that matter, and letting other considerations intrude on that is intruding the rules of the normals into the game. That’s largely what this whole thread is about.
One side says we’ll be more effective playing the normals game. It’s a game my kind strongly prefers not to play. Having to behave as normals is ineffective for us, and the opportunity to play by our rules is extremely valuable to us.
Josh Waitzkin’s book The Art of Learning describes his various encounters with unsporting conduct and cheating in chess tournaments and competitive tai chi. He wrote that he’d developed the approach to just work so hard at developing his own skill at the game that he was able to ignore the distractions the opponent was trying to pull and proceed to win anyway. He claimed that the opponents would generally become agitated and careless once they noticed that they couldn’t get any sort of upset out of him.
Discussions aren’t games with rules, but you might still get something out of the idea that social gamesmanship is basically just compensating poor skill with cheating, and you need to work hard enough on your epistemic skills that it won’t stop you even when it does get thrown in your way.
Well, I’d say that social gamesmanship isn’t cheating, it’s playing a different game.
Being very good with your epistemic skills has mileage socially too, and importantly, mileage with people with personal properties you’re more likely concerned about. And refraining from the usual types of social gamesmanship earns you points with those people as well.
FWIW, one of the things that caught my attention about this community, and encouraged me to stick around, was the emphasis on valuing accuracy and precision (which I value) without the “barbs are part of the fun/putting relish into a debate” style you describe here (which I dislike intensely).
There are lots of “nice is more important than true” spaces on the net, and lots of “being unpleasant to people is part of the fun” spaces; and an astonishing number of spaces that are both. A space that manages to even approximate being neither is rare.
I can understand someone disliking the barbs.
Barbs are largely the part of the classical rhetoric that play on biases in the listener. That’s probably true of niceness as well.
And I agree that the Lesswrong tone seems relatively unique, particularly given the broad and general nature of discussion topics, and the variety in political opinions.
One of the good things which contributes to the tone here is people reliably getting credit for saying they’ve changed their mind for some good reason. I can’t think of any other site where that’s in play.
Isn’t it peculiar that most people are otherwise?
Way back when, I remember discussing exactly that point on the Extropians list. In many ways a similar group to here. But some very smart guys were arguing that it was a huge loss of face to admit you were wrong, and better to deny or evade (I’m sure they put it more convincingly than that).
When someone is wrong, graciously admitting and accepting it scores major points with me.
Thinking about it, maybe I can make a better argument for denial. There are two issues, being wrong, and whether one admits being wrong. If admitting being wrong is what largely determines whether you are perceived as being wrong, then denying the error maintains status.
For people driven by social truth, which is likely the majority, truth is scored on attitude, power, authority, popularity, solidarity, fealty, etc. The validity of the arguments don’t matter much. For people driven by epistemic truth, the arguments are what matters, so denying the plain truth of them is seen as a personality defect, while admitting it a virtue.
The thing is, it’s not that the deniers are aliens. I am. I and my kind. For us, in an argument, it’s the facts that matter, and letting other considerations intrude on that is intruding the rules of the normals into the game. That’s largely what this whole thread is about.
One side says we’ll be more effective playing the normals game. It’s a game my kind strongly prefers not to play. Having to behave as normals is ineffective for us, and the opportunity to play by our rules is extremely valuable to us.
Josh Waitzkin’s book The Art of Learning describes his various encounters with unsporting conduct and cheating in chess tournaments and competitive tai chi. He wrote that he’d developed the approach to just work so hard at developing his own skill at the game that he was able to ignore the distractions the opponent was trying to pull and proceed to win anyway. He claimed that the opponents would generally become agitated and careless once they noticed that they couldn’t get any sort of upset out of him.
Discussions aren’t games with rules, but you might still get something out of the idea that social gamesmanship is basically just compensating poor skill with cheating, and you need to work hard enough on your epistemic skills that it won’t stop you even when it does get thrown in your way.
Well, I’d say that social gamesmanship isn’t cheating, it’s playing a different game.
Being very good with your epistemic skills has mileage socially too, and importantly, mileage with people with personal properties you’re more likely concerned about. And refraining from the usual types of social gamesmanship earns you points with those people as well.