Lots of different words and phrases “devalue” different technical terms, since they exist outside of their technical definition. From what I can see from the OED, group think has been used as a term since 1923 and similar phrases like group mind were used in the late 19th century. Because someone makes a definition in a field it does not strip the original word or phrase of its meaning. If that was the case I’m sure lawyers would have a field day with all of us and that I could pick out quite a few misuses of onto on this site.
The technical meaning you point to is interesting. However, it does not even apply to this site as no one here is making decisions by committee, this is a forum/group blog. I’m surprised you pointed to it as the culture here has some of the pathologies mentioned, such as:
Not seeking expert opinion
Being highly selective in gathering information
These two aren’t really as much are your fault, it’s a bummer we can’t access/share academic articles that pertain to many of the subjects discussed here.
A little more trouble for this site is the solutions though:
Having leaders remain impartial
Obvious trouble.
Using outside experts
One of Eliezer’s biggest flaw’s is his high opinion of himself and those that agree with him:
Along with it the wholesale writing off of others that he knows very little of. From Eliezer’s point of view there are very few, if any, experts of any worth to consult on many issues at all. This sort of thought is toxic for collaboration with others and can be profoundly isolating.
The history of this site is not very long and it should not surprise anyone that most around here tow the Eliezer line. He created this site after becoming a smallish blog celebrity on overcomingbias. That those that came to populate this site largely agree with him should not at all be surprising. That you think no one should be able to charge groupthink comes off as incredibly defense and really silly given that it would be a little shocking if it wasn’t here.
Now to try to be constructive, here are some things that could facilitate interesting discussions around here:
Ban topics that make you look nuts and that you largely agree on already: FAI and cryonics.
The time when FAI was banned seemed to have a much more diverse and interesting discourse. Why retread the same old topics when you could explore new things that no one here knows what ‘Rationality’ should say about it?
Less talking please.
Let’s see some algorithms/programs or something besides overly long posts. I bet some cool stuff could come out of it. Why argue about which two things are better when you could try to see by testing it. Go empiricism.
Re “less talking”, yeah. One thing that particularly disappointed me was when I proposed starting up a Jaynes study group and got pretty much zero uptake. More disappointed even when people cited “too hard” as the reason.
Good points about technical meaning. I guess it’s not really people respecting the exact framework from Janis that I’d like, so much as saying things which are more interesting than “you guys are biased”. It’s just too easy to troll that way.
I’m not saying “no one should be able to charge groupthink”. I’m hoping that the discussion below this post will encourage and help newcomers (or even regulars) to make clearer and more pointed diagnoses of the pathologies of this community. Just saying “Robin and Eliezer have really biased the crowd on this one”, and particularly in the context of a discussion which was devoted to close critical examination of “this one”, is providing no value.
I’m a relative newcomer, so not really motivated by the celebrity status from OB. I want to encourage discourse that provides value and discourage that which does not. I am so motivated not out of righteousness, but for purely selfish motives: I have learned a lot from this site already (Bayes, Jaynes, MWI, a bunch of smaller conceptual tools from Eliezer’s OB writings) and I want more of that good stuff. Positive ROI is what this is about.
Downvoted for wasting my time with many paragraphs of empty status signals, making an unreasonable request for censorship, and demanding work (software) that you don’t have the right to ask for.
This was done in the past and I think it was a great request.
demanding work (software) that you don’t have the right to ask for.
It was a suggestion that I think people here would enjoy doing. I always have fun when I’m coding something experimental (of course these things are always fun until they’re not).
Downvoted for wasting my time with many paragraphs of empty status signals
Interesting charge. Don’t worry though, I caught your hostile signals.
Interesting charge. Don’t worry though, I caught your hostile signals.
Sorry, that came off more strongly than I intended. I think the main reason I reacted that way is because your post seemed to put status concerns above truth. In particular, this paragraph
The history of this site is not very long and it should not surprise anyone that most around here tow the Eliezer line. He created this site after becoming a smallish blog celebrity on overcomingbias. That those that came to populate this site largely agree with him should not at all be surprising. That you think no one should be able to charge groupthink comes off as incredibly defense and really silly given that it would be a little shocking if it wasn’t here.
