Thank you for trying to improve the quality of the debate! If you could rewrite the most important insights as a new “sequence” that would be awesome.
If I may express my opinion, I would prefer reading a text that would not include criticism of what to me seems like a strawman of “rationalists”, and simply focus on the specific ideas. (Something like writing “2+2=4″ instead of “rationalists believe that 2+2=3, but post-rationalists believe that 2+2=4 and here is why”.) I am curious how much of post-rationality will remain after the tribal aspects are removed.
Tone arguments are often frowned upon, but these is a difference between saying “you guys are doing a specific mistake here, let me explain, because this is very important” and “you guys are hopelessly wrong, I am going away and starting my own dojo”—even if technically both of them mean “you are wrong, and I am right”.
It would be especially bad if the guy starting his own new dojo happens to be right about a specific thing X and also to be wrong about a specific thing Y. Now believing in “neither X nor Y” becomes the mark of the old tribe, and believing in “both X and Y” becomes the mark of the new tribe. Which seems to me what typically happens in politics.
I’d like to be able to consider the “postrationalist” or “metarationalist” claims individually, perhaps to agree with some, disagree with some, and express uncertaintly about some. Instead of having two separate packages, and being told to choose the better one.
(Then of course remains the problem with the identity of a “rationalist”, where I don’t expect people to agree, because that’s a thing of aesthetical preferences and social pressures. I’m not pretending any middle ground here; I enjoy the label of “rationalist” or “x-rationalist”, and I try to be the one who can cooperate and is willing to pay the cost, hoping to become stronger, as a team. I don’t think my contribution matters a lot, but I don’t see that as a reason for defecting.)
a kind of vague annoyance that Rationalist principles are being challenged
I certainly see some negative attitudes towards this sort of thing on LW, but it doesn’t look to me at all like “vague annoyance that Rationalist principles are being challenged”. Could you explain why you think that’s what it is?
(Full disclosure: your description above seems to me like an example of my snarky thesis that postrationality = knowing about rationality + feeling superior to rationalists. But I think that in feeling that way I’m being uncharitable in almost exactly the way I’m suspecting you of being uncharitable. :-) )
For what it’s worth, I’m not a fan of the notion that anything that successfully builds on rationality is a part of rationality. Not because it’s exactly wrong, but because surely it could happen that the self-identified rationalist community has a wrong or incomplete idea of what actually constitutes effective thinking. In that case, a New Improved Version should indeed be “part of rationality”, but until the actual so-called rationalists catch up it might not look that way. And if the rationalist community were sufficiently dysfunctional, calling the New Improved Version “rationality” might be counterproductive. I am not claiming that any of this is actually the case, and in particular I am not claiming that the “postrationalists” or “metarationalists” are in fact in possession of genuine improvements on LW-style rationality. But it’s not a possibility that can be ruled out a priori, and this “automatically part of rationality” thing seems to me like it fails to acknowledge the possibility.
I don’t have much to say to most of that besides nodding my head sagely. I will remark, though, that “developmental stage” theories like Kegan’s almost always rub me the wrong way, because they tend to encourage the sort of smugly superior attitude I fear I detect in much “postrationalist” talk of rationalism. I don’t think I have ever heard any enthusiast for such a theory place themselves anywhere other than in the latest “stage”.
(I don’t mean to claim that no such theory can be correct. But I mistrust the motives of those who espouse them, and I fear that the pleasure of looking down on others is a good enough explanation for much of the approval such theories enjoy that I’d need to see some actual good evidence before embracing such a theory. I haven’t particularly looked for such evidence, in Kegan’s case or any other; but nor have I seen anyone offering any.)
When at school I learned about Kohlberg’s stages of moral development, there was a nice example of a moral problem (something like the Trolley problem, but I think it was about stealing an expensive medicine to heal someone) where either side could be argued from each stage of moral development. For example, you could make a completely selfish argument for either side “I don’t care about anyone’s property” or “I don’t care about anyone’s health”, but you could also make an abstract principled argument for either side “we should optimize for orderly society” or “we should optimize for helping humans” (simplified versions). The lesson was that the degree of moral development is not the same as the position on an issue.
