[note: still kinda braindumpy and not arguing very concretely]
Hmm. I agree that survivorship bias could easily be a force at play here, but not sure about some of your specific subclaims here. (I haven’t read the books listed, although I think I’ve maybe read summaries of the Art of Not Being Governed. Will check out both of them)
There’s two somewhat different things, which are “meeting people’s needs in the moment” and “being stable/sustainable.” Which do seem like when done right they should go hand in hand, but I’m not entirely sure it makes sense to be sustainable in the classical village sense. (A university is stable in ways different from a village, although many of the same mechanisms are there in some form)
Some of the things I’ve heard or encountered that played a role in my thinking (not all of these are necessarily countering your points, some are just painting a picture of where I’m coming from and clarifying what evidence I actually have that there’s a real thing here).
1. A friend claiming that working on a military submarine, forced to work together with a small group of people in sardine can sized vessel, where if anyone of them fucked up they could be entombed in the sea, which he described as producing the tightest bonds he ever felt, which he expected to be hard to imagine. (This points a bit against single-occupation towns necessarily having any issues re: trust/stability. I do expect diverse occupations to be useful for other reasons though)
2. The fact that, at NYC Sunday Assembly (an attempted atheist church), ex-Christians describe how close their church was, how people would take care of each other, how they felt connected, and this was so good, and atheist communities were so mediocre, that for many of them their default course of action was to just keep hanging out in the religious communities ’cuz they were just better at it than the atheist communities.
3. A couple experiences I’ve had volunteering to maintain parks and gardens, which involved a lot of manual labor, while talking with other people in a local community which felt… really good and wholesome. It felt good to work with my hands, it felt good to work together. It was in fact quite weird and sad that at the end of the day, I said out loud “huh. So, that felt really good… and I feel like I should do that all the time, for my physical and emotional well being… and I can tell that I’m not going to, and am just going to get swept up into atomic individualist land again.”
4. In general, hearing many people, from theater troupes to military people to people running events where a small team had to depend on each other, about the tight bonds they form.
5. Hearing descriptions of the MAPLE monastery where some rationalists have gone, and a cluster of dependability skills that it seemed to foster
6. Scott’s description of his experience with communities in Concept Shaped Holes (both in seeing “real” communities that seemed to have something deep that he hadn’t even known existed, and his experiences with the rationalist community demonstrating at least being somewhat closer to that end of the spectrum).
All of this seems to point to there being something real here, which does require effort to adapt to the 21st century, and require skill and sacrifice to implement even in it’s usual form. But which… seems reasonably straightforward as far as things go. Atomic Libertarians might have a hard time implementing it but that’s more of a fact about them than about it.
Could some of this be connected to the “geek social fallacies”? Specifically: some people seem to be a community material; some people seem corrosive to any community; most are probably somewhere on the spectrum. If you try to make a community that includes the corrosive people, it will quickly and inevitably fall apart. However, some communities have “inclusion” as their applause light, so it requires some degree of hypocrisy and tacit coordination to navigate this successfully.
I suppose that even the religious communities who try to save everyone’s soul, are ultimately exclusive. This happens in two ways:
First, “doing some actual work” filters out lazy people, or people who prefer talking about things to actually doing things. There are people who could endlessly talk about helping the poor; but if you ask for volunteers who will cook the soup for the homeless, when the time comes to actually cook the soup, these talkers will not be there. Good!
Second, some people take more than they give, but you can balance this by making “taking” low status, and “giving” high status; and then having the high-status people meet separately. So you spend one afternoon cooking the soup and giving it to the homeless; but then you spend another afternoon or two with the fellow cooks in a place where the homeless people are not invited.
So, on one level you have people who love everyone so much that they even spend their free time cooking soups for the homeless. But on another level, you have a clever algorithm to filter out a kind of elite—people who are altruistic and willing to work—and have them network with each other, in absence of the less worthy ones. No one mentions this explicitly, because debating it explicitly would probably ruin the effect, if people uninterested in cooking soup for the homeless would start participating anyway, because they would realize the benefits of networking with altruistic and hard-working ones.
I suspect that the atheist community meetup will be full of annoying and disagreeable people who would filter themselves out from the “religious people cooking soup for the homeless” meetup. They don’t have to be all annoying and disagreeable, of course, but even a few of them can ruin the atmosphere.
Coordinating online probably also makes things worse. When you announce an activity, people who dislike the activity will give vocal feedback, and you suddenly find yourself in a debate with them, which is a complete waste of your time. As opposed to announcing the time and place on a flyer, so that people who are interested will come, and the people who are not will stay at home.
