But … “I thought X seemed Y to me”[20] and “X is Y” do not mean the same thing!
And it seems to me that in the type of comment Eliezer’s referring to, “X seemed stupid to me” is more often correct than “X was stupid”.
Argument for this: it’s unlikely that someone would say “X seemed stupid to me” if X actually didn’t seem stupid to them, so it’s almost always true when said; whereas I think it’s quite common to misjudge whether X was actually stupid.
(“X was stupid, they should have just used the grabthar device.” / “Did you miss the part three chapters back [published eight months ago] where that got disabled?”)
So we might expect that “more often true ⇒ less information content”. We could rewrite “X was stupid” to “this story contained the letter E” and that would more often be true, too. But I don’t think that holds, because
“X seemed stupid” is not almost-always true, unlike “this story contained the letter E”;
But if someone said “X was stupid” I think it’s almost-always also the case that X seemed stupid to them;
And in fact people don’t reliably track this distinction.
I think people track it more than zero, to be clear. But if I see someone say “X was stupid”, two prominent hypotheses are:
This person reliably tracks the distinction between “X was stupid” and “X seemed stupid”, and in this case they have sufficient confidence to make the stronger claim.
This person does not reliably track that distinction.
And even on LessWrong, (2) is sufficiently common that in practice I often just rewrite the was-claim to the seemed-claim in my head.
(Actually, I think I’m imperfect at this. I think as a rule of thumb, the “was” claim updates me further than is warranted in the direction that X was stupid. My guess is that this kind of failure is pretty common. But that’s separate from a claim about information content of people’s words.)
So I think Eliezer is giving good advice for “how to be good at saying true and informative things”, as well as good advice for “how to discuss an author’s work in a way that leaves them motivated to keep writing”.
I agree that “seems to me” statements are more likely to be true than the corresponding unqualified claims, but they’re also about a less interesting subject matter (which is not quite the same thing as “less information content”). You probably don’t care about how it seems to me; you care about how it is.
You probably don’t care about how it seems to me; you care about how it is.
Indeed, and as I argued above, a person who reliably tracks the distinction between what-is and what-seems-to-them tells me more about what-is than a person who doesn’t.
I mean, I suppose that if someone happened to know that the dress was blue, and told me “the dress looks white to me” without saying ”...but it’s actually blue”, that would be misleading on the subject of the color of the dress. But I think less misleading, and a less common failure mode, than a person who doesn’t know that the dress is blue, who tells me “the dress is white” because that’s how it looks to them.
I mean, in the specific case of the colors of objects in photographs, I think correspondence between what-is and what-seems is sufficiently high not to worry about it most of the time. The dress was famous in part because it’s unusual. If you know that different people see the dress as different colors, and you don’t know what’s going on, then (according to me and, I claim, according to sensible rationalist discourse norms) you should say “it looks white to me” rather than “it’s white”. But if you have no reason to think there’s anything unusual about this particular photograph of a dress that looks white to you, then whatever.
But I think this correspondence is significantly lower between “X was stupid” and “X seemed stupid”. And so in this case, it seems to me that being careful to make the distinction:
Makes you better at saying true things;
Increases the information content of your words, on both the subjects what-is and what-seems-to-you;
Hm, I think I’m maybe somewhat equivocating between “the dress looks blue to me” as a statement about my state of mind and as a statement about the dress.
Like I think this distinction could be unpacked and it would be fine, I’d still endorse what I’m getting at above. But I haven’t unpacked it as much as would be good.
Edited to add: this is my opinion regarding media criticism, not in general, apologies for any confusion.
To me, the difference between x is y” and “x seems y” and “x seems y to me” and “I think x seems y to me” and “mileage varies, I think x seems y to me” and the many variations of that is:
Expressing probabilities or confidence intervals
Acknowledging (or changing) social reality
Acknowledging (or changing) power dynamics / status
In the specific case of responses to fiction there is no base reality, so we can’t write “x is y” and mean it literally. All these things are about how the fictional character seems. Still, I would write “Luke is a Jedi” not “Luke seems to be a Jedi”.