If I look at the “rationality / postrationality” vs “Kegan’s stages” using similar optics, I can see how people on different stages could still argue for either side. Therefore, one could “explain” either side as a manifestation of any of stages 3, 4, and 5.
If the Stage 3 is “socially determined, based on the real or imagined expectations of others”, we could argue that people who use the label “rationalists” do it because they are in the Stage 3, and they believe that other “rationalists” expect them to use this label, so they follow the social pressure. But just as well we could argue that people who avoid the label “rationalists” (and use “post-rationalists” instead) do it because their social environment disapproves of the “rationalist” label. Both sides could be following social pressure, only different social pressures, from different groups of people. Maybe “rationalists” are scared that they could lose their group identity. And maybe “post-rationalists” are scared that someone from their social group could pattern-match them to “rationalists” and consequently exclude them from their group, whatever it happens to be (academia, buddhists, cool postmodern people, etc.).
If the Stage 4 is “determined by a set of values that they have authored for themselves”, we could similarly argue that “rationalists” have chosen the rational way for themselves, in defiance of the whole society (rejected religion and mysterious answers, criticized education that teaches the teachers’ passwords), and using reason as science as their guides they found people with similar values at LessWrong, thanks to Aumann’s “great minds think alike” theorem. But just as well we could argue that “post-rationalists” have chosen the post-rational way for themselves, in defiance of the Less-Wrong “rationalists”. People from both groups can feel like heroic lonely warriors in an ignorant world dismissive to their ideas.
If people in Stage 5 are “no longer bound to any particular aspect of themselves or their history, and they are free to allow themselves to focus on the flow of their lives”, we could find supportive arguments for that, too. The zero-th virtue (“do not ask whether it is ‘the Way’ to do this or that; ask whether the sky is blue or green; if you speak overmuch of the Way you will not attain it”), internal criticism of LW as “shiny distraction” on one side; abandoning the “rationalist” label on the other side.
What most likely happens in reality is that both sides certainly attract various kinds of people. (And even according to Kegan, one person is often in multiple stages at the same time.) However, here I am going to break the symmetry and say that to me it seems the “post-rationalist” side is almost defining themselves as “we are in the Stage 5, and those who identify as ‘rationalists’ are in the Stage 4″. At least this is how it seems to me from outside. (But complaining too much about this would be the pot calling the kettle black, because “rationalists” define themselves as “we are the rational ones, in the insane world”. So in a karmic sense they deserved such comeback.)
Also, accusing other people of not being in Stage 5 feels to me like a kafkatrap. There is no way to defend against such accusation, because whatever evidence of being in Stage 5 you bring, can be dismissed by “Stage 5′s never claim to be Stage 5′s, so everything you said is evidence of you not being in Stage 5”. (But it probably doesn’t work the other way. If you admit that you are not in Stage 5, that statement will be taken at face value. At least I think so; I didn’t actually try this.) So how does one convince others that they are in Stage 5? From observation, the solution seems to be having a blog about Kegan’s stages, and judging others as not being at Stage 5 yet… if you do this, you establish yourself as an expert on Stage 5, and by definition only people on Stage 5 can be experts on Stage 5. If these are the rules of the game, I don’t want to play it. (Note how I used the same cheap status trick here: defining other people as pawns in a system, and myself as the smart one who is above and beyond the system. Meh. Oops, I did it again. I am so meta I must be at Stage 8 at least. Oops, I am doing it again. I admit the game is a bit addictive.)
