This post puts me maybe 50% the way to thinking this is a good idea from my previous position.
My largest qualm about this is well-represented by a pattern you seem to show, which starts with saying “Taking care of yourself always comes first, respect yourself”, then getting people to actually act on that in simple, low-risk low-involvement contexts, and assuming that means they’ll actually be able to do it when it matters. People can show all the signs of accepting a constructed social norm when that norm is introduced, without that meaningfully implying that they’ll use it when push comes to shove. Think about how people act when actual conflicts with large fight/flight/freeze responses interact with self-care norms. I suspect some typical-mind, as my model of you is better at that than most people. I think it depends on what “running on spite” cashes out to. This is kind of a known skull, but I think the proposed solution of check-ins is probably insufficient.
My other big concern is what comments like your reply to Peter here imply about your models and implicit relationship to the project. In this comment, you say you’ll revise something, but I pretty strongly anticipate you still wanting people to do the thing the original wording implied. This seems to defuse criticism in dangerous ways, by giving other people the impression that you’re updating not just the charter, but your aesthetics. Frankly, you don’t seem at all likely to revise your aesthetics. And those, ultimately, determine the true rules.
To summarize the nature of my issues here in a few words: aesthetic intuitions have huge amounts of inertia and can’t be treated like normal policy positions, and people’s self-care abilities (and stress-noticing abiities) cannot be trusted in high-stress environments, even under light to moderate testing.
I’m unlikely to revise the aesthetics, but a) the particular operationalization/expression of those aesthetics, and b) the boundary/balance between both the aesthetics and other people’s agency are fully open to debate, iteration, and consensus.
The whole point is to test out the aesthetic as it exists, to see whether it produces a better life for people, so it’s important not to compromise it until some actual testing has taken place. But imagine e.g. a constructed social norm is approved of, proves to be problematic twice, and has one week left before its originally established “re-evaluate” point—I posit you get much better data out of seeing what happens if you keep the norm firmly in place, see the fallout for a week, watch people grumble and adjust, and then re-evaluate on schedule, than if you just constantly say “NOPE, DIDN’T WORK, SCREW THAT.”
I think there’s a strong instinct to buck norms and update in the moment, and that this is a pendulum swing thing—it’s good that we do this a lot more than we did two decades ago, but it’s bad that we do it as much as we do. There’s value in learning to live with rules that don’t change, or rules that are slightly stupid, and by setting rules firmly in place for e.g. three weeks at a time, I think you capture some of that value, at a low price in terms of loss of the flexibility thing.
Does that seem coherent/a valid response to your qualm?
Another way to say this is that I think the bar for “discard this norm” should be raised one notch higher from (straw description) “it bothered one of us once” to “it bothered several of us several times.” If you keep it past the former, I think you see interesting effects in how people shape themselves around one another, and I think there’s some valuable effect from transferring some sovereignty back from the individual to the social fabric (i.e. everybody’s not just quittable at all times).
Evaluating whether to change a thing at the moment when it is maximally annoying (as would be the case in ad-hoc votes) will have different results from evaluating it at a predetermined time.
I’d suggest evaluating the policy of ‘demand that an approved norm be in place until the scheduled vote’ on the first scheduled vote following each scheduled vote in which ‘a norm was dropped that people wanted to have it dropped mid-cycle but couldn’t because of the policy’.
Your suggestion makes sense for an experiment, but misses the whole point of this experiment. This, to me, seems like exactly the unpleasant valley dynamic. “We tried holding ourselves to a standard of ‘we finish the experiments that we start,’ but we got a couple of experiments in and we didn’t like it. Let’s stop.”
“Last fortnight, we canceled [Idea which appeared to be horrible seconds after implementing it], which we continued for an entire fortnight because of our policy. Today we look at all available evidence and must decide if the meta-experiment generates benefits greater than the costs.”
If you have no norm for evaluating that rule explicitly, it doesn’t mean that you won’t evaluate it. Maybe evaluating it every time it applies is excessive, but pretending that you won’t quickly learn to put exit clauses in experiments that are likely to need them ‘notwithstanding any other provision’ is failing to accurately predict.
I think you miss the point that Duncan wants to train the ability to be out-of-comfort zone by following through on goals that are set.
A norm being very annoying wouldn’t be a reason to drop it before the scheduled vote. The norm would have to actually create substantial harm.
I read that “this is causing substantial harm” would be insufficient to cancel a norm, but expect that “this is creating a physical hazard” would be enough to reject the norm mid-cycle. The problem is that every edge has edge cases, and if there’s a false negative in a mideterm evaluation of danger...
Maybe I’m concluding that the paramilitary aesthetic will be more /thing/ than others are. In my observation authoritarian paramilitary styled groups are much more /thing/ than other people expect them to be. (My own expectations, OTOH are expected to be accurate because subjectivity.
Duncan’s rule one is “A Dragon will protect itself”.
I don’t think whether something is physical would be the prime distinction but whether the harm is substantial. If following a norm would likely result in someone losing his job, that isn’t physical harm but substantial harm that likely warrants violating the norm.
