I would want to go even further, and strike out (perceived) “importance” as a barrier. Thinking in terms of “importance” will tend to cause our minds to stay within certain topic clusters, when what we actually want is more variety of topics. Rationality lessons are often most illuminating when applied in situations we don’t stereotypically think of as illustrating rationality lessons. People may have pet topics or specialized areas of expertise that they would like to post on, but don’t because of a fear that their subject isn’t “important enough” (which in practice tends to mean being about the topics most commonly discussed here). This is unfortunate, because rationality literally applies everywhere; and I think an aspiring rationalist should seek out as many diverse opportunities for honing their general rationality skills as possible. This will prove useful when it comes to the “important” topics.
On the other hand,
These have already been discussed so they would be discouraged as duplicates rule (except for substantially new approaches),
I actually wouldn’t want to restrict duplicates to new approaches to the subject itself; I think a new specific lesson on rationality should suffice. Familiarity has its advantages too. (For example, there are a number of Bayesian lessons that I have learned from my study of the Knox case since the original discussion, and I would hope to be able to post in the future on some subset of these, using this particular vivid illustration, without too much objection on the grounds that the topic “has already been done”.)
This is unfortunate, because rationality literally applies everywhere; and I think an aspiring rationalist should seek out as many diverse opportunities for honing their general rationality skills as possible.
I would like to know how widely agreed-on this attitude is on LW; I have been specifically resisting writing posts about random things which are of interest to me but don’t correlate to any of the site’s major common themes (rationality in the abstract, AI, health, philosophy). I’d be happy to write posts applying rational principles to everyday circumstances, but I’d want a stronger signal that that the community would appreciate it first.
I for one am at least interested in the concept. Whether individual posts would be worthwhile or not is another matter. May I suggest you use the open threads to provide a first cut at topics you mean to address, refine it based on feedback, then post it and see how it goes? Remember that top level posts need a certain karma level to appear on the front page, so if the community doesn’t like the post, you won’t be pushing other topics off the front page.
If the backlash would be great against a top level post, you should be able to ascertain that from the open thread first.
That’s a good point; thank you for reminding me of that option.
FWIW, by way of codified guidelines, we have this on the About page:
Off-topic top-level posts may be removed.
and this in the FAQ, under “When should I make a top-level post”:
if … you have an important point to make about rationality
Combining those, I see how I got the idea that I shouldn’t bother making a top-level post unless I had something particularly new and clever to say about rationality itself.
You’re misreading jimrandomh, who is proposing that we discuss these non-rationality topics not because (and not only when) they illustrate principles of rationality, but because they are important in their own right. I say that if we adopt a policy like that, we apply it only to the most important topics—mainly existential risk. Or if the point is to draw people here, to anything sufficiently shiny.
I’m saying that there really aren’t any “non-rationality topics” (i.e. a post on any topic can be a post about rationality) and that, insofar as one believes (as I do) that raising the general level of sanity is among the most important goals there are, it is to our benefit (with respect to that important goal) to encourage a wide range of contributions and not be too restrictive or cliquey about topics.
To exactly what extent jimrandomh agrees, I don’t know, but this thought was prompted by his post.
A post on any topic can be a post about rationality if you put in specific work to make it so; I read jimrandomh as saying there’s no need to put in such work.
Your reading may be the intended one; we’ll have to await jimrandomh’s clarification. Meanwhile, the following paragraph is what led me to believe that jimrandomh is not actually proposing a change in topic policy:
Less Wrong does not currently provide strong guidance about what is considered on topic. In fact, Less Wrong generally considers topic to be secondary to importance and clarity, and this is as it should be. However, this should be formally acknowledged, so that people are not discouraged from posting important things just because they think they might be off topic! Determining whether something is on topic is a trivial inconvenience of the worst sort.
The posting policies of Less Wrong are effectively determined by up- and downvoting and by commenting, which means that everyone can have their own ideas about what those policies are. Whether my proposal agrees with the current policy or not depends on what you think the current policy is, and that’s unclear. My intention is to clarify it in the way I think gives the highest utility. I don’t think it substantially disagrees with the policies currently enforced as indicated by voting.