In my personal experience, I found the highest quality people in various volunteer groups. Doesn’t matter what: they could be campaigning for human rights, organizing a summer camp for kids, preparing educational reform materials, or mowing a meadow to save endangered plant species. Some of these activities have specific filters on profession or political alignment, but each of them at the same times filters for… I am not sure I can describe it correctly, but it is a good filter.
Coordinating online probably also makes things worse. When you announce an activity, people who dislike the activity will give vocal feedback, and you suddenly find yourself in a debate with them, which is a complete waste of your time.
In my experience if someone sets up an event via facebook people who don’t like the activity simply decide against coming. I can’t remember cases where that lead to longer discussions. Is your experience different?
I had in mind the proposals to organize (1) Solstice celebration and (2) Dragon Army, on Less Wrong.
From my perspective, both cases were “hey, I have an idea of a weird but potentially awesome activity, here is an outline, contact me if you are interested”, and in both cases, the debate was mostly about why this is a horrible thing to do, because only cultists would organize a weird activity in real life.
The Dragon Army pushed the Overton window so far that now it makes difficult to remember what exactly was so horrifying about the Solstice celebration. But back then, the mere idea of singing together was quite triggering for a few people: singing is an irrational activity, it manipulates your emotions, it increases group cohesion which rubs contrarians the wrong way, it’s what religious people do, yadda yadda yadda, therefore meeting with a group of friends and singing a song together means abandoning your rationality forever.
Now, the Solstice celebration is a perfectly normal thing, and no one freaks out about it anymore. And I suppose if there would be a second and third attempt to do something like the Dragon Army, people would get used to that, too. But the reactions to the first attempts felt quite discouraging.
Announcing an event is different then planning an event.
A post that’s about “hey, I have an idea of a weird but potentially awesome activity, here is an outline, contact me if you are interested”, is in the planning stage. In the planning stage it makes sense to have a lot more criticism and discuss how the event should work.
Your comment is, I’m afraid, full of the most egregious strawmen—and what’s worse, they are strawmen which were trotted out, and subsequently revealed for what they were (with their accusers conceding the straw nature of their accusations), even at the time.
Anyone who wishes to see for themselves can read the discussion I linked (though if you do, please be sure to read not only initial comments in every thread, but responses, and counter-responses… in short, do not just skim and assume you get the gist; actually take the time to understand what the disputants, on both sides, were saying). I have little to add now to what I said back then.
I will, however, comment on this, which is an example of an unfortunately common error in reasoning about this sort of situation:
Now, the Solstice celebration is a perfectly normal thing, and no one freaks out about it anymore.
It is only “a perfectly normal thing” because everyone who didn’t think it was perfectly normal, has left! (Or, in the milder cases, simply avoids such things, and even if this bothers them, does not speak up, seeing no point in rehashing the same argument, knowing that it will end in the same way: with their preferences overruled.) It is a simple case of evaporative cooling!
Seems important to note that I endorse this comment. Obviously I think it was correct for Solstice to win the overton-window fight (otherwise I’d have made very different life choices). But it’s important to be clear and honest about what happened, and yes, there were some people who were quite unhappy with it, some of whom left, and some of whom remained, quietly annoyed.
I do think it’s also important to note that there are also people who were annoyed or worried initially, went to Solstice, and after a couple years updated to “yeah this isn’t bad in the way I initially thought it was.” (In both cases, the number of people who “still don’t like it” and “have updated to ‘it’s fine’” that I have concretely observed are less than 10, so I’m hesitant to make many generalizations)
I do think Villiam’s general claim of “if you propose a new thing, especially a new confusing thing, there’s a good chance you’ll get a disproportionate amount of vocal opposition compared to support” is true and noteworthy. (this isn’t quite how they framed it initially and I’m not sure this is what they meant, but it is what I interpreted them to mean, if I interpreted wrong please correct me)
“if you propose a new thing, especially a new confusing thing, there’s a good chance you’ll get a disproportionate amount of vocal opposition compared to support” … if I interpreted wrong please correct me
Yes, this is how I meant it, but in context of Less Wrong especially when the new thing is about rationalist having some emotional experience and becoming closer to each other. Even if it is an obviously voluntary activity no one is pressured to join. Unusual and confusing suggestions that would involve studying math or playing poker would not get that intensity of reaction.
(The surprising part is why singing songs together or living in the Dragon Army house is perceived as more dangerous than polyamory. But maybe because the idea of polyamory came first, so the people who strongly objected to that were already gone when the other ideas came.)
