It was exactly because I found that entire article unsavoury that I decided to be snide. I was in fact mildly offended by the implication when I read it.
I’ve actually always been on the fence about whether Bayesian Judo is a useful concrete example of Belief in Belief that makes the concept more available and easily understood, or masturbatory blogging. Othersthought that it was less-than-honest. Likewise, I’m unsure about whether or not it belongs in R:AZ. I was going to say that in the above comment but decided it was outside the scope of my remarks.
Even if I’m more inclined to agree with you than not, maximizing the probability that people stay in the reading group by making your own writing unambiguously politically correct is probably higher impact than acting on impulses to be snide; otherwise, in one sense, you’re just repeating Eliezer’s mistake. There’s also no context to make it clear that you find the implication offensive unless someone reads this comment thread, which won’t always be the case.
Also, I’m not against the discussion of opposing viewpoints, as that’s part of the purpose of the group, but I do think that they should be made explicit and in good faith, so as to maximize impact. For example, you could have omitted that line in the OP and written a comment down here to the effect of:
I found Bayesian Judo unsavoury, and was mildly offended by the implication that what is construed as rational behavior in the article is a means for men to attract women.
Ostensibly, the people running the show are rationalists. If you actually make the case that Bayesian Judo doesn’t belong in there, then they might remove it in later electronic versions and print versions. And if this is in line with your values, then you should, by definition, want this. Furthermore, explication and good faith are instrumental in that regard.
Yes, ‘Bayesian Judo’ has gotten sufficiently negative reactions that we’ll look into how difficult it would be to tone it down or delete it in future editions.
General feedback on things you’d like to see changed in the book—especially where it doesn’t demand large-scale rewriting—is welcome on the reading group threads. If you don’t want to voice your criticisms publicly, you can e-mail them to errata@intelligence.org.
The summary has been edited with the offending line removed. The rest of this comment is not an excuse so much as self-analysis to figure out how I made that mistake:
Addressing the issue in the comments is of course the obvious thing to do if I had thought of doing so. At the time I was feeling an editorial obligation to say more than a single sentence about each essay, especially if that first sentence is rather content-free e.g. “A humorous story.” I had faced the same problem with “A fable of science and politics.” However in this case there was very little to work with even after a good-faith effort to pull out some well-intentioned meanings. The post didn’t seem to serve any purpose except at best as you put it, “masturbatory blogging,” and at worst was advocating for or advertising techniques of pickup artistry [sic]. So I decided to do my job of accurately summarizing without op-ed the content of the article, knowing that it would (and should) cause debate. But somehow I failed to realize that I could have left out the offending line and sparked the discussion myself. Availability heuristic :\
It is a real life example of what happens when you point out to someone that their beliefs and anticipations are out of sync. Real life examples of discussions with people and seeing how they think, are useful in a setting that discusses people and how they think.
It was exactly because I found that entire article unsavoury that I decided to be snide. I was in fact mildly offended by the implication when I read it.
I’ve actually always been on the fence about whether Bayesian Judo is a useful concrete example of Belief in Belief that makes the concept more available and easily understood, or masturbatory blogging. Others thought that it was less-than-honest. Likewise, I’m unsure about whether or not it belongs in R:AZ. I was going to say that in the above comment but decided it was outside the scope of my remarks.
Even if I’m more inclined to agree with you than not, maximizing the probability that people stay in the reading group by making your own writing unambiguously politically correct is probably higher impact than acting on impulses to be snide; otherwise, in one sense, you’re just repeating Eliezer’s mistake. There’s also no context to make it clear that you find the implication offensive unless someone reads this comment thread, which won’t always be the case.
Also, I’m not against the discussion of opposing viewpoints, as that’s part of the purpose of the group, but I do think that they should be made explicit and in good faith, so as to maximize impact. For example, you could have omitted that line in the OP and written a comment down here to the effect of:
Ostensibly, the people running the show are rationalists. If you actually make the case that Bayesian Judo doesn’t belong in there, then they might remove it in later electronic versions and print versions. And if this is in line with your values, then you should, by definition, want this. Furthermore, explication and good faith are instrumental in that regard.
Yes, ‘Bayesian Judo’ has gotten sufficiently negative reactions that we’ll look into how difficult it would be to tone it down or delete it in future editions.
General feedback on things you’d like to see changed in the book—especially where it doesn’t demand large-scale rewriting—is welcome on the reading group threads. If you don’t want to voice your criticisms publicly, you can e-mail them to errata@intelligence.org.
The summary has been edited with the offending line removed. The rest of this comment is not an excuse so much as self-analysis to figure out how I made that mistake:
Addressing the issue in the comments is of course the obvious thing to do if I had thought of doing so. At the time I was feeling an editorial obligation to say more than a single sentence about each essay, especially if that first sentence is rather content-free e.g. “A humorous story.” I had faced the same problem with “A fable of science and politics.” However in this case there was very little to work with even after a good-faith effort to pull out some well-intentioned meanings. The post didn’t seem to serve any purpose except at best as you put it, “masturbatory blogging,” and at worst was advocating for or advertising techniques of pickup artistry [sic]. So I decided to do my job of accurately summarizing without op-ed the content of the article, knowing that it would (and should) cause debate. But somehow I failed to realize that I could have left out the offending line and sparked the discussion myself. Availability heuristic :\
This seems an uncharitable reading. What’s the issue with just having a fun example post?
What is it an example of?
It is a real life example of what happens when you point out to someone that their beliefs and anticipations are out of sync. Real life examples of discussions with people and seeing how they think, are useful in a setting that discusses people and how they think.