Not exactly; I ask people to call out the problems commonly impairing the rationality of other discussions of the topic, to help avoid them, and including that explanation would make any article at least a little bit “about rationality”. However, the justification for including the connection to rationality is to protect the quality of the conversation, not to satisfy an “is on-topic” requirement.
Fair enough; still, I feel most people underestimate how radical a change it is from “a community blog devoted to refining the art of human rationality” to “a community blog devoted to providing correct analysis on important subjects, informed by previous writings on the art of human rationality, and maybe refining that art a little bit as a side effect”.
We seem to have a mix of pure and applied reasoning topics. It would be bad if we lost one of those categories, or if the ratio got too far out of wack. Since we accept posts on lots of random important subjects, any effects that letting random important subjects in might have have already happened, and they clearly weren’t disastrous.
To be honest at one point I considered talking about how rationality could be used to improve AI, game play and gaming skills in computer and video games, especially the strategy genre.
Would you consider such a discussion too trivial for rationality insights? Or would its usefulness be limited just to outreach and popularization of rationality?
The thing with those games is that there are so many approaches you can go with, and you need to be uncommonly rational in choosing. For example, the usual advice in the early game is to build new cities as quickly as you can, because the sooner you build them, the sooner they can start expanding and producing resources—it’s a straightforward example of exponential growth and compound interest. But what if the map is set up with mostly water, and you start on an island without much space? You’ve got to adapt your play-style, and you’ve got to do it decisively. You expand as much as you can, then focus your efforts on improving the cities you do have, until you get boats and can start expanding again, this time backed by a nice industrial base and plenty of population. Because you’re on an island, you can leave cities undefended without too much risk, so you can devote more of your crucial early resources to things that will yield compound interest, like terrain enhancements.
It feels like an exercise in min-maxing, and more importantly, figuring out what to focus on and what to neglect—and having the audacity to go through with a plan that feels crazy but is actually very sane. I think that’s the main rationality habit you can take from playing Civilization.
So about a month has passed now since this thread was originally posted… just wondering, have you had a chance to play civ5 yet? Just curious to hear another LWers take on the new game in the franchise.
I would want to go even further, and strike out (perceived) “importance” as a barrier. Thinking in terms of “importance” will tend to cause our minds to stay within certain topic clusters, when what we actually want is more variety of topics. Rationality lessons are often most illuminating when applied in situations we don’t stereotypically think of as illustrating rationality lessons. People may have pet topics or specialized areas of expertise that they would like to post on, but don’t because of a fear that their subject isn’t “important enough” (which in practice tends to mean being about the topics most commonly discussed here). This is unfortunate, because rationality literally applies everywhere; and I think an aspiring rationalist should seek out as many diverse opportunities for honing their general rationality skills as possible. This will prove useful when it comes to the “important” topics.
On the other hand,
I actually wouldn’t want to restrict duplicates to new approaches to the subject itself; I think a new specific lesson on rationality should suffice. Familiarity has its advantages too. (For example, there are a number of Bayesian lessons that I have learned from my study of the Knox case since the original discussion, and I would hope to be able to post in the future on some subset of these, using this particular vivid illustration, without too much objection on the grounds that the topic “has already been done”.)
I would like to know how widely agreed-on this attitude is on LW; I have been specifically resisting writing posts about random things which are of interest to me but don’t correlate to any of the site’s major common themes (rationality in the abstract, AI, health, philosophy). I’d be happy to write posts applying rational principles to everyday circumstances, but I’d want a stronger signal that that the community would appreciate it first.
I for one am at least interested in the concept. Whether individual posts would be worthwhile or not is another matter. May I suggest you use the open threads to provide a first cut at topics you mean to address, refine it based on feedback, then post it and see how it goes? Remember that top level posts need a certain karma level to appear on the front page, so if the community doesn’t like the post, you won’t be pushing other topics off the front page.
If the backlash would be great against a top level post, you should be able to ascertain that from the open thread first.
That’s a good point; thank you for reminding me of that option.
