But it is always a failure of e-rationality to refuse to consider a valid question because of social consequences.
It is a failure of e-rationality to alter your beliefs for social purposes. It is not an epic failure of e-rationality to not accept a particular social challenge. Moreover e-rationality makes no normative claims at all. “If the question is valid, then it should be discussed” is about your preferences and not something required by e-rationality to the degree ‘epic fail period’. You can have different preferences to me, that’s fine. But I take offence at your accusation of an epic failure of rationality based on advocating ignoring a question that you would choose to answer. It is nonsensical.
I never said anything about needing to answer any question.
It seems my assertion was ambiguous. I don’t mean “need to answer any possible question”. I insist that nobody is required to answer any question whatsoever.
But here we have a situation were people are basically saying that the question is good and valid, but they don’t like the person who asked it, so in order to slight him there won’t be any discussion of it this time around. That’s a different story.
Substitute “in order to slight him” with “in order not to slight oneself” and that is exactly the story under consideration. It isn’t about ignoring a question as a rhetorical ploy to counter an argument. In fact, saying that you would answer such a question under different circumstances serves to waive such a rhetorical use.
You are advocating a norm about the social obligations of people to engage with the challenges and you are advocating it using the threat of being considered ‘epically irrational’. I absolutely refuse to submit myself to the norm you advocate and take umbrage at the manner of your assertion of it upon me (as a subset of ‘us’).
And sure, certainly nobody is required to justify their professional goals to anyone who isn’t paying their wage. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good idea to refuse to justify those goals if the question is a good one.
I have no objection to you suggesting that answering this particular question may be a better than not answering it. You may even be right. I cannot claim to be a master of intricacies of social politics by any stretch of the imagination.
If I came across SIAI now and wasn’t a donor yet, I can’t imagine anything that’d throw up a bigger red flag than a refusal to answer the question “how can I know my money is actually helping the cause you’re claiming to advance”.
I would like to see some more details of SIAI’s approach and progress made public. Perhaps in the form of some extra PR on the SIAI website and posts here that link to it to allow discussion from the many interested lesswrong participants.
Before I gave it an upvote, it had been voted down to −2, apparently just because of the author.
I don’t consider this inappropriate. Karma serves as an organic form of moderation that can alleviate the need for moderators deleting unhelpful posts. Having it serve as an collectively implemented approximation of banning is perhaps better than having requiring an administrator to do the dirty work. This is better than having an official arbitrating such unpleasantness, particularly when the motivating conflict involves someone with administrative status! I expect a trend of improved posting, even a trend of toning down posts to the level of the OP, would quickly eliminate a tendency for mormon2′s posts to be downvoted freely.
I think we are talking at cross purposes here. And it seems I may have misunderstood part of the comments which led to that “epic rationality fail” line, in which case I apologize.
This line of yours first led me to see that we really are talking about two different things:
It is not an epic failure of e-rationality to not accept a particular social challenge.
I am puzzled over as to why you would want to consider this a “social challenge”. The opening post was formulated in a reasonable tone, asking reasonable and fully warranted questions. I had automatically assumed that any aspiring rationalist would, well, treat such as post like any other post by someone else. I certainly hadn’t assumed that people would instead prefer to interpret it as a maneuver in some elaborate social battle, and I am utterly puzzled over why anyone would want to take it that way. Not only does that run a major risk of misinterpretation in case the person in question actually meant what they said in the post, it’s also stooping down to their level and making things worse in case they did intend it as a social attack.
It seems my assertion was ambiguous. I don’t mean “need to answer any possible question”. I insist that nobody is required to answer any question whatsoever.
Okay, it appears I was ambiguous as well. I didn’t mean that anyone would be required to answer any question, either. The tone I got from the comments was something along the lines of “this is an important question, and I do find it interesting and worthy enough to discuss and consider, but now that you have brought it up, I’ll push it out of my mind or at least delay discussion of it later on”.
Does this mean people find this an important topic and would like to discuss it, but will now forever avoid the question? That would indeed be a rationality fail. Does it mean that some poster of a higher status should reword the same questions in his own words, and post them in the open thread / as his own top-level post, and then it would be acceptable to discuss? That just seems petty and pointless, when it could just as well be discussed here.
Certainly there’s no requirement on anybody to answer any questions if they don’t feel like it. But, how should I put this… it’s certainly a worrying sign if they can be deflected from a question they’d otherwise consider, simply because the wrong person also happens to ask it.
I am not ignoring this but I will not engage fully with all of it because to do so effectively would require us to write several posts worth of background to even be using the same meaning for words.
Does this mean people find this an important topic and would like to discuss it, but will now forever avoid the question? That would indeed be a rationality fail.
I agree, and rather hope not.
Certainly there’s no requirement on anybody to answer any questions if they don’t feel like it. But, how should I put this… it’s certainly a worrying sign if they can be deflected from a question they’d otherwise consider, simply because the wrong person also happens to ask it.
I would not be quite as worried and would perhaps frame it slightly differently. I may share an underlying concern with maintaining an acceptable ‘bullshit to content’ ratio. Things like ignoring people or arguments can sometimes fall into that bullshit category and oft times are a concern to me. I think I have a somewhat different conception than you when it comes to “times when ignoring stuff is undesirable”.
It is a failure of e-rationality to alter your beliefs for social purposes. It is not an epic failure of e-rationality to not accept a particular social challenge. Moreover e-rationality makes no normative claims at all. “If the question is valid, then it should be discussed” is about your preferences and not something required by e-rationality to the degree ‘epic fail period’. You can have different preferences to me, that’s fine. But I take offence at your accusation of an epic failure of rationality based on advocating ignoring a question that you would choose to answer. It is nonsensical.
It seems my assertion was ambiguous. I don’t mean “need to answer any possible question”. I insist that nobody is required to answer any question whatsoever.
Substitute “in order to slight him” with “in order not to slight oneself” and that is exactly the story under consideration. It isn’t about ignoring a question as a rhetorical ploy to counter an argument. In fact, saying that you would answer such a question under different circumstances serves to waive such a rhetorical use.
You are advocating a norm about the social obligations of people to engage with the challenges and you are advocating it using the threat of being considered ‘epically irrational’. I absolutely refuse to submit myself to the norm you advocate and take umbrage at the manner of your assertion of it upon me (as a subset of ‘us’).
I have no objection to you suggesting that answering this particular question may be a better than not answering it. You may even be right. I cannot claim to be a master of intricacies of social politics by any stretch of the imagination.
I would like to see some more details of SIAI’s approach and progress made public. Perhaps in the form of some extra PR on the SIAI website and posts here that link to it to allow discussion from the many interested lesswrong participants.
I don’t consider this inappropriate. Karma serves as an organic form of moderation that can alleviate the need for moderators deleting unhelpful posts. Having it serve as an collectively implemented approximation of banning is perhaps better than having requiring an administrator to do the dirty work. This is better than having an official arbitrating such unpleasantness, particularly when the motivating conflict involves someone with administrative status! I expect a trend of improved posting, even a trend of toning down posts to the level of the OP, would quickly eliminate a tendency for mormon2′s posts to be downvoted freely.
I think we are talking at cross purposes here. And it seems I may have misunderstood part of the comments which led to that “epic rationality fail” line, in which case I apologize.
This line of yours first led me to see that we really are talking about two different things:
I am puzzled over as to why you would want to consider this a “social challenge”. The opening post was formulated in a reasonable tone, asking reasonable and fully warranted questions. I had automatically assumed that any aspiring rationalist would, well, treat such as post like any other post by someone else. I certainly hadn’t assumed that people would instead prefer to interpret it as a maneuver in some elaborate social battle, and I am utterly puzzled over why anyone would want to take it that way. Not only does that run a major risk of misinterpretation in case the person in question actually meant what they said in the post, it’s also stooping down to their level and making things worse in case they did intend it as a social attack.
Okay, it appears I was ambiguous as well. I didn’t mean that anyone would be required to answer any question, either. The tone I got from the comments was something along the lines of “this is an important question, and I do find it interesting and worthy enough to discuss and consider, but now that you have brought it up, I’ll push it out of my mind or at least delay discussion of it later on”.
Does this mean people find this an important topic and would like to discuss it, but will now forever avoid the question? That would indeed be a rationality fail. Does it mean that some poster of a higher status should reword the same questions in his own words, and post them in the open thread / as his own top-level post, and then it would be acceptable to discuss? That just seems petty and pointless, when it could just as well be discussed here.
Certainly there’s no requirement on anybody to answer any questions if they don’t feel like it. But, how should I put this… it’s certainly a worrying sign if they can be deflected from a question they’d otherwise consider, simply because the wrong person also happens to ask it.
I am not ignoring this but I will not engage fully with all of it because to do so effectively would require us to write several posts worth of background to even be using the same meaning for words.
I agree, and rather hope not.
I would not be quite as worried and would perhaps frame it slightly differently. I may share an underlying concern with maintaining an acceptable ‘bullshit to content’ ratio. Things like ignoring people or arguments can sometimes fall into that bullshit category and oft times are a concern to me. I think I have a somewhat different conception than you when it comes to “times when ignoring stuff is undesirable”.