Note: I don’t have the energy or prioritize this enough to make this message more succinct. But I feel like I have communicated the core things I wanted to.
The gears to ascension is a “blowhard” as you put it, that people have heard of who makes assertions without defending them, and then who gets criticized for having a name that confidently asserts correctness on top of that.
I think it is okay to make assertions without defending them—there’s a cost to defending your assertions and your messages can be written with certain audiences and goals in mind that might make defending your assertions not relevant or not worth the effort.
Are you sure that your username causes people to criticize you for confidently asserting correctness? At least from personal experience, I’ve noticed that most people who choose their usernames and profile pictures on the internet do so as a way to communicate certain aesthetics—non-content based information about themselves. It is about identity and fun. I think most people learn to separate the username aesthetics from the epistemic prior of a person. I know I have.
“The gears of ascension” is an interesting name. It is memorable. Paired with a rather abrasive commenting strategy in end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023, your comments annoyed me enough that I put your LW account on ignore (until about March 2023, when I saw your writings / messages on certain Discord servers). This, however, did not involve me ever thinking that your username implied / promised something specific about your content. I like your username, because it communicates something about your desires and how you see yourself and your aesthetics.
Carrying the name “often wrong” feels more in the spirit of this site, anyhow.
When I imagine myself doing this, the use of “often wrong” in one’s username feels… defensive. It feels like I’m trying to pre-emptively lower people’s epistemic priors for me so that I don’t get punished for being wrong. This does make sense certain zero sum environments, one where I don’t want to be singled out or noticed for making mistakes, because that leads to being blamed and being isolated and kicked out. This however seems counterproductive from a positive sum epistemic system standpoint, one where you want people to engage in accurate credit assignment to other people’s claims. If one develops a reputation for ‘being wrong’, then that is useful for the system’s function since their claims are given less weight. As long as this is paired with, say, a UBI-equivalent quality of life okayness for the wrong entity in this system, it doesn’t seem bad. After all, the global epistemics of the system sure is better.
You think Eliezer would say he’s often wrong? Carrying the name “often wrong” is not in the spirit of this site. The belief that one is often wrong is supposed to be individual, you knowing this and stating this to yourself. It isn’t intended to be a blanket statement you tell other people that you prefix your claims with.
If I can’t be respected under this name, so be it, and that’s sort of the idea—I don’t want my name to carry respect. I want individual comments evaluated for their validity.
So changing your name, in some ways, is destruction of common knowledge, because people have built up a rich mental model of your beliefs, your epistemics, and the domains where you are mentally robust or mentally fragile.
People with actual impressive education would look down on my name while people without it would look up to it because it sounds all fancy and transhumanist in ways that don’t match my accomplishments.
I’d argue your current username might also cause “people with actual impressive education” (who don’t decouple username vibes from content epistemic prior) to be less open to reading your comments. There’s no point in caring about the opinions of people who seem to get impressed by your username either, I don’t think their efforts are relevant to your goals.
My every comment should stand on its own, and the fact that they do not was being ignored too easily because my name was memorable.
No, throwing away information is sub-optimal for group epistemics. Your name gives me context. When you comment on, say, a post by Tsvi, and state that you feel optimistic about his models, it gives me an idea of where your mind is at, what research skills you value and are learning, what your alignment models are (or are shifting towards, given what I know of your alignment model). This helps me figure out how to make good things happen that might involve recommending stuff to you that you might be interested in, for example.
The fact that your name is memorable is useful for this.
I don’t think I’ve very well described my intuitions about accurate credit assignment and reputation and group epistemics, but I’m trying to point in that direction, and I hope I’ve at least succeeded, even if I haven’t given you a clear and coherent model of this.
Note: I don’t have the energy or prioritize this enough to make this message more succinct. But I feel like I have communicated the core things I wanted to.
I think it is okay to make assertions without defending them—there’s a cost to defending your assertions and your messages can be written with certain audiences and goals in mind that might make defending your assertions not relevant or not worth the effort.
Are you sure that your username causes people to criticize you for confidently asserting correctness? At least from personal experience, I’ve noticed that most people who choose their usernames and profile pictures on the internet do so as a way to communicate certain aesthetics—non-content based information about themselves. It is about identity and fun. I think most people learn to separate the username aesthetics from the epistemic prior of a person. I know I have.
“The gears of ascension” is an interesting name. It is memorable. Paired with a rather abrasive commenting strategy in end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023, your comments annoyed me enough that I put your LW account on ignore (until about March 2023, when I saw your writings / messages on certain Discord servers). This, however, did not involve me ever thinking that your username implied / promised something specific about your content. I like your username, because it communicates something about your desires and how you see yourself and your aesthetics.
When I imagine myself doing this, the use of “often wrong” in one’s username feels… defensive. It feels like I’m trying to pre-emptively lower people’s epistemic priors for me so that I don’t get punished for being wrong. This does make sense certain zero sum environments, one where I don’t want to be singled out or noticed for making mistakes, because that leads to being blamed and being isolated and kicked out. This however seems counterproductive from a positive sum epistemic system standpoint, one where you want people to engage in accurate credit assignment to other people’s claims. If one develops a reputation for ‘being wrong’, then that is useful for the system’s function since their claims are given less weight. As long as this is paired with, say, a UBI-equivalent quality of life okayness for the wrong entity in this system, it doesn’t seem bad. After all, the global epistemics of the system sure is better.
You think Eliezer would say he’s often wrong? Carrying the name “often wrong” is not in the spirit of this site. The belief that one is often wrong is supposed to be individual, you knowing this and stating this to yourself. It isn’t intended to be a blanket statement you tell other people that you prefix your claims with.
So changing your name, in some ways, is destruction of common knowledge, because people have built up a rich mental model of your beliefs, your epistemics, and the domains where you are mentally robust or mentally fragile.
I’d argue your current username might also cause “people with actual impressive education” (who don’t decouple username vibes from content epistemic prior) to be less open to reading your comments. There’s no point in caring about the opinions of people who seem to get impressed by your username either, I don’t think their efforts are relevant to your goals.
No, throwing away information is sub-optimal for group epistemics. Your name gives me context. When you comment on, say, a post by Tsvi, and state that you feel optimistic about his models, it gives me an idea of where your mind is at, what research skills you value and are learning, what your alignment models are (or are shifting towards, given what I know of your alignment model). This helps me figure out how to make good things happen that might involve recommending stuff to you that you might be interested in, for example.
The fact that your name is memorable is useful for this.
I don’t think I’ve very well described my intuitions about accurate credit assignment and reputation and group epistemics, but I’m trying to point in that direction, and I hope I’ve at least succeeded, even if I haven’t given you a clear and coherent model of this.