I read the quoted portion of Yudkowsky’s comment as requiring/encouraging negative literary criticism to express low confidence, to disclaim attempts to change social reality, and to express low status.
“seems to me” suggests inside view, “is” suggests outside view.
“seems to me” gestures vaguely at my model, “is” doesn’t. This is clearer with the dress; if I think it’s blue, “it looks blue to me” tells you why I think that, while “it’s blue” doesn’t distinguish between “I looked at the photo” and “I read about it on wikipedia and apparently someone tracked down the original dress and it was blue”. With “X seemed stupid to me”, it’s a vaguer gesture, but I think something like “this was my gut reaction, maybe I thought about it for a few minutes”. (If someone has spoken with the author and the author agrees “oops yeah that was stupid of X, they should instead have...”, then “X was stupid” seems a lot more justifiable to me.)
In the specific case of responses to fiction there is no base reality, so we can’t write “x is y” and mean it literally. All these things are about how the fictional character seems. Still, I would write “Luke is a Jedi” not “Luke seems to be a Jedi”.
Eh… so I don’t claim to fully understand what’s going on when we talk about fictional universes. But still, I’m comfortable with “Luke is a Jedi”, and I think it’s importantly different from, say, “Yoda is wise” or “the Death Star is indestructible” or “the Emperor has been defeated once and for all”.
And I think the ways it’s different are similar to the differences between claims about base-level reality like “Tim Cook is a CEO” versus “the Dalai Lama is wise” or “the Titanic is unsinkable” or “Napoleon has been defeated once and for all”.
Thanks for replying. I’m going to leave aside non-fictional examples (“The Dress”) because I intended to discuss literary criticism.
“seems to me” suggests inside view, “is” suggests outside view.
I’m not sure exactly what you mean, see Taboo “Outside View”. My best guess is that you mean that “X seems Y to me” implies my independent impression, not deferring to the views of others, whereas “X is Y” doesn’t.
If so, I don’t think I am missing this. I think that “seems to me” allows for a different social reality (others say that X is NOT Y, but my independent impression is that X is Y), whereas “is” implies a shared social reality (others say that X is Y, I agree), and can be an attempt to change or create social reality (I say “X is Y”, others agree, and it becomes the new social reality).
“seems to me” gestures vaguely at my model, “is” doesn’t. … With “X seemed stupid to me”, it’s a vaguer gesture, but I think something like “this was my gut reaction, maybe I thought about it for a few minutes”.
Again, I don’t think I am missing this. I agree that “X seems Y to me” implies something like a gut reaction or a hot take. I think this is because “X seems Y to me” expresses lower confidence than “X is Y”, and someone reporting a gut reaction or a hot take would have lower confidence than someone who has studied the text at length and sought input from other authorities. Similarly gesturing vaguely at the map/territory distinction implies that the distinction is relevant because the map may be in error.
I think Eliezer is giving good advice for “how to be good at saying true and informative things”,
Well, that isn’t his stated goal. I concede that Yudkowsky makes this argument under “criticism easily goes wrong”, but like Zack I notice that he only applies this argument in one direction. Yudkowsky doesn’t advise critics to say: “mileage varied, I thought character X seemed clever to me”, he doesn’t say “please don’t tell me what good things the author was thinking unless the author plainly came out and said so”. Given the one-sided application of the advice, I don’t take it very seriously.
“Gödel, Escher, Bach” by Douglas R. Hofstadter is the most awesome book that I have ever read. If there is one book that emphasizes the tragedy of Death, it is this book, because it’s terrible that so many people have died without reading it.
I claim that this text would not be more true and informative with “mileage varies, I think x seems y to me”. What do you think?
Thanks for replying. I’m going to leave aside non-fictional examples (“The Dress”) because I intended to discuss literary criticism.
So uh. Fair enough but I don’t think anything else in your comment hinged on examples being drawn from literary criticism rather than reality? And I like the dress as an example a lot, so I think I’m gonna keep using it.
I’m not sure exactly what you mean, see Taboo “Outside View”. My best guess is that you mean that “X seems Y to me” implies my independent impression, not deferring to the views of others, whereas “X is Y” doesn’t.
