Something I haven’t actually been clear on re: your opinions:
If LW ended up leaning hard into Archipelago, and if we did something like “posts can be either set to ‘debate’ mode, or ‘collaborative’ mode, or there are epistemic statuses indicating things like “this post is about early stage brainstorming vs this post is ready to be seriously critiqued”,
Does that actually sound good to you?
My model of you was worried that that sort of thing could well result in horrible consequences (via giving bad ideas the ability to gain traction).
(I suppose you might believe that, but still think it’s superior to the status of quo of ‘sorta kinda that but much more confusingly’)
Having good and correct norms on Less Wrong > having some sort of Archipelago, and thereby having good and correct norms on some parts of Less Wrong > having bad and wrong norms everywhere on Less Wrong
We did discuss this a while ago, actually, though I’m afraid I haven’t the time right now to look for the comment thread in question. Simply: if you can set posts to “collaborative mode”, and there’s nothing wrong with that (norm-wise), well, everyone sets their posts to “collaborative mode” all the time (because defending their ideas is hard and annoying), the end. (Unless you also have strong norms along the lines of “using or even mentioning ideas which have thus far been discussed only in ‘collaborative mode’ posts, in other discussions, as if they have been properly defended and are anything but baseless speculation, is a faux pas; conversely, calling out such usage is right and proper and praiseworthy and deserving of upvotes”. But such a norm, which would be very useful and beneficial, nonetheless seems to me to be unlikely to end up as part of the Archipelago you envision. Or am I mistaken, do you think?)
This seems to assume there is one correct set of norms for all conversations. That would be really surprising to me. Do you think there’s one set that is Always Correct, or that the switching costs outweigh the gains from tailored norms?
How much work we take this qualifier to be doing is, of course, a likely point of disagreement, but if you see it as doing most of the work in my comment, then assume that you’ve misunderstood me.
I think a core disagreement here has less to do with collaborative vs debate. Ideas can, and should, be subjected to extreme criticism within a collaborative frame.
My disagreement with your claim is more about how intellectual progress works. I strongly believe you need a several stages, with distinct norms. [Note: I’m not sure these stages listed are exactly right, but think they point roughly in the right direction]
1. Early brainstorming, shower thoughts, and play.
2. Refining brainstormed ideas into something coherent enough to be evaluated
3. Evaluating, and iterating on, those ideas. [It’s around this stage that I think comments like the ones I archetypically associate with you become useful]
4. If an idea seems promising enough to do rigorously check (i.e. something like ’do real science, spending thousands or millions of dollars to run experiments), figure out how to do that. Which is complicated enough that it’s its own step, separate from....
5. Do real science (note: this section is a bit different for things like math and philosophy)
6. If the experiments disconfirm the idea (or, if an earlier stage truncated the idea before you got to the “real science” part), make sure to say “oops”, and make it common knowledge that the idea is wrong.
I think the first two stages are extremely important (and bad things happen when you punish doing it publicly). The last stage is also extremely important. Right now, even at its most rigorous, the pipeline of ideas at LessWrong seems to stop around the 3rd stage.
I don’t expect you to agree with all of that right now, but I am curious: how much would your concerns be addressed if we had clearer/better systems for the final step?
4 and 5 seem hard. Consider the “Archipelago” idea. Also, this model assumes the idea is easily disproved/proved, and isn’t worth iterating on further.
(Rough) Contrasting model:
1) I want to make a [lightbulb] (before lightbulbs have been invented).
2) Come up with a design.
3) Test the design.
4) If it fails, go back to step 2, and start over, or refine the design, and go to step 3.
Repeat 100 times, or until you succeed.
5) If it works, come up with a snazzy name, and start a business.
Something I haven’t actually been clear on re: your opinions:
If LW ended up leaning hard into Archipelago, and if we did something like “posts can be either set to ‘debate’ mode, or ‘collaborative’ mode, or there are epistemic statuses indicating things like “this post is about early stage brainstorming vs this post is ready to be seriously critiqued”,
Does that actually sound good to you?
My model of you was worried that that sort of thing could well result in horrible consequences (via giving bad ideas the ability to gain traction).
(I suppose you might believe that, but still think it’s superior to the status of quo of ‘sorta kinda that but much more confusingly’)
Having good and correct norms on Less Wrong > having some sort of Archipelago, and thereby having good and correct norms on some parts of Less Wrong > having bad and wrong norms everywhere on Less Wrong
We did discuss this a while ago, actually, though I’m afraid I haven’t the time right now to look for the comment thread in question. Simply: if you can set posts to “collaborative mode”, and there’s nothing wrong with that (norm-wise), well, everyone sets their posts to “collaborative mode” all the time (because defending their ideas is hard and annoying), the end. (Unless you also have strong norms along the lines of “using or even mentioning ideas which have thus far been discussed only in ‘collaborative mode’ posts, in other discussions, as if they have been properly defended and are anything but baseless speculation, is a faux pas; conversely, calling out such usage is right and proper and praiseworthy and deserving of upvotes”. But such a norm, which would be very useful and beneficial, nonetheless seems to me to be unlikely to end up as part of the Archipelago you envision. Or am I mistaken, do you think?)
Nod. I do think the failure mode your pointing at is an important thing for the system to address.
This seems to assume there is one correct set of norms for all conversations. That would be really surprising to me. Do you think there’s one set that is Always Correct, or that the switching costs outweigh the gains from tailored norms?
All conversations? Certainly not. All conversations on Less Wrong? To a first approximation[1], yes.
How much work we take this qualifier to be doing is, of course, a likely point of disagreement, but if you see it as doing most of the work in my comment, then assume that you’ve misunderstood me.
I think a core disagreement here has less to do with collaborative vs debate. Ideas can, and should, be subjected to extreme criticism within a collaborative frame.
My disagreement with your claim is more about how intellectual progress works. I strongly believe you need a several stages, with distinct norms. [Note: I’m not sure these stages listed are exactly right, but think they point roughly in the right direction]
1. Early brainstorming, shower thoughts, and play.
2. Refining brainstormed ideas into something coherent enough to be evaluated
3. Evaluating, and iterating on, those ideas. [It’s around this stage that I think comments like the ones I archetypically associate with you become useful]
4. If an idea seems promising enough to do rigorously check (i.e. something like ’do real science, spending thousands or millions of dollars to run experiments), figure out how to do that. Which is complicated enough that it’s its own step, separate from....
5. Do real science (note: this section is a bit different for things like math and philosophy)
6. If the experiments disconfirm the idea (or, if an earlier stage truncated the idea before you got to the “real science” part), make sure to say “oops”, and make it common knowledge that the idea is wrong.
I think the first two stages are extremely important (and bad things happen when you punish doing it publicly). The last stage is also extremely important. Right now, even at its most rigorous, the pipeline of ideas at LessWrong seems to stop around the 3rd stage.
I don’t expect you to agree with all of that right now, but I am curious: how much would your concerns be addressed if we had clearer/better systems for the final step?
4 and 5 seem hard. Consider the “Archipelago” idea. Also, this model assumes the idea is easily disproved/proved, and isn’t worth iterating on further.
(Rough) Contrasting model:
1) I want to make a [lightbulb] (before lightbulbs have been invented).
2) Come up with a design.
3) Test the design.
4) If it fails, go back to step 2, and start over, or refine the design, and go to step 3.
Repeat 100 times, or until you succeed.
5) If it works, come up with a snazzy name, and start a business.