Obviously I think it was correct for Solstice to win the overton-window fight (otherwise I’d have made very different life choices)
And, to be clear, I do not have any meta-objection to this (which is to say, my object-level opinion is the same as it ever was—I think this choice that rationalist communities collectively made was a poor one—but I have no principled objection to “we, as a community, decided to go a certain way, and if some folks don’t care for that, that’s unfortunate, but this is what we’re doing”).
But, yes, pretending that that’s not what happened—pretending that actually, the dissenters just turned out to be obviously silly and their objections were groundless and now they’ve quietly accepted how wrong they were all along, now that their wrongness is plain for all to see—is not acceptable at all.
I do think it’s also important to note that there are also people who were annoyed or worried initially, went to Solstice, and after a couple years updated to “yeah this isn’t bad in the way I initially thought it was.”
Indeed. If I may ask—do you know of any people who initially were in favor / cautiously optimistic / ambivalent / etc., but later updated to “actually this is bad”?
In both cases, the number of people who “still don’t like it” and “have updated to ‘it’s fine’” that I have concretely observed are less than 10, so I’m hesitant to make many generalizations
I, too, have only a handful of data points, so indeed I don’t propose to generalize, but I do want to note that you are rather less likely to observe “still don’t like it” than you are to observe “actually this is fine”, conditional on the existence of each, simply because you’re less likely to interact with people of the latter persuasion!
I have not heard anyone update starting from “this was okay” and then later “this was bad” direction. (If anyone happens to be reading along and had that experience this is as good a time as any to speak up)
(My recollection of your own experience, after coming to a Solstice once, was that you said something afterwards like “okay, yeah that was still cringey but less cringey than I thought. I *am* worried about the use of the Litany of Tarski.” [which is no longer part of Solstice].
It seems like as good a time as any to check if that memory of mine is accurate).
I remember having that conversation, but not the details of what I said. Your version sounds plausible, based on my overall recollection of the event.
(I suppose I should note, for anyone reading this, that the Solstice event I attended was one of the very early ones. It was held at a group house here in Brooklyn, and done as part of a more general gathering; this was before the Solstice celebration as such was made into a separate event, with a rented event space, etc. That is the only Solstice celebration I have attended, so I have no comment on what those that’ve been held since then are like.)
I do think Villiam’s general claim of “if you propose a new thing, especially a new confusing thing, there’s a good chance you’ll get a disproportionate amount of vocal opposition compared to support” is true and noteworthy.
It’s certainly true, but is it really noteworthy?
What I mean is: of course you’re going to get more opposition than support when you propose a confusing new thing. Not only is this expected, but it is (it seems to me) correct!
Change is bad. Any change must justify itself, must offer not merely some benefit (itself an uncertain outcome), but enough benefit to overcome the inherent badness of any change whatsoever. And if the new thing is not just new, not just untested, but confusing? Why, that’s twice the burden of justification—at least!
Now, there are bad and ill-considered objections to anything, even to the worst things. (“Let’s all jump off the Verrazzano Bridge” is a poor idea, but if your objection to this plan is “But what if someone laughs at me? I’d be mortified!”, you are being extremely foolish…) But while some of the arguments against both the Solstice and Dragon Army were, indeed, low-quality ones, some of the most serious objections stemmed from a (perceived) lack of acknowledgment of this burden of justification—a lack of sense that the plan’s authors were cognizant of the reasons why reasonable people might have reservations, at least, about going forward.
It is all too easy to paint anyone who’s less than enthusiastic about your plan as a reflexive objector. Yet I find that the most vocal opposition is often aroused by exactly those plans which are made, and presented, with the certainty that no one could possibly object except for bad reasons.
Change is bad. Any change must justify itself, must offer not merely some benefit (itself an uncertain outcome), but enough benefit to overcome the inherent badness of any change whatsoever.
If you advocate that common resources should be spent on X instead of Y that’s change that needs justification.
If you however want to spend your own resources on creating a new event, I don’t see why you should have to justify yourself to other people beyond what you need to do to encourage them to come to your event. I would want people to start new events without feeling the need to justify themselves.
After the event is over it’s much easier to see what worked and what didn’t. Experimenting with different events is valuable.
I can certainly see a few reasons why one could have this assumption, but assuming it without arguing it in this case seems to be begging the question.
I am not saying: “change, usually, is bad”, or “it is a good default assumption that a change is bad”, or “change tends to be bad”, or “more often than not, change is bad”, or anything at all similar.
I am saying: change, inherently, is bad. Change is bad merely by virtue of being change. Whatever the actual change is, nevertheless the fact of something changing in any way is, itself, directly, bad.