From a quick skim, I’d say many of the things in both the inside-view and outside-view lists there could fit. Like if I say “the dress looks white to me but I think it’s actually blue”, some ways this could fit inside/outside view:
Inside is one model available to me (visual appearance), outside is all-things-considered (wikipedia).
Inside is my personal guess, outside is taking a poll (most people think it’s blue, they’re probably right).
Inside is my initial guess, outside is reference class forecasting (I have a weird visual processing bug and most things that look white to me turn out to be blue).
If so, I don’t think I am missing this.
I don’t really know how to reply to this, because it seems to me that you listed “acknowledging or changing social reality”, I said “I think you’re missing inside versus outside view”, and you’re saying “I don’t think I am missing that” and elaborating on the social reality thing. I claim the two are different, and if they seem the same to you, I don’t really know where to proceed from there.
Again, I don’t think I am missing this. I agree that “X seems Y to me” implies something like a gut reaction or a hot take. I think this is because “X seems Y to me” expresses lower confidence than “X is Y”, and someone reporting a gut reaction or a hot take would have lower confidence than someone who has studied the text at length and sought input from other authorities.
I think you have causality backwards here. I’d buy “it seems low confidence because it suggests a gut reaction” (though I’m not gonna rule out that there’s more going on). I don’t buy “it suggests a gut reaction because it seems low confidence”.
So I claim the gut-reaction thing is more specific than the low-confidence thing.
Well, that isn’t his stated goal.
Right. Very loosely speaking, Eliezer said to do it because it was kind to authors; Zack objected because it was opposed to truth; I replied that in fact it’s pro-truth. (And as you point out, Eliezer had already explained that it’s pro-truth, differently but compatibly with my own explanation.)
Yudkowsky doesn’t advise critics to say: “mileage varied, I thought character X seemed clever to me”, he doesn’t say “please don’t tell me what good things the author was thinking unless the author plainly came out and said so”.
Well, I can’t speak for Eliezer, and what Eliezer thinks is less important than what’s true. For myself, I think both of those would be good advice for the purpose of saying true and informative things; neutral advice for the purpose of being kind to authors.
Given the one-sided application of the advice, I don’t take it very seriously.
I’m not sure what you mean by not taking it very seriously.
Applying a rule in one situation is either good advice for some purpose, or it’s not. Applying a rule in another situation is either good advice for some purpose, or it’s not. If someone advises applying the rule in one situation, and says nothing about another situation… so what?
My vague sense here is that you think he has hidden motives? Like “the fact that he advises it in this situation and not that situation tells us… something”? But:
I don’t think his motives are hidden. He’s pretty explicitly talking about how to be kind to authors, and the rule helps that purpose more in one situation than another.
You can just decide for yourself what your purposes are and whether it’s good advice for them in any given situation. If he makes arguments that are only relevant to purposes you don’t share, you can ignore them. If he makes bad arguments you can point them out and/or ignore them. If he makes good arguments that generalize further than he takes them, in ways that you endorse but you think he wouldn’t, you can follow the generalization anyway.
I claim that this text would not be more true and informative with “mileage varies, I think x seems y to me”. What do you think?
Eliezer described it as his opinion before saying it, and to me that does the same work.
If it weren’t flagged as opinion, then yes, I think a “seems” or “to me” or something would make it slightly more true and informative. Not loads in this case—“awesome” and “terrible” are already very subjective words, unlike “blue” or “indestructible”.
This feels like the type of conversation that takes a lot of time and doesn’t help anyone much. So after this I’m gonna try to limit myself to two more effortful replies to you in this thread.
My vague sense here is that you think he has hidden motives?
Absolutely not, his motive (how to be kind to authors) is clear. I think he is using the argument as a soldier. Unlike Zack, I’m fine with that in this case.
This feels like the type of conversation that takes a lot of time and doesn’t help anyone much.
I endorse that. I’ll edit my grandparent post to explicitly focus on literary/media criticism. I think my failure to do so got the discussion off-track and I’m sorry. You mention that “awesome” and “terrible” are very subjective words, unlike “blue”, and this is relevant. I agree. Similarly, media criticism is very subjective, unlike dress colors.
