Fleshing it out a bit more… If a group has an explicit mission, then it seems like one could periodically have a session where everyone “steelmans” the case against the mission.
To me, that will lead to an environment where people think that they are engaging with criticism without having to really engage with the criticism that actually matters.
Disruption! Grabbing the third rail! Asking about what we’re overlooking! It seems that psychiatry, like EA, is really good at criticizing itself. Even better: these aren’t those soft within-the-system critiques everyone is worried about. These are hard challenges to the entire paradigm of capitalism or whatever.
And it’s not just the APA as an institution. Go to any psychiatrist at the conference and criticize psychiatry in these terms—“Don’t you think our field is systemically racist and sexist and fails to understand that the true problem is Capitalism?” and they will enthusiastically agree and maybe even tell you stories about how their own experience proves that’s true and how they need to try to do better.
[...]
Here are other criticisms that I think can actually start fights: should tricyclics be higher on our treatment algorithm for depression than atypical antipsychotics? Should we use levothyroxine more (or less) often? And my nominee for “highest likelihood of people actually coming to blows” would be asking if they’re sure it’s ethical to charge poor patients three-digit fees for no-shows.
All of these are the opposite of the racism critique: they’re minor, finicky points entirely within the current paradigm that don’t challenge any foundational assumptions at all.
If you frame the criticism as having to be about the mission of psychiatry, it’s easy for people to see “Is it ethical to charge poor patients three-digit fees for no-shows?” as off-topic.
In an organization like GiveWell people who criticize GiveWell’s mission in such a way, are unlikely to talk about the ways, in which GiveWell favors raising more donations over being more truthseeking, that Ben Hoffman described.
To me, that will lead to an environment where people think that they are engaging with criticism without having to really engage with the criticism that actually matters.
This is a possible outcome, especially if the above tactic were the only tactic to be employed. That tactic helps reduce ignorance of the “other side” on the issues that get the steelmanning discussion, and hopefully also pushes away low-curiosity tribalistic partisans while retaining members who value deepening understanding and intellectual integrity. There are lots of different ways for things to go wrong, and any complete strategy probably needs to use lots of tactics. Perhaps the most important tactic would be to notice when things are going wrong (ideally early) and adjust what you’re doing, possibly designing new tactics in the process.
Also, in judging a strategy, we should know what resources we assume we have (e.g. “the meetup leader is following the practice we’ve specified and is willing to follow ‘reasonable’ requests or suggestions from us”), and know what threats we’re modeling. In principle, we might sort the dangers by [impact if it happens] x [probability of it happening], enumerate tactics to handle the top several, do some cost-benefit analysis, decide on some practices, and repeat.
If you frame the criticism as having to be about the mission of psychiatry, it’s easy for people to see “Is it ethical to charge poor patients three-digit fees for no-shows?” as off-topic.
My understanding/guess is that “Is it ethical to charge poor patients three-digit fees for no-shows?” is an issue where the psychiatrists know the options and the impacts of the options, and the “likelihood of people actually coming to blows” comes from social signaling things like “If I say I don’t charge them, this shows I’m in a comfortable financial position and that I’m compassionate for poor patients”/”If I say I do charge them, this opens me up to accusations (tinged with social justice advocacy) of heartlessness and greed”. I would guess that many psychiatrists do charge the fees, but would hate being forced to admit it in public. Anyway, the problem here is not that psychiatrists are unaware of information on the issue, so there’d be little point in doing a steelmanning exercise about it.
That said, as you suggest, it is possible that people would spend their time steelmanning unimportant issues (and making ‘criticism’ of the “We need fifty Stalins” type). But if we assume that we have one person who notices there’s an important unaddressed issue, who has at least decent rapport with the meetup leader, then it seems they could ask for that issue to get steelmanned soon. That could cover it. (If we try to address the scenario where no one notices the unaddressed issue, that’s a pretty different problem.)
If I say that other psychiatrists at the conference are engaging in an ethical lapse when they charge late fees to poor people then I’m engaging in an uncomfortable interpersonal conflict. It’s about personal incentives that actually matter a lot to the day-to-day practice of psychiatry.
While the psychiatrists are certainly aware of them charging poor people, they are likely thinking about it normally as business as usual instead of considering it as an ethical issue.
If we take Scott’s example of psychiatrists talking about racism being a problem in psychiatry I don’t think the problem is that that racism is unimportant. The problem is rather that you can get points by virtue signaling talking about the problem and find common ground around the virtue signaling if you are willing to burn a few scapegoats while talking about the issues of charging poor people late fees is divisive.
Washington DC is one of the most liberal places in the US with people who are good at virtue signaling and pretending they care about “solving systematic racism” yet, they passed a bill to require college degrees for childcare services. If you apply the textbook definition of systematic racism, requiring college degrees for childcare services is about creating a system that prevents poor Black people to look after children.
Systematic racism that prevents poor Black people from offering childcare services is bad but the people in Washington DC are good at rationalising. The whole discourse about racism is of a nature where people score their points by virtue signaling about how they care about fighting racism. They practice steelmanning racism all the time and steelmanning the concept of systematic racism and yet they pass systematic racist laws because they don’t like poor Black people looking after their children.
