I don’t think debates really fit the ethos of LessWrong. Every time I write a comment it tells me to explain not persuade, after all. Debates have an effect of splitting people into camps, which is not great. And they put people in the frame of mind of winning, rather than truth-seeking. Additionally, people end up conflating “winning the debate” (which in people’s minds is not necessarily even about who has the best arguments) with being correct. There was an old post here on LessWrong a while ago I remember reading where people were talking about the problems with debates as a truth-seeking mechanism, but I can’t seem to find it now.
It strikes me that anything that could be a debate would be better as a comment thread for these reasons. I think LessWrong moving in a more debate direction would be a mistake. (My point here is not that people shouldn’t have debates, but that making debate a part of LessWrong specifically seems questionable.)
So given that I figured it was a joke, because it just doesn’t quite fit. But I now see the prediction market, and I don’t think I can guess better here. And the community response seems very positive, which I’m pretty sure isn’t a joke. I feel like this always happens though. Someone comes up with a new idea to change something and people get excited and want it, but fail to consider what it will be like when it is no longer new and exciting, but rather just one other extra thing. Will the conversations had through the debate format really be better than if they had been had through a different, less adversarial method?
I personally would be in favor of a better word than “debate”. The feature as I expect it to be used is really just “a public conversation that all the participants have signed up for in-advance, around a somewhat legible topic, where individual contributions can’t be voted on to not have it become a popularity context, and where the participants can have high-trust conversations because everyone is pre-vetted”.
We could just call them “conversations” but that feels pretty confusing to me. I would be pretty open to other names for the feature. Agree that “debate” has connotations of trying to convince the audience, and being in some kind of zero-sum competition, whereas this whole feature is trying to reduce exactly that.
Hmm, I kind of like that. “Dialogue” does feel like it has pretty good connotations. “Invite X to dialogue with you” feels like it also works reasonably well. “Dialogue participants”. Yeah, I feel sold on this being better than “debate”.
I also think it’s more natural for a dialogue feature to be used for a debate, than it is for a debate feature to be used for a dialogue. A dialogue is a more agnostic term for the structure of the conversation, and I expect some rationalists will want to bring in specific norms for different conversations (e.g. “you’re defending your position from the other two, and she’s the facilitator”).
(Seriously, some explicit distinction between “dialogue as collaboration”, “dialogue as debate” and “dialogue as explanation” would be nice. Not necessary at all, but nice.)
Upon reflection, it seems I was focused on the framing rather than the mechanism, which in of itself doesn’t necessarily do all the bad things I described. The framing is important though. I definitely think you should change the name.
FiveThirtyEight has done something similar in the past they called a chat.
I think debates can be useful, especially when explicitly denoted like this. It can encourage discovery of all evidence for and against a hypothesis by treating it like a competitive game, which humans are good at.
However, to be effective debate sides should be randomly chosen. Otherwise, people might get too invested and start goodharting. By making the sides random, you can keep the true goal in mind while still having enough competitiveness to motivate you.
I don’t think debates really fit the ethos of LessWrong. Every time I write a comment it tells me to explain not persuade, after all. Debates have an effect of splitting people into camps, which is not great. And they put people in the frame of mind of winning, rather than truth-seeking. Additionally, people end up conflating “winning the debate” (which in people’s minds is not necessarily even about who has the best arguments) with being correct. There was an old post here on LessWrong a while ago I remember reading where people were talking about the problems with debates as a truth-seeking mechanism, but I can’t seem to find it now.
It strikes me that anything that could be a debate would be better as a comment thread for these reasons. I think LessWrong moving in a more debate direction would be a mistake. (My point here is not that people shouldn’t have debates, but that making debate a part of LessWrong specifically seems questionable.)
So given that I figured it was a joke, because it just doesn’t quite fit. But I now see the prediction market, and I don’t think I can guess better here. And the community response seems very positive, which I’m pretty sure isn’t a joke. I feel like this always happens though. Someone comes up with a new idea to change something and people get excited and want it, but fail to consider what it will be like when it is no longer new and exciting, but rather just one other extra thing. Will the conversations had through the debate format really be better than if they had been had through a different, less adversarial method?
I personally would be in favor of a better word than “debate”. The feature as I expect it to be used is really just “a public conversation that all the participants have signed up for in-advance, around a somewhat legible topic, where individual contributions can’t be voted on to not have it become a popularity context, and where the participants can have high-trust conversations because everyone is pre-vetted”.
We could just call them “conversations” but that feels pretty confusing to me. I would be pretty open to other names for the feature. Agree that “debate” has connotations of trying to convince the audience, and being in some kind of zero-sum competition, whereas this whole feature is trying to reduce exactly that.
“New Dialogue”
Hmm, I kind of like that. “Dialogue” does feel like it has pretty good connotations. “Invite X to dialogue with you” feels like it also works reasonably well. “Dialogue participants”. Yeah, I feel sold on this being better than “debate”.
I also think it’s more natural for a dialogue feature to be used for a debate, than it is for a debate feature to be used for a dialogue. A dialogue is a more agnostic term for the structure of the conversation, and I expect some rationalists will want to bring in specific norms for different conversations (e.g. “you’re defending your position from the other two, and she’s the facilitator”).
Peregrin/Periklynian/Suvinian Dialog!
(Seriously, some explicit distinction between “dialogue as collaboration”, “dialogue as debate” and “dialogue as explanation” would be nice. Not necessary at all, but nice.)
Other handles that have made me excited about this feature:
Glowfic for nonfiction
Interview podcast but written down.
In both cases the draw was “the interactivity makes it easier to write relevant things, compared to sitting down by myself and guessing”.
Upon reflection, it seems I was focused on the framing rather than the mechanism, which in of itself doesn’t necessarily do all the bad things I described. The framing is important though. I definitely think you should change the name.
FiveThirtyEight has done something similar in the past they called a chat.
I think debates can be useful, especially when explicitly denoted like this. It can encourage discovery of all evidence for and against a hypothesis by treating it like a competitive game, which humans are good at.
However, to be effective debate sides should be randomly chosen. Otherwise, people might get too invested and start goodharting. By making the sides random, you can keep the true goal in mind while still having enough competitiveness to motivate you.