Upvoted because every group wants to be a cult and this seems to be a topic particularly suspectible to groupthink when faced with criticism. (That is, for this community.)
I also note posters making comments that deny the question because of who posed it or because of the tone in which it is made, while admitting the basic validity of the question, which is a rationality fail of epic proportions. If the question is valid, then it should be discussed, no matter how unpopular the poster happens to be within the inner circle. Period. Even if he isn’t as eloquent and well-blessed with social skills than the most vocal people.
Nor does it seem good in the eyes of outsiders to see a valid question dismissed on such superficial reasons. This is separate from the direct effect the dismissal has on our own rationality. It will weaken both the rationalist and SIAI causes in the long run, as outsiders will see the causes as hypocritical and incapable of answering tough questions, respectively. Thus a smaller influx of interested outsiders.
In addition to the main post being voted down and the very validity of the question being denied, mormon2 has made at least one comment containing good points (even if I disagree with some of them). Before I gave it an upvote, it had been voted down to −2, apparently just because of the author.
(All of this being said, I find the answers that were provided to the OP’s question to be mostly adequate.)
I also note posters making comments that deny the question because of who posed it or because of the tone in which it is made, while admitting the basic validity of the question, which is a rationality fail of epic proportions.
No. You are either mistaken or you are using some arbitrary definition of ‘rationality’ that I reject. It is not rational to ignore all social implications of a question.
It matters who is asking. It matters how it is asked. And it matters why it is asked. It also matters what you predict the effect of ‘feeding’ another answer to the questioner will be.
Period.
No. Just no. Nobody is obliged to answer any question on pain of epic rationality fail. Nobody is obliged to accept belligerent disrespect and respond to it as though though a rapport is present. And nobody, not even Eliezer, is required to justify their professional goals at the whim of a detractor.
You are either mistaken or you are using some arbitrary definition of ‘rationality’ that I reject. It is not rational to ignore all social implications of a question.
Of the two definitions for rationality, I was going for e-rationality. It can certainly be i-rational to take social implications of a question into account to such a degree that one won’t even consider it by fear of consequences. Simply deciding that evolution must be false since the social consequences of believing otherwise would be too unpleasant, for instance. Or you could admit, in the safety of your head, that evolution must be true, but hide this belief because you know what the consequences were. That might be rational both ways. But it is always a failure of e-rationality to refuse to consider a valid question because of social consequences. In the case of communities and not individuals, “to consider” means discussion within the community.
“Taking into account the social consequences” is fine in theory, but it’s an easy path towards rationalizing away every argument from every person you don’t like. I would be a bit more understanding if the poster in question would have been really abrasive and heaped scorn upon scorn in the opening post. I do agree that the one comment of his that got really voted down was over the line and possibly deserved it. (-8 is a bit overkill, though.) But the opening post was, if not exactly polite, not any harsher than critique in general is. Even if a person has a history of being slightly abrasive, by the very least he merits a hearing when he does compose a non-abrasive criticism. Especially so since there is, in my experience, a certain correlation between (real or perceived) abrasiveness and a resistance to groupthink—either because the person in question just happens to care little for social norms, or because their brain is atypically wired, giving them both weak social skills and a tendency not to fall victim to groupthink.
Nobody is obliged to answer any question on pain of epic rationality fail.
I never said anything about needing to answer any question. 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.
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 am a SIAI donor, not sure of the exact amount but I think I’ve donated something in the region of $1500 so far. The feeling that SIAI doesn’t really seem to be accomplishing much caused several moments in the past when I’ve reconsidered whether I should donate or if my money would do more good elsewhere. Recently that worry has abated, but more because of SIAI folks other than Eliezer doing things. 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”.
(Tangential, but since we got on the topic… even now, the lack of reporting of what SIAI people actually do remains one of my greatest annoyances with the organization. Anna Salamon posted a great report—as a comment in a discussion thread most potential SIAI donors will never read. My request to have it reposted on the SIAI blog was ignored. This is not the way to attract more donors, people. Not necessarily even the way to keep old ones.)
Anna Salamon posted a great report—as a comment in a discussion thread most potential SIAI donors will never read. My request to have it reposted on the SIAI blog was ignored. This is not the way to attract more donors, people. Not necessarily even the way to keep old ones.
Sorry, Kaj. We have been working on a more fleshed out “what we’ve done, what we’re doing, and what more money would let us do” webpage, which should be up within the next week. We have had a large a backlog of worthwhile activities and a comparative shortage of already trained person-hours, lately. Part of the idea in the visiting fellows program.
No problem—I do know you folks are probably overworked, I know how it is from plenty of volunteer work for various groups over the years myself. Not to mention I still have at least one project from at least a year back already that I was doing for SIAI, but never got finished. Just do your best. :)
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”.
I do mention SIAI and what we’re up to on my blog, which has about 3K readers, about every other day for several months. It may not be an “official” SIAI news source, but many people read it and gain knowledge about SIAI via that route.
Upvoted because every group wants to be a cult and this seems to be a topic particularly suspectible to groupthink when faced with criticism. (That is, for this community.)
I also note posters making comments that deny the question because of who posed it or because of the tone in which it is made, while admitting the basic validity of the question, which is a rationality fail of epic proportions. If the question is valid, then it should be discussed, no matter how unpopular the poster happens to be within the inner circle. Period. Even if he isn’t as eloquent and well-blessed with social skills than the most vocal people.
Nor does it seem good in the eyes of outsiders to see a valid question dismissed on such superficial reasons. This is separate from the direct effect the dismissal has on our own rationality. It will weaken both the rationalist and SIAI causes in the long run, as outsiders will see the causes as hypocritical and incapable of answering tough questions, respectively. Thus a smaller influx of interested outsiders.
In addition to the main post being voted down and the very validity of the question being denied, mormon2 has made at least one comment containing good points (even if I disagree with some of them). Before I gave it an upvote, it had been voted down to −2, apparently just because of the author.
(All of this being said, I find the answers that were provided to the OP’s question to be mostly adequate.)
No. You are either mistaken or you are using some arbitrary definition of ‘rationality’ that I reject. It is not rational to ignore all social implications of a question.
It matters who is asking. It matters how it is asked. And it matters why it is asked. It also matters what you predict the effect of ‘feeding’ another answer to the questioner will be.
No. Just no. Nobody is obliged to answer any question on pain of epic rationality fail. Nobody is obliged to accept belligerent disrespect and respond to it as though though a rapport is present. And nobody, not even Eliezer, is required to justify their professional goals at the whim of a detractor.
Of the two definitions for rationality, I was going for e-rationality. It can certainly be i-rational to take social implications of a question into account to such a degree that one won’t even consider it by fear of consequences. Simply deciding that evolution must be false since the social consequences of believing otherwise would be too unpleasant, for instance. Or you could admit, in the safety of your head, that evolution must be true, but hide this belief because you know what the consequences were. That might be rational both ways. But it is always a failure of e-rationality to refuse to consider a valid question because of social consequences. In the case of communities and not individuals, “to consider” means discussion within the community.
“Taking into account the social consequences” is fine in theory, but it’s an easy path towards rationalizing away every argument from every person you don’t like. I would be a bit more understanding if the poster in question would have been really abrasive and heaped scorn upon scorn in the opening post. I do agree that the one comment of his that got really voted down was over the line and possibly deserved it. (-8 is a bit overkill, though.) But the opening post was, if not exactly polite, not any harsher than critique in general is. Even if a person has a history of being slightly abrasive, by the very least he merits a hearing when he does compose a non-abrasive criticism. Especially so since there is, in my experience, a certain correlation between (real or perceived) abrasiveness and a resistance to groupthink—either because the person in question just happens to care little for social norms, or because their brain is atypically wired, giving them both weak social skills and a tendency not to fall victim to groupthink.
I never said anything about needing to answer any question. 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.
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 am a SIAI donor, not sure of the exact amount but I think I’ve donated something in the region of $1500 so far. The feeling that SIAI doesn’t really seem to be accomplishing much caused several moments in the past when I’ve reconsidered whether I should donate or if my money would do more good elsewhere. Recently that worry has abated, but more because of SIAI folks other than Eliezer doing things. 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”.
(Tangential, but since we got on the topic… even now, the lack of reporting of what SIAI people actually do remains one of my greatest annoyances with the organization. Anna Salamon posted a great report—as a comment in a discussion thread most potential SIAI donors will never read. My request to have it reposted on the SIAI blog was ignored. This is not the way to attract more donors, people. Not necessarily even the way to keep old ones.)
Sorry, Kaj. We have been working on a more fleshed out “what we’ve done, what we’re doing, and what more money would let us do” webpage, which should be up within the next week. We have had a large a backlog of worthwhile activities and a comparative shortage of already trained person-hours, lately. Part of the idea in the visiting fellows program.
No problem—I do know you folks are probably overworked, I know how it is from plenty of volunteer work for various groups over the years myself. Not to mention I still have at least one project from at least a year back already that I was doing for SIAI, but never got finished. Just do your best. :)
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”.
I do mention SIAI and what we’re up to on my blog, which has about 3K readers, about every other day for several months. It may not be an “official” SIAI news source, but many people read it and gain knowledge about SIAI via that route.
Now that you mention it, yes, your blog is probably the place with the most reporting about what SIAI does. Not enough even there, though.