Our norms exist already, they’re just unwritten right now. There are things that we can do that will cause everyone to shun us. (Posting a discussion like this may end up being one of them, in which case I will have learned something valuable about Less Wrong...)
I wouldn’t have a problem with describing the norms that currently happen to hold among LW users, but I do with prescribing them.
EDIT: to elaborate, there’s a difference between following a norm, and thinking that it’s the best norm and that it deserves to be codified and officially explicitly endorsed.
The intentions of the various categories seem to have changed considerably in this version, which suggests that maybe we need to talk about what we want this list of norms to do before we figure out what subcategories it needs.
To that end, I see three obvious goals. In rough order of importance:
Codify skills, habits, and meta-beliefs that will help people be rational, e.g. rationalist taboo.
Codify norms of this group, to make it easy for people to join up—rather like Silas’ ‘signs about how things are done here’ idea.
List useful, basically-settled beliefs for people to build on, e.g. Ocham’s Razor or Bayseanism.
The term “social rational” sounds like it would be used for core-type skills used for working in groups. “LW-specific norms” might work better for that one. Otherwise, yeah, sounds good to me.
Describing them is my goal. The only way that I can think of to get a complete list is to ask everyone to post the ones that they feel exist, and then to see what the consensus is. If you have a better method, please let me know so that I can use it instead.
Our norms exist already, they’re just unwritten right now. There are things that we can do that will cause everyone to shun us. (Posting a discussion like this may end up being one of them, in which case I will have learned something valuable about Less Wrong...)
I wouldn’t have a problem with describing the norms that currently happen to hold among LW users, but I do with prescribing them.
EDIT: to elaborate, there’s a difference between following a norm, and thinking that it’s the best norm and that it deserves to be codified and officially explicitly endorsed.
I don’t follow. What is your actual reasoning as to why this is a universally bad thing?
Agreed, and on closer reading the OP seems to need to be reworded to reflect this.
Edited to try to make this clearer. I may still need to alter the phrasing more to make it less offensive, and I welcome all suggestions.
*looks*
The intentions of the various categories seem to have changed considerably in this version, which suggests that maybe we need to talk about what we want this list of norms to do before we figure out what subcategories it needs.
To that end, I see three obvious goals. In rough order of importance:
Codify skills, habits, and meta-beliefs that will help people be rational, e.g. rationalist taboo.
Codify norms of this group, to make it easy for people to join up—rather like Silas’ ‘signs about how things are done here’ idea.
List useful, basically-settled beliefs for people to build on, e.g. Ocham’s Razor or Bayseanism.
Would it be better to categorize them by goal, then?
That would suggest three levels of norms: core rational, social rational, and common knowledge.
The term “social rational” sounds like it would be used for core-type skills used for working in groups. “LW-specific norms” might work better for that one. Otherwise, yeah, sounds good to me.
Describing them is my goal. The only way that I can think of to get a complete list is to ask everyone to post the ones that they feel exist, and then to see what the consensus is. If you have a better method, please let me know so that I can use it instead.