Alleges that Less Wrong members are committing groupthink without claiming that they’re actually wrong about anything. That cleanly separates further discussion from the facts of any particular matter, and, while I acknowledge that this is an Eliezerish view to hold, I consider that a very bad thing.
making an unreasonable request for censorship
This was done in the past and I think it was a great request.
Technically, that was only a moratorium. But more to the point, topics come and go on Less Wrong, posts about particular topics tend to be temporally clustered, and there’re always some complaints about the current topic du jour. I wouldn’t worry about cryonics and FAI crowding out other topics; there’ve been enough posts about them recently that there isn’t much left to say, so we probably won’t hear much about them for awhile.
Why was this voted up to +4? Y’all are way too scared of being labeled cultish if you’re voting this stuff up.
I really wish there was some way to teach arrogance. It seems to be such a large factor in whether people actually make progress as rationalists or not.
I liked the suggestions. I wouldn’t permanently ban any topics but if every couple of months we stopped talking about transhumanist topics I think the results would be really constructive and help grow the community.
I really wish there was some way to teach arrogance. It seems to be such a large factor in whether people actually make progress as rationalists or not.
I don’t usually find cause to say this in reply to downvoted comments, but that is worth a post. Particularly because the conception you have of arrogance (or at least, the conceptions that I infer you have about arrogance) crosses some significant inferential barriers so is lost somewhat in this context.
I agree on both counts, and thanks for rounding up the links. Somewhere in my collection of half-baked drafts is a post specific to arrogance itself, how the definition is tied to status, when it is useful and when it isn’t.
He was condescending. When people are policing they tend to assert and maintain their higher status rather than ‘descending to be with’. The difference is significant (at least, to the reaction I have to attempts at each and the quality standards I have for comments of each type.)
Lots of different words and phrases “devalue” different technical terms, since they exist outside of their technical definition. From what I can see from the OED, group think has been used as a term since 1923 and similar phrases like group mind were used in the late 19th century. Because someone makes a definition in a field it does not strip the original word or phrase of its meaning. If that was the case I’m sure lawyers would have a field day with all of us and that I could pick out quite a few misuses of onto on this site.
The technical meaning you point to is interesting. However, it does not even apply to this site as no one here is making decisions by committee, this is a forum/group blog. I’m surprised you pointed to it as the culture here has some of the pathologies mentioned, such as:
These two aren’t really as much are your fault, it’s a bummer we can’t access/share academic articles that pertain to many of the subjects discussed here.
A little more trouble for this site is the solutions though:
Obvious trouble.
One of Eliezer’s biggest flaw’s is his high opinion of himself and those that agree with him:
http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/25848?in=49:06&out=49:12
Along with it the wholesale writing off of others that he knows very little of. From Eliezer’s point of view there are very few, if any, experts of any worth to consult on many issues at all. This sort of thought is toxic for collaboration with others and can be profoundly isolating.
The history of this site is not very long and it should not surprise anyone that most around here tow the Eliezer line. He created this site after becoming a smallish blog celebrity on overcomingbias. That those that came to populate this site largely agree with him should not at all be surprising. That you think no one should be able to charge groupthink comes off as incredibly defense and really silly given that it would be a little shocking if it wasn’t here.
Now to try to be constructive, here are some things that could facilitate interesting discussions around here:
Ban topics that make you look nuts and that you largely agree on already: FAI and cryonics.
The time when FAI was banned seemed to have a much more diverse and interesting discourse. Why retread the same old topics when you could explore new things that no one here knows what ‘Rationality’ should say about it?
Less talking please.
Let’s see some algorithms/programs or something besides overly long posts. I bet some cool stuff could come out of it. Why argue about which two things are better when you could try to see by testing it. Go empiricism.