For me, the “rationalist” movement is a place where people similar to me can come and find each other. (Roughly defined as: high IQ, non-religious, trying to “win”, willing to help each other, trustworthy, not interested in status games. There is probably more that I can’t easily describe here; probably some clicking on personality level.) Even most people who come to LW meetups don’t satisfy my criteria, but there at least I can find the few ones much easier than in the general population. I would be sad to lose this one coordination point. Meeting such people brings value to my life; I find it emotionally satisfying to talk with people openly about topics that interest me without having to censor my thoughts or explain long inferential distances; sometimes I also get some useful advice. At this moment I don’t see any value I could get from “post-rationality”, but I am willing to learn, as long as it doesn’t feel to me as someone just playing status games, because I have low tolerance for that.
Kegan has published a lot of evidence about the consistency of measurements his scheme. See “A guide to the subject-object interview : its administration and interpretation” Lisa Lahey [and four others]. As for validity, not so much, but it does build on the widely accepted work of others (Paiget etc), and “The evolving self” has about 8 pages of citations and references including
Kegan, R. 1976. Ego and truth: per-
sonality and the Piagetian paradigm.
Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard Univer-
sity.
_ 1977. The sweeter welcome:
Martin Buber, Bernard Malamud and
Saul Bellow. Needham Heights,
Mass.: Wexford.
_ 1978. Child development and
health education. Principal 57 (3):
91-95.
_ 1979. The evolving self: a
process conception for ego
psychology. Counseling Psychologist 8
(2): 5-34.
_ 1980. There the dance is:
religious dimensions of developmen-
tal theory. In Toward moral and
religious maturity, ed. ]. W. Fowler
and A. Vergote. Morristown, N.J.:
Silver Burdette.
_ 1981. A neo-Piagetian ap-
proach to object relations. In The
self: psychology, psychoanalysis and an-
thropology, ed. B. Lee and G. Noam.
New York: Plenum Press.
I mistrust the motives
rub me the wrong way
I haven’t particularly looked for such evidence
Not very convincing.
My summary of Kegan’s model is here. My suggestion is to try it and see if it works.
Thanks for the pointers. I’m more interested in validity than consistency here, I think.
Not very convincing
I was intending to inform, not to convince. (I agree that no one should be convinced of anything much by my saying that I mistrust some people’s motives.)
Thank you for trying to improve the quality of the debate! If you could rewrite the most important insights as a new “sequence” that would be awesome.
If I may express my opinion, I would prefer reading a text that would not include criticism of what to me seems like a strawman of “rationalists”, and simply focus on the specific ideas. (Something like writing “2+2=4″ instead of “rationalists believe that 2+2=3, but post-rationalists believe that 2+2=4 and here is why”.) I am curious how much of post-rationality will remain after the tribal aspects are removed.
Tone arguments are often frowned upon, but these is a difference between saying “you guys are doing a specific mistake here, let me explain, because this is very important” and “you guys are hopelessly wrong, I am going away and starting my own dojo”—even if technically both of them mean “you are wrong, and I am right”.
It would be especially bad if the guy starting his own new dojo happens to be right about a specific thing X and also to be wrong about a specific thing Y. Now believing in “neither X nor Y” becomes the mark of the old tribe, and believing in “both X and Y” becomes the mark of the new tribe. Which seems to me what typically happens in politics.
I’d like to be able to consider the “postrationalist” or “metarationalist” claims individually, perhaps to agree with some, disagree with some, and express uncertaintly about some. Instead of having two separate packages, and being told to choose the better one.
(Then of course remains the problem with the identity of a “rationalist”, where I don’t expect people to agree, because that’s a thing of aesthetical preferences and social pressures. I’m not pretending any middle ground here; I enjoy the label of “rationalist” or “x-rationalist”, and I try to be the one who can cooperate and is willing to pay the cost, hoping to become stronger, as a team. I don’t think my contribution matters a lot, but I don’t see that as a reason for defecting.)
I certainly see some negative attitudes towards this sort of thing on LW, but it doesn’t look to me at all like “vague annoyance that Rationalist principles are being challenged”. Could you explain why you think that’s what it is?
(Full disclosure: your description above seems to me like an example of my snarky thesis that postrationality = knowing about rationality + feeling superior to rationalists. But I think that in feeling that way I’m being uncharitable in almost exactly the way I’m suspecting you of being uncharitable. :-) )
For what it’s worth, I’m not a fan of the notion that anything that successfully builds on rationality is a part of rationality. Not because it’s exactly wrong, but because surely it could happen that the self-identified rationalist community has a wrong or incomplete idea of what actually constitutes effective thinking. In that case, a New Improved Version should indeed be “part of rationality”, but until the actual so-called rationalists catch up it might not look that way. And if the rationalist community were sufficiently dysfunctional, calling the New Improved Version “rationality” might be counterproductive. I am not claiming that any of this is actually the case, and in particular I am not claiming that the “postrationalists” or “metarationalists” are in fact in possession of genuine improvements on LW-style rationality. But it’s not a possibility that can be ruled out a priori, and this “automatically part of rationality” thing seems to me like it fails to acknowledge the possibility.
I don’t have much to say to most of that besides nodding my head sagely. I will remark, though, that “developmental stage” theories like Kegan’s almost always rub me the wrong way, because they tend to encourage the sort of smugly superior attitude I fear I detect in much “postrationalist” talk of rationalism. I don’t think I have ever heard any enthusiast for such a theory place themselves anywhere other than in the latest “stage”.
(I don’t mean to claim that no such theory can be correct. But I mistrust the motives of those who espouse them, and I fear that the pleasure of looking down on others is a good enough explanation for much of the approval such theories enjoy that I’d need to see some actual good evidence before embracing such a theory. I haven’t particularly looked for such evidence, in Kegan’s case or any other; but nor have I seen anyone offering any.)
When at school I learned about Kohlberg’s stages of moral development, there was a nice example of a moral problem (something like the Trolley problem, but I think it was about stealing an expensive medicine to heal someone) where either side could be argued from each stage of moral development. For example, you could make a completely selfish argument for either side “I don’t care about anyone’s property” or “I don’t care about anyone’s health”, but you could also make an abstract principled argument for either side “we should optimize for orderly society” or “we should optimize for helping humans” (simplified versions). The lesson was that the degree of moral development is not the same as the position on an issue.
If I look at the “rationality / postrationality” vs “Kegan’s stages” using similar optics, I can see how people on different stages could still argue for either side. Therefore, one could “explain” either side as a manifestation of any of stages 3, 4, and 5.
If the Stage 3 is “socially determined, based on the real or imagined expectations of others”, we could argue that people who use the label “rationalists” do it because they are in the Stage 3, and they believe that other “rationalists” expect them to use this label, so they follow the social pressure. But just as well we could argue that people who avoid the label “rationalists” (and use “post-rationalists” instead) do it because their social environment disapproves of the “rationalist” label. Both sides could be following social pressure, only different social pressures, from different groups of people. Maybe “rationalists” are scared that they could lose their group identity. And maybe “post-rationalists” are scared that someone from their social group could pattern-match them to “rationalists” and consequently exclude them from their group, whatever it happens to be (academia, buddhists, cool postmodern people, etc.).
If the Stage 4 is “determined by a set of values that they have authored for themselves”, we could similarly argue that “rationalists” have chosen the rational way for themselves, in defiance of the whole society (rejected religion and mysterious answers, criticized education that teaches the teachers’ passwords), and using reason as science as their guides they found people with similar values at LessWrong, thanks to Aumann’s “great minds think alike” theorem. But just as well we could argue that “post-rationalists” have chosen the post-rational way for themselves, in defiance of the Less-Wrong “rationalists”. People from both groups can feel like heroic lonely warriors in an ignorant world dismissive to their ideas.
If people in Stage 5 are “no longer bound to any particular aspect of themselves or their history, and they are free to allow themselves to focus on the flow of their lives”, we could find supportive arguments for that, too. The zero-th virtue (“do not ask whether it is ‘the Way’ to do this or that; ask whether the sky is blue or green; if you speak overmuch of the Way you will not attain it”), internal criticism of LW as “shiny distraction” on one side; abandoning the “rationalist” label on the other side.