FWIW, by way of codified guidelines, we have this on the About page:
and this in the FAQ, under “When should I make a top-level post”:
Combining those, I see how I got the idea that I shouldn’t bother making a top-level post unless I had something particularly new and clever to say about rationality itself.
You’re misreading jimrandomh, who is proposing that we discuss these non-rationality topics not because (and not only when) they illustrate principles of rationality, but because they are important in their own right. I say that if we adopt a policy like that, we apply it only to the most important topics—mainly existential risk. Or if the point is to draw people here, to anything sufficiently shiny.
I’m saying that there really aren’t any “non-rationality topics” (i.e. a post on any topic can be a post about rationality) and that, insofar as one believes (as I do) that raising the general level of sanity is among the most important goals there are, it is to our benefit (with respect to that important goal) to encourage a wide range of contributions and not be too restrictive or cliquey about topics.
To exactly what extent jimrandomh agrees, I don’t know, but this thought was prompted by his post.
A post on any topic can be a post about rationality if you put in specific work to make it so; I read jimrandomh as saying there’s no need to put in such work.
Your reading may be the intended one; we’ll have to await jimrandomh’s clarification. Meanwhile, the following paragraph is what led me to believe that jimrandomh is not actually proposing a change in topic policy:
The posting policies of Less Wrong are effectively determined by up- and downvoting and by commenting, which means that everyone can have their own ideas about what those policies are. Whether my proposal agrees with the current policy or not depends on what you think the current policy is, and that’s unclear. My intention is to clarify it in the way I think gives the highest utility. I don’t think it substantially disagrees with the policies currently enforced as indicated by voting.
Not exactly; I ask people to call out the problems commonly impairing the rationality of other discussions of the topic, to help avoid them, and including that explanation would make any article at least a little bit “about rationality”. However, the justification for including the connection to rationality is to protect the quality of the conversation, not to satisfy an “is on-topic” requirement.
Fair enough; still, I feel most people underestimate how radical a change it is from “a community blog devoted to refining the art of human rationality” to “a community blog devoted to providing correct analysis on important subjects, informed by previous writings on the art of human rationality, and maybe refining that art a little bit as a side effect”.
We seem to have a mix of pure and applied reasoning topics. It would be bad if we lost one of those categories, or if the ratio got too far out of wack. Since we accept posts on lots of random important subjects, any effects that letting random important subjects in might have have already happened, and they clearly weren’t disastrous.
To be honest at one point I considered talking about how rationality could be used to improve AI, game play and gaming skills in computer and video games, especially the strategy genre.
Would you consider such a discussion too trivial for rationality insights? Or would its usefulness be limited just to outreach and popularization of rationality?
PS Is anyone here a Civlization player?
The thing with those games is that there are so many approaches you can go with, and you need to be uncommonly rational in choosing. For example, the usual advice in the early game is to build new cities as quickly as you can, because the sooner you build them, the sooner they can start expanding and producing resources—it’s a straightforward example of exponential growth and compound interest. But what if the map is set up with mostly water, and you start on an island without much space? You’ve got to adapt your play-style, and you’ve got to do it decisively. You expand as much as you can, then focus your efforts on improving the cities you do have, until you get boats and can start expanding again, this time backed by a nice industrial base and plenty of population. Because you’re on an island, you can leave cities undefended without too much risk, so you can devote more of your crucial early resources to things that will yield compound interest, like terrain enhancements.
It feels like an exercise in min-maxing, and more importantly, figuring out what to focus on and what to neglect—and having the audacity to go through with a plan that feels crazy but is actually very sane. I think that’s the main rationality habit you can take from playing Civilization.
I think the main rationality habit you can take from playing Civilization is “Don’t play Civilization if you value your time at all”.
Not that I intend to actually follow that advice once Civ 5 comes out.… oh crap, that’s today isn’t it? Why did you have to remind me?
No More Turns!
I never played Civ IV, quite deliberately.
Then I suggest you don’t play sword of the stars either.
That was just cruel! ;)
So about a month has passed now since this thread was originally posted… just wondering, have you had a chance to play civ5 yet? Just curious to hear another LWers take on the new game in the franchise.
Do you have any particular topics or categories of topics in mind?