I see. That’s not a sense I pick up on myself, but I suppose it’s not worth litigating.
To be clear, skimming my previous posts, I don’t see anything that I don’t endorse when it comes to literary criticism. Like, if I’ve said something that you agree with most of the time, but disagree with for literary criticism, then we likely disagree. (Though of course there may be subtleties e.g. in the way that I think something applies when the topic is literary criticism.)
You mention that “awesome” and “terrible” are very subjective words, unlike “blue”, and this is relevant. I agree. Similarly, media criticism is very subjective, unlike dress colors.
Media criticism can be very subjective, but it doesn’t have to be. “I love Star Wars” is more subjective than “Star Wars is great” is more subjective than “Star Wars is a technical masterpiece of the art of filmmaking” is more subjective than “Star Wars is a book about a young boy who goes to wizard school”. And as I said above:
I’m comfortable with “Luke is a Jedi”, and I think it’s importantly different from, say, “Yoda is wise” or “the Death Star is indestructible” or “the Emperor has been defeated once and for all”.
And I think the ways it’s different are similar to the differences between claims about base-level reality like “Tim Cook is a CEO” versus “the Dalai Lama is wise” or “the Titanic is unsinkable” or “Napoleon has been defeated once and for all”.
And it seems to me that in the type of comment Eliezer’s referring to, “X seemed stupid to me” is more often correct than “X was stupid”.
Argument for this: it’s unlikely that someone would say “X seemed stupid to me” if X actually didn’t seem stupid to them, so it’s almost always true when said; whereas I think it’s quite common to misjudge whether X was actually stupid.
(“X was stupid, they should have just used the grabthar device.” / “Did you miss the part three chapters back [published eight months ago] where that got disabled?”)
So we might expect that “more often true ⇒ less information content”. We could rewrite “X was stupid” to “this story contained the letter E” and that would more often be true, too. But I don’t think that holds, because
“X seemed stupid” is not almost-always true, unlike “this story contained the letter E”;
But if someone said “X was stupid” I think it’s almost-always also the case that X seemed stupid to them;
And in fact people don’t reliably track this distinction.
I think people track it more than zero, to be clear. But if I see someone say “X was stupid”, two prominent hypotheses are:
This person reliably tracks the distinction between “X was stupid” and “X seemed stupid”, and in this case they have sufficient confidence to make the stronger claim.
This person does not reliably track that distinction.
And even on LessWrong, (2) is sufficiently common that in practice I often just rewrite the was-claim to the seemed-claim in my head.
(Actually, I think I’m imperfect at this. I think as a rule of thumb, the “was” claim updates me further than is warranted in the direction that X was stupid. My guess is that this kind of failure is pretty common. But that’s separate from a claim about information content of people’s words.)
So I think Eliezer is giving good advice for “how to be good at saying true and informative things”, as well as good advice for “how to discuss an author’s work in a way that leaves them motivated to keep writing”.
I agree that “seems to me” statements are more likely to be true than the corresponding unqualified claims, but they’re also about a less interesting subject matter (which is not quite the same thing as “less information content”). You probably don’t care about how it seems to me; you care about how it is.
Indeed, and as I argued above, a person who reliably tracks the distinction between what-is and what-seems-to-them tells me more about what-is than a person who doesn’t.
I mean, I suppose that if someone happened to know that the dress was blue, and told me “the dress looks white to me” without saying ”...but it’s actually blue”, that would be misleading on the subject of the color of the dress. But I think less misleading, and a less common failure mode, than a person who doesn’t know that the dress is blue, who tells me “the dress is white” because that’s how it looks to them.
I mean, in the specific case of the colors of objects in photographs, I think correspondence between what-is and what-seems is sufficiently high not to worry about it most of the time. The dress was famous in part because it’s unusual. If you know that different people see the dress as different colors, and you don’t know what’s going on, then (according to me and, I claim, according to sensible rationalist discourse norms) you should say “it looks white to me” rather than “it’s white”. But if you have no reason to think there’s anything unusual about this particular photograph of a dress that looks white to you, then whatever.