What most likely happens in reality is that both sides certainly attract various kinds of people. (And even according to Kegan, one person is often in multiple stages at the same time.) However, here I am going to break the symmetry and say that to me it seems the “post-rationalist” side is almost defining themselves as “we are in the Stage 5, and those who identify as ‘rationalists’ are in the Stage 4″. At least this is how it seems to me from outside. (But complaining too much about this would be the pot calling the kettle black, because “rationalists” define themselves as “we are the rational ones, in the insane world”. So in a karmic sense they deserved such comeback.)
Also, accusing other people of not being in Stage 5 feels to me like a kafkatrap. There is no way to defend against such accusation, because whatever evidence of being in Stage 5 you bring, can be dismissed by “Stage 5′s never claim to be Stage 5′s, so everything you said is evidence of you not being in Stage 5”. (But it probably doesn’t work the other way. If you admit that you are not in Stage 5, that statement will be taken at face value. At least I think so; I didn’t actually try this.) So how does one convince others that they are in Stage 5? From observation, the solution seems to be having a blog about Kegan’s stages, and judging others as not being at Stage 5 yet… if you do this, you establish yourself as an expert on Stage 5, and by definition only people on Stage 5 can be experts on Stage 5. If these are the rules of the game, I don’t want to play it. (Note how I used the same cheap status trick here: defining other people as pawns in a system, and myself as the smart one who is above and beyond the system. Meh. Oops, I did it again. I am so meta I must be at Stage 8 at least. Oops, I am doing it again. I admit the game is a bit addictive.)
For me, the “rationalist” movement is a place where people similar to me can come and find each other. (Roughly defined as: high IQ, non-religious, trying to “win”, willing to help each other, trustworthy, not interested in status games. There is probably more that I can’t easily describe here; probably some clicking on personality level.) Even most people who come to LW meetups don’t satisfy my criteria, but there at least I can find the few ones much easier than in the general population. I would be sad to lose this one coordination point. Meeting such people brings value to my life; I find it emotionally satisfying to talk with people openly about topics that interest me without having to censor my thoughts or explain long inferential distances; sometimes I also get some useful advice. At this moment I don’t see any value I could get from “post-rationality”, but I am willing to learn, as long as it doesn’t feel to me as someone just playing status games, because I have low tolerance for that.
Kegan has published a lot of evidence about the consistency of measurements his scheme. See “A guide to the subject-object interview : its administration and interpretation” Lisa Lahey [and four others]. As for validity, not so much, but it does build on the widely accepted work of others (Paiget etc), and “The evolving self” has about 8 pages of citations and references including
Kegan, R. 1976. Ego and truth: per- sonality and the Piagetian paradigm. Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard Univer- sity.
_ 1977. The sweeter welcome: Martin Buber, Bernard Malamud and Saul Bellow. Needham Heights, Mass.: Wexford.
_ 1978. Child development and health education. Principal 57 (3): 91-95.
_ 1979. The evolving self: a process conception for ego psychology. Counseling Psychologist 8 (2): 5-34.
_ 1980. There the dance is: religious dimensions of developmen- tal theory. In Toward moral and religious maturity, ed. ]. W. Fowler and A. Vergote. Morristown, N.J.: Silver Burdette.
_ 1981. A neo-Piagetian ap- proach to object relations. In The self: psychology, psychoanalysis and an- thropology, ed. B. Lee and G. Noam. New York: Plenum Press.
Not very convincing.
My summary of Kegan’s model is here. My suggestion is to try it and see if it works.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_hpownP1A4PdERFVXJDVE5SRnc/view?usp=sharing
Thanks for the pointers. I’m more interested in validity than consistency here, I think.
I was intending to inform, not to convince. (I agree that no one should be convinced of anything much by my saying that I mistrust some people’s motives.)