Re “less talking”, yeah. One thing that particularly disappointed me was when I proposed starting up a Jaynes study group and got pretty much zero uptake. More disappointed even when people cited “too hard” as the reason.
Good points about technical meaning. I guess it’s not really people respecting the exact framework from Janis that I’d like, so much as saying things which are more interesting than “you guys are biased”. It’s just too easy to troll that way.
I’m not saying “no one should be able to charge groupthink”. I’m hoping that the discussion below this post will encourage and help newcomers (or even regulars) to make clearer and more pointed diagnoses of the pathologies of this community. Just saying “Robin and Eliezer have really biased the crowd on this one”, and particularly in the context of a discussion which was devoted to close critical examination of “this one”, is providing no value.
I’m a relative newcomer, so not really motivated by the celebrity status from OB. I want to encourage discourse that provides value and discourage that which does not. I am so motivated not out of righteousness, but for purely selfish motives: I have learned a lot from this site already (Bayes, Jaynes, MWI, a bunch of smaller conceptual tools from Eliezer’s OB writings) and I want more of that good stuff. Positive ROI is what this is about.
Downvoted for wasting my time with many paragraphs of empty status signals, making an unreasonable request for censorship, and demanding work (software) that you don’t have the right to ask for.
This was done in the past and I think it was a great request.
It was a suggestion that I think people here would enjoy doing. I always have fun when I’m coding something experimental (of course these things are always fun until they’re not).
Interesting charge. Don’t worry though, I caught your hostile signals.
Sorry, that came off more strongly than I intended. I think the main reason I reacted that way is because your post seemed to put status concerns above truth. In particular, this paragraph
Alleges that Less Wrong members are committing groupthink without claiming that they’re actually wrong about anything. That cleanly separates further discussion from the facts of any particular matter, and, while I acknowledge that this is an Eliezerish view to hold, I consider that a very bad thing.
Technically, that was only a moratorium. But more to the point, topics come and go on Less Wrong, posts about particular topics tend to be temporally clustered, and there’re always some complaints about the current topic du jour. I wouldn’t worry about cryonics and FAI crowding out other topics; there’ve been enough posts about them recently that there isn’t much left to say, so we probably won’t hear much about them for awhile.
Voted you up for some of your points and suggestions, but I gotta say, if you think the OP suggested
then you didn’t read what it actually said.
Fair point. It would have been more precise to say raise the difficulty in charging etc.
Why was this voted up to +4? Y’all are way too scared of being labeled cultish if you’re voting this stuff up.
I really wish there was some way to teach arrogance. It seems to be such a large factor in whether people actually make progress as rationalists or not.
I liked the suggestions. I wouldn’t permanently ban any topics but if every couple of months we stopped talking about transhumanist topics I think the results would be really constructive and help grow the community.
Just keep modeling. ;)
Why was this not downvoted to −10? Y’all are way too cultish if you are not voting this stuff down.
I really wish there was some way to teach irony. It seems to be such a large factor in whether people actually make progress as rationalists or not.
I don’t usually find cause to say this in reply to downvoted comments, but that is worth a post. Particularly because the conception you have of arrogance (or at least, the conceptions that I infer you have about arrogance) crosses some significant inferential barriers so is lost somewhat in this context.
I think The Proper Use of Humility, The Proper Use of Doubt, Science Doesn’t Trust Your Rationality, and Einstein’s Superpowers contain most of the essential ideas, which isn’t to say that a post amplifying the point wouldn’t be useful.
I agree on both counts, and thanks for rounding up the links. Somewhere in my collection of half-baked drafts is a post specific to arrogance itself, how the definition is tied to status, when it is useful and when it isn’t.
One symptom from the linked definition of groupthink:
Seriously though man, you’re the one that has the overwhelming karma lead around here. Seems a little petty to police 4 dissenting votes.
Karma isn’t the point.
He was condescending. When people are policing they tend to assert and maintain their higher status rather than ‘descending to be with’. The difference is significant (at least, to the reaction I have to attempts at each and the quality standards I have for comments of each type.)