If you tell White people in Washington DC who are already steelmanning systematic racism to the best of their ability that they should steelman it more because they are still inherently racist, they might even agree with you, but it’s not what’s going to make them change the laws so that more poor Black people will look after their children.
That tactic helps reduce ignorance of the “other side” on the issues that get the steelmanning discussion
If you want to reduce ignorance of the “other side”, listening to the other side is better than trying to steelman the other side. Eliezer explained problems with steelmanning well in his interview with Lex Friedmann.
Also, in judging a strategy, we should know what resources we assume we have (e.g. “the meetup leader is following the practice we’ve specified and is willing to follow ‘reasonable’ requests or suggestions from us”), and know what threats we’re modeling.
Yes, as far as resources go, you have to keep in mind that all people involved have their interests.
When it comes to thread modelling reading through Ben Hoffman’s critique of GiveWell based on his employment at it, give you a good idea of what you want to model.
To me, that will lead to an environment where people think that they are engaging with criticism without having to really engage with the criticism that actually matters.
From Scott’s Criticism Of Criticism Of Criticism:
If you frame the criticism as having to be about the mission of psychiatry, it’s easy for people to see “Is it ethical to charge poor patients three-digit fees for no-shows?” as off-topic.
In an organization like GiveWell people who criticize GiveWell’s mission in such a way, are unlikely to talk about the ways, in which GiveWell favors raising more donations over being more truthseeking, that Ben Hoffman described.
This is a possible outcome, especially if the above tactic were the only tactic to be employed. That tactic helps reduce ignorance of the “other side” on the issues that get the steelmanning discussion, and hopefully also pushes away low-curiosity tribalistic partisans while retaining members who value deepening understanding and intellectual integrity. There are lots of different ways for things to go wrong, and any complete strategy probably needs to use lots of tactics. Perhaps the most important tactic would be to notice when things are going wrong (ideally early) and adjust what you’re doing, possibly designing new tactics in the process.
Also, in judging a strategy, we should know what resources we assume we have (e.g. “the meetup leader is following the practice we’ve specified and is willing to follow ‘reasonable’ requests or suggestions from us”), and know what threats we’re modeling. In principle, we might sort the dangers by [impact if it happens] x [probability of it happening], enumerate tactics to handle the top several, do some cost-benefit analysis, decide on some practices, and repeat.
My understanding/guess is that “Is it ethical to charge poor patients three-digit fees for no-shows?” is an issue where the psychiatrists know the options and the impacts of the options, and the “likelihood of people actually coming to blows” comes from social signaling things like “If I say I don’t charge them, this shows I’m in a comfortable financial position and that I’m compassionate for poor patients”/”If I say I do charge them, this opens me up to accusations (tinged with social justice advocacy) of heartlessness and greed”. I would guess that many psychiatrists do charge the fees, but would hate being forced to admit it in public. Anyway, the problem here is not that psychiatrists are unaware of information on the issue, so there’d be little point in doing a steelmanning exercise about it.
That said, as you suggest, it is possible that people would spend their time steelmanning unimportant issues (and making ‘criticism’ of the “We need fifty Stalins” type). But if we assume that we have one person who notices there’s an important unaddressed issue, who has at least decent rapport with the meetup leader, then it seems they could ask for that issue to get steelmanned soon. That could cover it. (If we try to address the scenario where no one notices the unaddressed issue, that’s a pretty different problem.)
If I say that other psychiatrists at the conference are engaging in an ethical lapse when they charge late fees to poor people then I’m engaging in an uncomfortable interpersonal conflict. It’s about personal incentives that actually matter a lot to the day-to-day practice of psychiatry.
While the psychiatrists are certainly aware of them charging poor people, they are likely thinking about it normally as business as usual instead of considering it as an ethical issue.
If we take Scott’s example of psychiatrists talking about racism being a problem in psychiatry I don’t think the problem is that that racism is unimportant. The problem is rather that you can get points by virtue signaling talking about the problem and find common ground around the virtue signaling if you are willing to burn a few scapegoats while talking about the issues of charging poor people late fees is divisive.
Washington DC is one of the most liberal places in the US with people who are good at virtue signaling and pretending they care about “solving systematic racism” yet, they passed a bill to require college degrees for childcare services. If you apply the textbook definition of systematic racism, requiring college degrees for childcare services is about creating a system that prevents poor Black people to look after children.
Systematic racism that prevents poor Black people from offering childcare services is bad but the people in Washington DC are good at rationalising. The whole discourse about racism is of a nature where people score their points by virtue signaling about how they care about fighting racism. They practice steelmanning racism all the time and steelmanning the concept of systematic racism and yet they pass systematic racist laws because they don’t like poor Black people looking after their children.
If you tell White people in Washington DC who are already steelmanning systematic racism to the best of their ability that they should steelman it more because they are still inherently racist, they might even agree with you, but it’s not what’s going to make them change the laws so that more poor Black people will look after their children.
If you want to reduce ignorance of the “other side”, listening to the other side is better than trying to steelman the other side. Eliezer explained problems with steelmanning well in his interview with Lex Friedmann.
Yes, as far as resources go, you have to keep in mind that all people involved have their interests.
When it comes to thread modelling reading through Ben Hoffman’s critique of GiveWell based on his employment at it, give you a good idea of what you want to model.