But I think this correspondence is significantly lower between “X was stupid” and “X seemed stupid”. And so in this case, it seems to me that being careful to make the distinction:
Makes you better at saying true things;
Increases the information content of your words, on both the subjects what-is and what-seems-to-you;
Is kinder to authors.
Hm, I think I’m maybe somewhat equivocating between “the dress looks blue to me” as a statement about my state of mind and as a statement about the dress.
Like I think this distinction could be unpacked and it would be fine, I’d still endorse what I’m getting at above. But I haven’t unpacked it as much as would be good.
Edited to add: this is my opinion regarding media criticism, not in general, apologies for any confusion.
To me, the difference between x is y” and “x seems y” and “x seems y to me” and “I think x seems y to me” and “mileage varies, I think x seems y to me” and the many variations of that is:
Expressing probabilities or confidence intervals
Acknowledging (or changing) social reality
Acknowledging (or changing) power dynamics / status
In the specific case of responses to fiction there is no base reality, so we can’t write “x is y” and mean it literally. All these things are about how the fictional character seems. Still, I would write “Luke is a Jedi” not “Luke seems to be a Jedi”.
I read the quoted portion of Yudkowsky’s comment as requiring/encouraging negative literary criticism to express low confidence, to disclaim attempts to change social reality, and to express low status.
Two differences I think you’re missing:
“seems to me” suggests inside view, “is” suggests outside view.
“seems to me” gestures vaguely at my model, “is” doesn’t. This is clearer with the dress; if I think it’s blue, “it looks blue to me” tells you why I think that, while “it’s blue” doesn’t distinguish between “I looked at the photo” and “I read about it on wikipedia and apparently someone tracked down the original dress and it was blue”. With “X seemed stupid to me”, it’s a vaguer gesture, but I think something like “this was my gut reaction, maybe I thought about it for a few minutes”. (If someone has spoken with the author and the author agrees “oops yeah that was stupid of X, they should instead have...”, then “X was stupid” seems a lot more justifiable to me.)
Eh… so I don’t claim to fully understand what’s going on when we talk about fictional universes. But still, I’m comfortable with “Luke is a Jedi”, and I think it’s importantly different from, say, “Yoda is wise” or “the Death Star is indestructible” or “the Emperor has been defeated once and for all”.
And I think the ways it’s different are similar to the differences between claims about base-level reality like “Tim Cook is a CEO” versus “the Dalai Lama is wise” or “the Titanic is unsinkable” or “Napoleon has been defeated once and for all”.
Thanks for replying. I’m going to leave aside non-fictional examples (“The Dress”) because I intended to discuss literary criticism.
I’m not sure exactly what you mean, see Taboo “Outside View”. My best guess is that you mean that “X seems Y to me” implies my independent impression, not deferring to the views of others, whereas “X is Y” doesn’t.
If so, I don’t think I am missing this. I think that “seems to me” allows for a different social reality (others say that X is NOT Y, but my independent impression is that X is Y), whereas “is” implies a shared social reality (others say that X is Y, I agree), and can be an attempt to change or create social reality (I say “X is Y”, others agree, and it becomes the new social reality).
Again, I don’t think I am missing this. I agree that “X seems Y to me” implies something like a gut reaction or a hot take. I think this is because “X seems Y to me” expresses lower confidence than “X is Y”, and someone reporting a gut reaction or a hot take would have lower confidence than someone who has studied the text at length and sought input from other authorities. Similarly gesturing vaguely at the map/territory distinction implies that the distinction is relevant because the map may be in error.
Well, that isn’t his stated goal. I concede that Yudkowsky makes this argument under “criticism easily goes wrong”, but like Zack I notice that he only applies this argument in one direction. Yudkowsky doesn’t advise critics to say: “mileage varied, I thought character X seemed clever to me”, he doesn’t say “please don’t tell me what good things the author was thinking unless the author plainly came out and said so”. Given the one-sided application of the advice, I don’t take it very seriously.
Also, I’ve read some Yudkowsky. Here is a Yudkowsky book review, excerpted from You’re Calling Who A Cult Leader? from 2009.
I claim that this text would not be more true and informative with “mileage varies, I think x seems y to me”. What do you think?