This post puts me maybe 50% the way to thinking this is a good idea from my previous position.
My largest qualm about this is well-represented by a pattern you seem to show, which starts with saying “Taking care of yourself always comes first, respect yourself”, then getting people to actually act on that in simple, low-risk low-involvement contexts, and assuming that means they’ll actually be able to do it when it matters. People can show all the signs of accepting a constructed social norm when that norm is introduced, without that meaningfully implying that they’ll use it when push comes to shove. Think about how people act when actual conflicts with large fight/flight/freeze responses interact with self-care norms. I suspect some typical-mind, as my model of you is better at that than most people. I think it depends on what “running on spite” cashes out to. This is kind of a known skull, but I think the proposed solution of check-ins is probably insufficient.
My other big concern is what comments like your reply to Peter here imply about your models and implicit relationship to the project. In this comment, you say you’ll revise something, but I pretty strongly anticipate you still wanting people to do the thing the original wording implied. This seems to defuse criticism in dangerous ways, by giving other people the impression that you’re updating not just the charter, but your aesthetics. Frankly, you don’t seem at all likely to revise your aesthetics. And those, ultimately, determine the true rules.
To summarize the nature of my issues here in a few words: aesthetic intuitions have huge amounts of inertia and can’t be treated like normal policy positions, and people’s self-care abilities (and stress-noticing abiities) cannot be trusted in high-stress environments, even under light to moderate testing.
-Olivia
I’m unlikely to revise the aesthetics, but a) the particular operationalization/expression of those aesthetics, and b) the boundary/balance between both the aesthetics and other people’s agency are fully open to debate, iteration, and consensus.
The whole point is to test out the aesthetic as it exists, to see whether it produces a better life for people, so it’s important not to compromise it until some actual testing has taken place. But imagine e.g. a constructed social norm is approved of, proves to be problematic twice, and has one week left before its originally established “re-evaluate” point—I posit you get much better data out of seeing what happens if you keep the norm firmly in place, see the fallout for a week, watch people grumble and adjust, and then re-evaluate on schedule, than if you just constantly say “NOPE, DIDN’T WORK, SCREW THAT.”
I think there’s a strong instinct to buck norms and update in the moment, and that this is a pendulum swing thing—it’s good that we do this a lot more than we did two decades ago, but it’s bad that we do it as much as we do. There’s value in learning to live with rules that don’t change, or rules that are slightly stupid, and by setting rules firmly in place for e.g. three weeks at a time, I think you capture some of that value, at a low price in terms of loss of the flexibility thing.
Does that seem coherent/a valid response to your qualm?
Another way to say this is that I think the bar for “discard this norm” should be raised one notch higher from (straw description) “it bothered one of us once” to “it bothered several of us several times.” If you keep it past the former, I think you see interesting effects in how people shape themselves around one another, and I think there’s some valuable effect from transferring some sovereignty back from the individual to the social fabric (i.e. everybody’s not just quittable at all times).
Evaluating whether to change a thing at the moment when it is maximally annoying (as would be the case in ad-hoc votes) will have different results from evaluating it at a predetermined time.
I’d suggest evaluating the policy of ‘demand that an approved norm be in place until the scheduled vote’ on the first scheduled vote following each scheduled vote in which ‘a norm was dropped that people wanted to have it dropped mid-cycle but couldn’t because of the policy’.
Your suggestion makes sense for an experiment, but misses the whole point of this experiment. This, to me, seems like exactly the unpleasant valley dynamic. “We tried holding ourselves to a standard of ‘we finish the experiments that we start,’ but we got a couple of experiments in and we didn’t like it. Let’s stop.”
“Last fortnight, we canceled [Idea which appeared to be horrible seconds after implementing it], which we continued for an entire fortnight because of our policy. Today we look at all available evidence and must decide if the meta-experiment generates benefits greater than the costs.”
If you have no norm for evaluating that rule explicitly, it doesn’t mean that you won’t evaluate it. Maybe evaluating it every time it applies is excessive, but pretending that you won’t quickly learn to put exit clauses in experiments that are likely to need them ‘notwithstanding any other provision’ is failing to accurately predict.
I think you miss the point that Duncan wants to train the ability to be out-of-comfort zone by following through on goals that are set. A norm being very annoying wouldn’t be a reason to drop it before the scheduled vote. The norm would have to actually create substantial harm.
I read that “this is causing substantial harm” would be insufficient to cancel a norm, but expect that “this is creating a physical hazard” would be enough to reject the norm mid-cycle. The problem is that every edge has edge cases, and if there’s a false negative in a mideterm evaluation of danger...
Maybe I’m concluding that the paramilitary aesthetic will be more /thing/ than others are. In my observation authoritarian paramilitary styled groups are much more /thing/ than other people expect them to be. (My own expectations, OTOH are expected to be accurate because subjectivity.
Duncan’s rule one is “A Dragon will protect itself”.
I don’t think whether something is physical would be the prime distinction but whether the harm is substantial. If following a norm would likely result in someone losing his job, that isn’t physical harm but substantial harm that likely warrants violating the norm.