Now, we have all heard this: “every improvement is, necessarily, a change”—quite so. And of course it is possible for a change to be good on net, which is what we usually call an “improvement”. Nevertheless the question of whether a change is good, on net, must be answered by taking the specific positive benefit of the specific change in question, and subtracting, not only anything that got worse, but also the inherent badness of changing something! You “start with a negative score”, so to speak. Thus it is possible to have a change that has a positive benefit, makes nothing worse, and yet the benefit is small, and does not suffice to overcome that “starting score”; in such a case we might say “yes, if we are choosing between A and B from a neutral starting point, B is a little better; but not so much that it’s worthwhile to change to B, if already at A”.
What is it then? You beg the question again by assuming it while trying to show how its not an assumption.
not only anything that got worse, but also the inherent badness of changing something! You “start with a negative score”,
This isn’t an argument, it’s just restating the premise. To see this, just change all instances of “change is bad” to “change is good” in your argument, and notice how they entire thing is still coherent. You start with a positive score for the change, because of the inherent goodness of change, and so on...
This isn’t an argument, it’s just restating the premise.
Indeed, it’s not an argument—any more than my original comment was an assumption!
To see this, just change all instances of “change is bad” to “change is good” in your argument, and notice how they entire thing is still coherent. You start with a positive score for the change, because of the inherent goodness of change, and so on...
Of course it’s still coherent. Why wouldn’t it be?
You keep calling what I wrote an argument, as if I am trying to prove a statement of fact. But isn’t it obvious that what I’m talking about is a matter of judgment, of value? And the negation of a statement of value is just as coherent as the original…
I don’t know how a personal value judgement fits in with your talk about a “burden of justification.” Why should someone feel the need to justify against your personal value judgement that change is bad? They simply have a different value judgement than you.
Why should someone feel the need to justify against your personal value judgement that change is bad?
Certainly they should not—unless, of course, that value judgment is not idiosyncratic, but common, or near-universal. It seems to me that this is so. You may disagree. In any case, justification is needed to the extent that said value judgment is shared by those affected by, or those evaluating, any change.
That makes sense. I think I was tripped up by your use of the words “is” and “bad”, both of which are ambiguous. Things that might have helped me get your meaning are swapping “is” for “feels”, swapping “bad” for “aversive” or “unpleasant”, and adding the qualifier “for me” or “for many people”.
Of course, if you were under the impression that this is a near universal aversion, it makes less sense to make any of those changes. I suspect that that assumption also underlies the miscommunication of why people didn’t address the “change is aversive” objection in the original post as well—they typical-mind fallacied that change was neutral or good, and you did the reverse.
Your comment is, I’m afraid, full of the most egregious strawmen
Looking at the discussion you linked… I admit I cannot find the horrible examples my mind keeps telling me I have seen. So, maybe I was wrong. Or maybe it was a different article, dunno. A few negative comments were deleted; but those were all written by the same person, so in either case they do not represent a mass reaction. The remaining comment closest to what I wanted to say is this one...
The whole point of rituals like this in religion is to switch off thinking and get people going with the flow. The epistemic danger should be pretty obvious. Ritual = irrational. [1]
...but even that one is not too bad.
It is only “a perfectly normal thing” because everyone who didn’t think it was perfectly normal, has left! … It is a simple case of evaporative cooling!
This is a good point. Whatever the community does, if it causes the opposing people to leave, will be in hindsight seen as the obviously right thing to do (because those who disagree have already left), even if in a parallel Everett branch doing the opposite thing is seen as the obviously right thing.
I still feel weird about people who would leave a community just because a few members of the community did sing a song together. Also, people keep leaving for all kinds of reasons. I am pretty sure some have left because of lack of emotional connection, such as, uhm, doing things together.
Meta:
Okay, at this moment I feel quite confused about this comment I just wrote. Like, from certain perspectives it seems like you are right, and I am simply refusing to say “oops”. At the very least, I failed to find a sufficiently horrible anti-Solstice comment.
Yet, somehow, it is you saying that there were people who left the rationality movement because of the Solstice ritual, which is the kind of hysterical reaction I tried to point at. (I can’t imagine myself leaving a movement just because a few of its members decided to meet and sing a song together.)
Yet, somehow, it is you saying that there were people who left the rationality movement because of the Solstice ritual, which is the kind of hysterical reaction I tried to point at. (I can’t imagine myself leaving a movement just because a few of its members decided to meet and sing a song together.)
I don’t think it’s really “a few people singing songs together”. It’s more like...an overall shift in demographics, tone, and norms. If I had to put it succinctly, the old school LessWrong was for serious STEM nerds and hard science fiction dorks. It was super super deep into the whole Shock Level memeplex thing. Over time it’s become a much softer sort of fandom geek thing. Rationalist Tumblr and SlateStarCodex aren’t marginal colonies, they’re the center driving force behind what’s left of the original ‘LessWrong rationality movement’. Naturally, a lot of those old guard members find this abhorrent and have no plans to ever participate in it.
I agree with Raemon that it is unlikely to be productive or appropriate to rehash this argument in the current thread. However, I do have things to say on the matter (in response to this comment of yours in particular), so it may be worthwhile to start another post, or a thread on the latest Open Thread post, on this topic; or you may feel free to ask for my thoughts on the matter via private message.
Note: while this thread is sort of relevant, and I think there are some productive ways for it to continue, I think there are many more unproductive ways to continue than productive ones.
As thread-owner, I’d say: “Feel free to continue this here if you have a specific confusion that needs resolving, that seems resolvable, or an outcome that you think is actually achievable to achieve. But don’t just rehash a 8-year-old-argument without reflecting on your life choices and having some kind of goal. Err on the side of disengaging if you’re not sure if you have a goal.”
[note: still kinda braindumpy and not arguing very concretely]
Hmm. I agree that survivorship bias could easily be a force at play here, but not sure about some of your specific subclaims here. (I haven’t read the books listed, although I think I’ve maybe read summaries of the Art of Not Being Governed. Will check out both of them)
There’s two somewhat different things, which are “meeting people’s needs in the moment” and “being stable/sustainable.” Which do seem like when done right they should go hand in hand, but I’m not entirely sure it makes sense to be sustainable in the classical village sense. (A university is stable in ways different from a village, although many of the same mechanisms are there in some form)
Some of the things I’ve heard or encountered that played a role in my thinking (not all of these are necessarily countering your points, some are just painting a picture of where I’m coming from and clarifying what evidence I actually have that there’s a real thing here).
1. A friend claiming that working on a military submarine, forced to work together with a small group of people in sardine can sized vessel, where if anyone of them fucked up they could be entombed in the sea, which he described as producing the tightest bonds he ever felt, which he expected to be hard to imagine. (This points a bit against single-occupation towns necessarily having any issues re: trust/stability. I do expect diverse occupations to be useful for other reasons though)
2. The fact that, at NYC Sunday Assembly (an attempted atheist church), ex-Christians describe how close their church was, how people would take care of each other, how they felt connected, and this was so good, and atheist communities were so mediocre, that for many of them their default course of action was to just keep hanging out in the religious communities ’cuz they were just better at it than the atheist communities.
3. A couple experiences I’ve had volunteering to maintain parks and gardens, which involved a lot of manual labor, while talking with other people in a local community which felt… really good and wholesome. It felt good to work with my hands, it felt good to work together. It was in fact quite weird and sad that at the end of the day, I said out loud “huh. So, that felt really good… and I feel like I should do that all the time, for my physical and emotional well being… and I can tell that I’m not going to, and am just going to get swept up into atomic individualist land again.”
4. In general, hearing many people, from theater troupes to military people to people running events where a small team had to depend on each other, about the tight bonds they form.
5. Hearing descriptions of the MAPLE monastery where some rationalists have gone, and a cluster of dependability skills that it seemed to foster
6. Scott’s description of his experience with communities in Concept Shaped Holes (both in seeing “real” communities that seemed to have something deep that he hadn’t even known existed, and his experiences with the rationalist community demonstrating at least being somewhat closer to that end of the spectrum).
All of this seems to point to there being something real here, which does require effort to adapt to the 21st century, and require skill and sacrifice to implement even in it’s usual form. But which… seems reasonably straightforward as far as things go. Atomic Libertarians might have a hard time implementing it but that’s more of a fact about them than about it.
Could some of this be connected to the “geek social fallacies”? Specifically: some people seem to be a community material; some people seem corrosive to any community; most are probably somewhere on the spectrum. If you try to make a community that includes the corrosive people, it will quickly and inevitably fall apart. However, some communities have “inclusion” as their applause light, so it requires some degree of hypocrisy and tacit coordination to navigate this successfully.
I suppose that even the religious communities who try to save everyone’s soul, are ultimately exclusive. This happens in two ways:
First, “doing some actual work” filters out lazy people, or people who prefer talking about things to actually doing things. There are people who could endlessly talk about helping the poor; but if you ask for volunteers who will cook the soup for the homeless, when the time comes to actually cook the soup, these talkers will not be there. Good!
Second, some people take more than they give, but you can balance this by making “taking” low status, and “giving” high status; and then having the high-status people meet separately. So you spend one afternoon cooking the soup and giving it to the homeless; but then you spend another afternoon or two with the fellow cooks in a place where the homeless people are not invited.
So, on one level you have people who love everyone so much that they even spend their free time cooking soups for the homeless. But on another level, you have a clever algorithm to filter out a kind of elite—people who are altruistic and willing to work—and have them network with each other, in absence of the less worthy ones. No one mentions this explicitly, because debating it explicitly would probably ruin the effect, if people uninterested in cooking soup for the homeless would start participating anyway, because they would realize the benefits of networking with altruistic and hard-working ones.
I suspect that the atheist community meetup will be full of annoying and disagreeable people who would filter themselves out from the “religious people cooking soup for the homeless” meetup. They don’t have to be all annoying and disagreeable, of course, but even a few of them can ruin the atmosphere.
Coordinating online probably also makes things worse. When you announce an activity, people who dislike the activity will give vocal feedback, and you suddenly find yourself in a debate with them, which is a complete waste of your time. As opposed to announcing the time and place on a flyer, so that people who are interested will come, and the people who are not will stay at home.
In my personal experience, I found the highest quality people in various volunteer groups. Doesn’t matter what: they could be campaigning for human rights, organizing a summer camp for kids, preparing educational reform materials, or mowing a meadow to save endangered plant species. Some of these activities have specific filters on profession or political alignment, but each of them at the same times filters for… I am not sure I can describe it correctly, but it is a good filter.
In my experience if someone sets up an event via facebook people who don’t like the activity simply decide against coming. I can’t remember cases where that lead to longer discussions. Is your experience different?
I had in mind the proposals to organize (1) Solstice celebration and (2) Dragon Army, on Less Wrong.
From my perspective, both cases were “hey, I have an idea of a weird but potentially awesome activity, here is an outline, contact me if you are interested”, and in both cases, the debate was mostly about why this is a horrible thing to do, because only cultists would organize a weird activity in real life.
The Dragon Army pushed the Overton window so far that now it makes difficult to remember what exactly was so horrifying about the Solstice celebration. But back then, the mere idea of singing together was quite triggering for a few people: singing is an irrational activity, it manipulates your emotions, it increases group cohesion which rubs contrarians the wrong way, it’s what religious people do, yadda yadda yadda, therefore meeting with a group of friends and singing a song together means abandoning your rationality forever.
Now, the Solstice celebration is a perfectly normal thing, and no one freaks out about it anymore. And I suppose if there would be a second and third attempt to do something like the Dragon Army, people would get used to that, too. But the reactions to the first attempts felt quite discouraging.
Announcing an event is different then planning an event.
A post that’s about “hey, I have an idea of a weird but potentially awesome activity, here is an outline, contact me if you are interested”, is in the planning stage. In the planning stage it makes sense to have a lot more criticism and discuss how the event should work.
I was one of the people who participated in the discussion of the Solstice celebration, so I have, I think, some perspective to offer.
Your comment is, I’m afraid, full of the most egregious strawmen—and what’s worse, they are strawmen which were trotted out, and subsequently revealed for what they were (with their accusers conceding the straw nature of their accusations), even at the time.
Anyone who wishes to see for themselves can read the discussion I linked (though if you do, please be sure to read not only initial comments in every thread, but responses, and counter-responses… in short, do not just skim and assume you get the gist; actually take the time to understand what the disputants, on both sides, were saying). I have little to add now to what I said back then.
I will, however, comment on this, which is an example of an unfortunately common error in reasoning about this sort of situation:
It is only “a perfectly normal thing” because everyone who didn’t think it was perfectly normal, has left! (Or, in the milder cases, simply avoids such things, and even if this bothers them, does not speak up, seeing no point in rehashing the same argument, knowing that it will end in the same way: with their preferences overruled.) It is a simple case of evaporative cooling!
Seems important to note that I endorse this comment. Obviously I think it was correct for Solstice to win the overton-window fight (otherwise I’d have made very different life choices). But it’s important to be clear and honest about what happened, and yes, there were some people who were quite unhappy with it, some of whom left, and some of whom remained, quietly annoyed.
I do think it’s also important to note that there are also people who were annoyed or worried initially, went to Solstice, and after a couple years updated to “yeah this isn’t bad in the way I initially thought it was.” (In both cases, the number of people who “still don’t like it” and “have updated to ‘it’s fine’” that I have concretely observed are less than 10, so I’m hesitant to make many generalizations)
I do think Villiam’s general claim of “if you propose a new thing, especially a new confusing thing, there’s a good chance you’ll get a disproportionate amount of vocal opposition compared to support” is true and noteworthy. (this isn’t quite how they framed it initially and I’m not sure this is what they meant, but it is what I interpreted them to mean, if I interpreted wrong please correct me)
Yes, this is how I meant it, but in context of Less Wrong especially when the new thing is about rationalist having some emotional experience and becoming closer to each other. Even if it is an obviously voluntary activity no one is pressured to join. Unusual and confusing suggestions that would involve studying math or playing poker would not get that intensity of reaction.
(The surprising part is why singing songs together or living in the Dragon Army house is perceived as more dangerous than polyamory. But maybe because the idea of polyamory came first, so the people who strongly objected to that were already gone when the other ideas came.)
And, to be clear, I do not have any meta-objection to this (which is to say, my object-level opinion is the same as it ever was—I think this choice that rationalist communities collectively made was a poor one—but I have no principled objection to “we, as a community, decided to go a certain way, and if some folks don’t care for that, that’s unfortunate, but this is what we’re doing”).
But, yes, pretending that that’s not what happened—pretending that actually, the dissenters just turned out to be obviously silly and their objections were groundless and now they’ve quietly accepted how wrong they were all along, now that their wrongness is plain for all to see—is not acceptable at all.
Indeed. If I may ask—do you know of any people who initially were in favor / cautiously optimistic / ambivalent / etc., but later updated to “actually this is bad”?
I, too, have only a handful of data points, so indeed I don’t propose to generalize, but I do want to note that you are rather less likely to observe “still don’t like it” than you are to observe “actually this is fine”, conditional on the existence of each, simply because you’re less likely to interact with people of the latter persuasion!
I have not heard anyone update starting from “this was okay” and then later “this was bad” direction. (If anyone happens to be reading along and had that experience this is as good a time as any to speak up)
(My recollection of your own experience, after coming to a Solstice once, was that you said something afterwards like “okay, yeah that was still cringey but less cringey than I thought. I *am* worried about the use of the Litany of Tarski.” [which is no longer part of Solstice].
It seems like as good a time as any to check if that memory of mine is accurate).
I remember having that conversation, but not the details of what I said. Your version sounds plausible, based on my overall recollection of the event.
(I suppose I should note, for anyone reading this, that the Solstice event I attended was one of the very early ones. It was held at a group house here in Brooklyn, and done as part of a more general gathering; this was before the Solstice celebration as such was made into a separate event, with a rented event space, etc. That is the only Solstice celebration I have attended, so I have no comment on what those that’ve been held since then are like.)
Separately from my other comment…
It’s certainly true, but is it really noteworthy?
What I mean is: of course you’re going to get more opposition than support when you propose a confusing new thing. Not only is this expected, but it is (it seems to me) correct!
Change is bad. Any change must justify itself, must offer not merely some benefit (itself an uncertain outcome), but enough benefit to overcome the inherent badness of any change whatsoever. And if the new thing is not just new, not just untested, but confusing? Why, that’s twice the burden of justification—at least!
Now, there are bad and ill-considered objections to anything, even to the worst things. (“Let’s all jump off the Verrazzano Bridge” is a poor idea, but if your objection to this plan is “But what if someone laughs at me? I’d be mortified!”, you are being extremely foolish…) But while some of the arguments against both the Solstice and Dragon Army were, indeed, low-quality ones, some of the most serious objections stemmed from a (perceived) lack of acknowledgment of this burden of justification—a lack of sense that the plan’s authors were cognizant of the reasons why reasonable people might have reservations, at least, about going forward.
It is all too easy to paint anyone who’s less than enthusiastic about your plan as a reflexive objector. Yet I find that the most vocal opposition is often aroused by exactly those plans which are made, and presented, with the certainty that no one could possibly object except for bad reasons.
If you advocate that common resources should be spent on X instead of Y that’s change that needs justification.
If you however want to spend your own resources on creating a new event, I don’t see why you should have to justify yourself to other people beyond what you need to do to encourage them to come to your event. I would want people to start new events without feeling the need to justify themselves.
After the event is over it’s much easier to see what worked and what didn’t. Experimenting with different events is valuable.
I can certainly see a few reasons why one could have this assumption, but assuming it without arguing it in this case seems to be begging the question.
Indeed not, as it is not an assumption at all!
I am not saying: “change, usually, is bad”, or “it is a good default assumption that a change is bad”, or “change tends to be bad”, or “more often than not, change is bad”, or anything at all similar.
I am saying: change, inherently, is bad. Change is bad merely by virtue of being change. Whatever the actual change is, nevertheless the fact of something changing in any way is, itself, directly, bad.