So uh. Fair enough but I don’t think anything else in your comment hinged on examples being drawn from literary criticism rather than reality? And I like the dress as an example a lot, so I think I’m gonna keep using it.
From a quick skim, I’d say many of the things in both the inside-view and outside-view lists there could fit. Like if I say “the dress looks white to me but I think it’s actually blue”, some ways this could fit inside/outside view:
Inside is one model available to me (visual appearance), outside is all-things-considered (wikipedia).
Inside is my personal guess, outside is taking a poll (most people think it’s blue, they’re probably right).
Inside is my initial guess, outside is reference class forecasting (I have a weird visual processing bug and most things that look white to me turn out to be blue).
I don’t really know how to reply to this, because it seems to me that you listed “acknowledging or changing social reality”, I said “I think you’re missing inside versus outside view”, and you’re saying “I don’t think I am missing that” and elaborating on the social reality thing. I claim the two are different, and if they seem the same to you, I don’t really know where to proceed from there.
I think you have causality backwards here. I’d buy “it seems low confidence because it suggests a gut reaction” (though I’m not gonna rule out that there’s more going on). I don’t buy “it suggests a gut reaction because it seems low confidence”.
So I claim the gut-reaction thing is more specific than the low-confidence thing.
Right. Very loosely speaking, Eliezer said to do it because it was kind to authors; Zack objected because it was opposed to truth; I replied that in fact it’s pro-truth. (And as you point out, Eliezer had already explained that it’s pro-truth, differently but compatibly with my own explanation.)
Well, I can’t speak for Eliezer, and what Eliezer thinks is less important than what’s true. For myself, I think both of those would be good advice for the purpose of saying true and informative things; neutral advice for the purpose of being kind to authors.
I’m not sure what you mean by not taking it very seriously.
Applying a rule in one situation is either good advice for some purpose, or it’s not. Applying a rule in another situation is either good advice for some purpose, or it’s not. If someone advises applying the rule in one situation, and says nothing about another situation… so what?
My vague sense here is that you think he has hidden motives? Like “the fact that he advises it in this situation and not that situation tells us… something”? But:
I don’t think his motives are hidden. He’s pretty explicitly talking about how to be kind to authors, and the rule helps that purpose more in one situation than another.
You can just decide for yourself what your purposes are and whether it’s good advice for them in any given situation. If he makes arguments that are only relevant to purposes you don’t share, you can ignore them. If he makes bad arguments you can point them out and/or ignore them. If he makes good arguments that generalize further than he takes them, in ways that you endorse but you think he wouldn’t, you can follow the generalization anyway.
Eliezer described it as his opinion before saying it, and to me that does the same work.
If it weren’t flagged as opinion, then yes, I think a “seems” or “to me” or something would make it slightly more true and informative. Not loads in this case—“awesome” and “terrible” are already very subjective words, unlike “blue” or “indestructible”.
This feels like the type of conversation that takes a lot of time and doesn’t help anyone much. So after this I’m gonna try to limit myself to two more effortful replies to you in this thread.
Absolutely not, his motive (how to be kind to authors) is clear. I think he is using the argument as a soldier. Unlike Zack, I’m fine with that in this case.
I endorse that. I’ll edit my grandparent post to explicitly focus on literary/media criticism. I think my failure to do so got the discussion off-track and I’m sorry. You mention that “awesome” and “terrible” are very subjective words, unlike “blue”, and this is relevant. I agree. Similarly, media criticism is very subjective, unlike dress colors.
I see. That’s not a sense I pick up on myself, but I suppose it’s not worth litigating.
To be clear, skimming my previous posts, I don’t see anything that I don’t endorse when it comes to literary criticism. Like, if I’ve said something that you agree with most of the time, but disagree with for literary criticism, then we likely disagree. (Though of course there may be subtleties e.g. in the way that I think something applies when the topic is literary criticism.)
Media criticism can be very subjective, but it doesn’t have to be. “I love Star Wars” is more subjective than “Star Wars is great” is more subjective than “Star Wars is a technical masterpiece of the art of filmmaking” is more subjective than “Star Wars is a book about a young boy who goes to wizard school”. And as I said above: