I’m primarily not attempting to make policy recommendations here, I’m attempting to output the sort of information a policy-maker could take into account as empirical observations.
This is also why the “think about applications” point doesn’t seem that relevant; lots of people have lots of applications, and they consult different information sources (e.g. encyclopedias, books), each of which isn’t necessarily specialized to their application.
This seems to me to be endorsing “updating” as a purpose; evidence flows up the causal links (and down the causal links, but for this purpose the upwards direction is more important). So I will be focusing on that purpose here. The most interesting causal links are then the ones which imply the biggest updates.
Which I suppose is a very subjective thing? It depends heavily not just on the evidence one has about this case, but also on the prior beliefs about psychosis, organizational structure, etc..
In theory, the updates should tend to bring everybody closer to some consensus, but the direction of change may vary wildly from person to person, depending on how they differ from that consensus. Though in practice, I’m already very essentialist, and my update is in an essentialist direction, so that doesn’t seem to cash out.
(… or does it? One thing I’ve been essentialist about is that I’ve been skeptical that “cPTSD” is a real thing caused by trauma, rather than some more complicated genetic thing. But the stories from especially Leverage and also to an extent MIRI have made me update enormously hard in favor of trauma being able to cause those sorts of mental problems—under specific conditions. I guess there’s an element of, on the more ontological/theoretical level, people might converge, but people’s preexisting ontological/theoretical beliefs may cause their assessments of the situation to diverge.)
Not really? I think even if Leverage turned out better in some ways that doesn’t mean switching to their model would help.
My phrasing might have been overly strong, since you would endorse a lot of what Leverage does, due to it being cultish. What I meant is that one thing you seem to have endorsed is that one thing you seem to have endorsed is talking more about “objects” and such.
That seems like a fully general argument against trying to fix common societal problems? I mean, how do you expect people ever made society better in the past?
In any case, even if it’s hard to avoid, it helps to know that it’s happening and is possibly a bottleneck on intellectual productivity; if it’s a primary constraint then Theory of Constraints suggests focusing a lot of attention on it.
I agree that this is a rather general argument, but it’s not supposed to stand on its own. The structure of my argument isn’t “MIRI is normal here so it’s probably hard to change, so the post isn’t actionable”, it’s “It’s dubious things happened exactly as the OP describes, MIRI is normal here so it’s probably hard to change, it’s hard to know whether the changes implied would even work because they’re entirely hypothetical, the social circle raising the critique does not seem to be able to use their theory to fix their own mental health, so the post isn’t actionable”.
(I will send you a PM with the name of the person in your social circle who seemed to currently be doing terribly, so you can say whether you think I am misinterpreting the situation around them.)
None of these would, individually, be a strong argument. Even together they’re not a knockdown argument. But these limitations do make it very difficult for me to make much of it.
It seems like the general mindset you’re taking here might imply that it’s useless to read biographies, news reports, history, and accounts of how things were invented/discovered, on the basis that whoever writes it has a lot of leeway in how they describe the events, although I’m not sure if I’m interpreting you correctly.
Yes. I don’t really read biographies or history, and mostly don’t read the news, for quite similar reasons. When I do, I always try to keep selection biases and interpretation biases strongly in mind.
I have gradually become more and more aware of the problems with this, but I also have the belief that excessive focus on these sorts of things lead to people overinterpreting everything. There’s probably a balance to be struck.
This seems to me to be endorsing “updating” as a purpose; evidence flows up the causal links (and down the causal links, but for this purpose the upwards direction is more important). So I will be focusing on that purpose here. The most interesting causal links are then the ones which imply the biggest updates.
Which I suppose is a very subjective thing? It depends heavily not just on the evidence one has about this case, but also on the prior beliefs about psychosis, organizational structure, etc..
In theory, the updates should tend to bring everybody closer to some consensus, but the direction of change may vary wildly from person to person, depending on how they differ from that consensus. Though in practice, I’m already very essentialist, and my update is in an essentialist direction, so that doesn’t seem to cash out.
(… or does it? One thing I’ve been essentialist about is that I’ve been skeptical that “cPTSD” is a real thing caused by trauma, rather than some more complicated genetic thing. But the stories from especially Leverage and also to an extent MIRI have made me update enormously hard in favor of trauma being able to cause those sorts of mental problems—under specific conditions. I guess there’s an element of, on the more ontological/theoretical level, people might converge, but people’s preexisting ontological/theoretical beliefs may cause their assessments of the situation to diverge.)
My phrasing might have been overly strong, since you would endorse a lot of what Leverage does, due to it being cultish. What I meant is that one thing you seem to have endorsed is that one thing you seem to have endorsed is talking more about “objects” and such.
I agree that this is a rather general argument, but it’s not supposed to stand on its own. The structure of my argument isn’t “MIRI is normal here so it’s probably hard to change, so the post isn’t actionable”, it’s “It’s dubious things happened exactly as the OP describes, MIRI is normal here so it’s probably hard to change, it’s hard to know whether the changes implied would even work because they’re entirely hypothetical, the social circle raising the critique does not seem to be able to use their theory to fix their own mental health, so the post isn’t actionable”.
(I will send you a PM with the name of the person in your social circle who seemed to currently be doing terribly, so you can say whether you think I am misinterpreting the situation around them.)
None of these would, individually, be a strong argument. Even together they’re not a knockdown argument. But these limitations do make it very difficult for me to make much of it.
Yes. I don’t really read biographies or history, and mostly don’t read the news, for quite similar reasons. When I do, I always try to keep selection biases and interpretation biases strongly in mind.
I have gradually become more and more aware of the problems with this, but I also have the belief that excessive focus on these sorts of things lead to people overinterpreting everything. There’s probably a balance to be struck.