Now, we have all heard this: “every improvement is, necessarily, a change”—quite so. And of course it is possible for a change to be good on net, which is what we usually call an “improvement”. Nevertheless the question of whether a change is good, on net, must be answered by taking the specific positive benefit of the specific change in question, and subtracting, not only anything that got worse, but also the inherent badness of changing something! You “start with a negative score”, so to speak. Thus it is possible to have a change that has a positive benefit, makes nothing worse, and yet the benefit is small, and does not suffice to overcome that “starting score”; in such a case we might say “yes, if we are choosing between A and B from a neutral starting point, B is a little better; but not so much that it’s worthwhile to change to B, if already at A”.
What is it then? You beg the question again by assuming it while trying to show how its not an assumption.
This isn’t an argument, it’s just restating the premise. To see this, just change all instances of “change is bad” to “change is good” in your argument, and notice how they entire thing is still coherent. You start with a positive score for the change, because of the inherent goodness of change, and so on...
Indeed, it’s not an argument—any more than my original comment was an assumption!
Of course it’s still coherent. Why wouldn’t it be?
You keep calling what I wrote an argument, as if I am trying to prove a statement of fact. But isn’t it obvious that what I’m talking about is a matter of judgment, of value? And the negation of a statement of value is just as coherent as the original…
I don’t know how a personal value judgement fits in with your talk about a “burden of justification.” Why should someone feel the need to justify against your personal value judgement that change is bad? They simply have a different value judgement than you.
Certainly they should not—unless, of course, that value judgment is not idiosyncratic, but common, or near-universal. It seems to me that this is so. You may disagree. In any case, justification is needed to the extent that said value judgment is shared by those affected by, or those evaluating, any change.
That makes sense. I think I was tripped up by your use of the words “is” and “bad”, both of which are ambiguous. Things that might have helped me get your meaning are swapping “is” for “feels”, swapping “bad” for “aversive” or “unpleasant”, and adding the qualifier “for me” or “for many people”.
Of course, if you were under the impression that this is a near universal aversion, it makes less sense to make any of those changes. I suspect that that assumption also underlies the miscommunication of why people didn’t address the “change is aversive” objection in the original post as well—they typical-mind fallacied that change was neutral or good, and you did the reverse.
Looking at the discussion you linked… I admit I cannot find the horrible examples my mind keeps telling me I have seen. So, maybe I was wrong. Or maybe it was a different article, dunno. A few negative comments were deleted; but those were all written by the same person, so in either case they do not represent a mass reaction. The remaining comment closest to what I wanted to say is this one...
...but even that one is not too bad.
This is a good point. Whatever the community does, if it causes the opposing people to leave, will be in hindsight seen as the obviously right thing to do (because those who disagree have already left), even if in a parallel Everett branch doing the opposite thing is seen as the obviously right thing.
I still feel weird about people who would leave a community just because a few members of the community did sing a song together. Also, people keep leaving for all kinds of reasons. I am pretty sure some have left because of lack of emotional connection, such as, uhm, doing things together.
Meta:
Okay, at this moment I feel quite confused about this comment I just wrote. Like, from certain perspectives it seems like you are right, and I am simply refusing to say “oops”. At the very least, I failed to find a sufficiently horrible anti-Solstice comment.
Yet, somehow, it is you saying that there were people who left the rationality movement because of the Solstice ritual, which is the kind of hysterical reaction I tried to point at. (I can’t imagine myself leaving a movement just because a few of its members decided to meet and sing a song together.)
I don’t think it’s really “a few people singing songs together”. It’s more like...an overall shift in demographics, tone, and norms. If I had to put it succinctly, the old school LessWrong was for serious STEM nerds and hard science fiction dorks. It was super super deep into the whole Shock Level memeplex thing. Over time it’s become a much softer sort of fandom geek thing. Rationalist Tumblr and SlateStarCodex aren’t marginal colonies, they’re the center driving force behind what’s left of the original ‘LessWrong rationality movement’. Naturally, a lot of those old guard members find this abhorrent and have no plans to ever participate in it.
I don’t blame them.
I agree with Raemon that it is unlikely to be productive or appropriate to rehash this argument in the current thread. However, I do have things to say on the matter (in response to this comment of yours in particular), so it may be worthwhile to start another post, or a thread on the latest Open Thread post, on this topic; or you may feel free to ask for my thoughts on the matter via private message.
Note: while this thread is sort of relevant, and I think there are some productive ways for it to continue, I think there are many more unproductive ways to continue than productive ones.
As thread-owner, I’d say: “Feel free to continue this here if you have a specific confusion that needs resolving, that seems resolvable, or an outcome that you think is actually achievable to achieve. But don’t just rehash a 8-year-old-argument without reflecting on your life choices and having some kind of goal. Err on the side of disengaging if you’re not sure if you have a goal.”